The ebbs and flows of Susan Guiteras鈥� life鈥攑rofessional and personal鈥攈ave always been in sync with the tides of the environment she works in. She's been working on the shores of Delaware, at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge and Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, since 2002 and has been the supervisory wildlife biologist of the refuges since 2007. Guiteras is one of the longest-tenured staffers at the Delaware refuge, and she remembers the story of Hurricane Sandy inside and out.
For her, it鈥檚 a story that begins well before Sandy even struck: It starts in 2006 when Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge saw its first big storm鈥攖he first of more to come.
鈥淭hat was mother nature making herself known,鈥� Guiteras said. The storm was the first tap on the shoulder, pushing refuge managers鈥� growing suspicion that the refuge鈥檚 management conflicted with the natural course of the coastal ecosystem.
Situated on the Delaware shore, the refuge once managed 4,000 acres of artificial freshwater impoundments. Water control devices kept out tidal influence out of what would be salt marsh salt marsh
Salt marshes are found in tidal areas near the coast, where freshwater mixes with saltwater.
Learn more about salt marsh if tides were left to their own devices. The resulting freshwater marsh provided habitat for freshwater ducks and game fowl and plenty of space for recreational hunters.
In 2008, another storm hit, this time breaking one of the impoundments and ushering salt water into the fresh. Even still managers were able to restore the original freshwater impoundments.
In 2009, Guiteras had just had her first child when two back-to-back nor 鈥榚asters hit. She was on maternity leave at the time watching storm updates from home 鈥渨ith a baby on my shoulder literally,鈥� she said. Those signaled the 鈥減oint of no return鈥� to Guiteras.
The freshwater impoundments had to go.
鈥淭he system was really trying to return,鈥� she said. 鈥淎t first it was mother nature tapping us on the shoulder saying 鈥榩sst, we have a problem.鈥� Eventually she shook us by the shoulders screaming 鈥楬ELLO!鈥欌€�
Thus began a long process of planning and modeling to figure out how to healthily restore tidal flow at the refuge.
In 2012, all these efforts to overhaul the impoundments were already in motion. Guiteras was again out on maternity leave when Hurricane Sandy hit鈥攈ard. Again Guiteras watched updates from home. (鈥淚 promised the staff no more babies after that!鈥� she laughed. 鈥楴o more storms鈥� was a much taller order.)
鈥淲e鈥檇 had problems before, but now it was tenfold,鈥� Guiteras said. By that point, they were already thinking of post-storm restoration and ways to embed greater storm resilience in their rebuilding. 鈥淓ven before Sandy, the problems were already brewing but so were the solutions,鈥� she said.
Almost a blessing in disguise, Sandy ushered in record-levels of damage and destruction, but it also ushered in a glut of relief dollars. It meant that the refuge now had the money to . The Service and its partners鈥擴.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), and NOAA鈥攚ere awarded $38 million of Sandy funds for the restoration, which would become one of the largest restorations on the East Coast.
The Sandy funding was divided into two main parts: recovery dollars, to fix what had been broken (the shoreline) and resilience dollars, to prevent the shore from needing extensive recovery in future storms鈥攖his was where the bulk of the project lay, in converting the freshwater impoundments back to their natural salt marsh state.
In 2015, such efforts began. Construction teams first dredged sentiment out of historic channels to foster natural tidal flow, emptying the freshwater and inviting back salt marsh conditions. Then they used that dredged sediment to build back beach and dunes that the storm had washed out.
All of it was designed 鈥渨ith large storms in mind,鈥� Guiteras said. The beach invites natural overwash and is large enough to absorb big influxes of water.
All throughout, the guiding principle was 鈥淟et鈥檚 fix the system so we don鈥檛 have to fix it every time this happens so that it can fix it on its own.鈥�
And it鈥檚 paid off. Now ten years after Sandy and seven after Prime Hook鈥檚 restoration began, land managers across the East Coast are looking for ways to make shoreline more resilient to sea level rise and increasing storm intensity. Prime Hook has already been there.
Guiteras explained that she sees these efforts as ahead of the curve in preparing for the new normal of climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.
Learn more about climate change that many refuges are just reaching now. As climate change intensifies, Prime Hook is largely settled. When the next storm strikes, nature has the tools to take its course and rebound.
Getting there was not easy, but now the team can reap the rewards of years of destruction and the years of forward-thinking work to keep these damages from repeating themselves鈥攁nd intensifying.
Said Guiteras: 鈥淚 still stand out there and think 鈥業 can鈥檛 believe we pulled this off鈥�.鈥�
