Work is moving ahead on Lewes’s 4th Street preserve.
The 30-acre tract of land is slated to be the first urban forest in the First State. Lewes Deputy Mayor Khalil Saliba says he hopes that it won’t be the last.
"It's going to be hopefully a precursor to other communities doing the same thing with unimproved land in their cities,” Kaliba said at a meeting of the city’s Economic, Environment and Resiliency Commission last week.
As part of the preserve’s rehabilitation, a force of more than 40 volunteers turned out earlier this month to work on planting, Saliba said, noting that organizers actually had to turn volunteers away.
“They did an inordinate amount of work from 9:00 in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon,” Saliba said. “There were over 780 plants and shrubs and trees that were planted.”
Rodney Robinson, a member of the 4th Street Preserve Task force, which is managing the site’s rehabilitation, said that part of the planting plan is the creation of pollinator drifts, large swaths of ground planted to encourage pollinators to visit.
“The idea is that these are little centers where in time the seeds will be disseminated and we'll get a good, healthy herbaceous layer throughout the forest,” Robinson said.
Right now, workers are trying a wide variety of plants, he added.
“We're putting a lot of different kinds of plants in because we don't quite know yet what's going to be happy there,” he said. “So we're putting in maybe a dozen species at a time in one of these drifts.”
In addition to the planting, work is continuing on a groundwater study. Small testing wells have been bored and experts are putting together a more complete picture of the site’s groundwater.
“I think we'll know a lot more about what's in the ground there, particularly involving the groundwater pretty soon,” he said. “And hopefully over a year, we'll have a much more conclusive idea.”
Meanwhile, workers at the preserve, whether city employees or volunteers, are being very careful not to disturb two high-profile residents - a pair of bald eagles who have built a nest in one of the preserve’s trees.
“We're doing all the things we can from a mitigation perspective to mitigate noise and other disruption to them,” Saliba said. “But so far so good.”
There remain some open questions about the site, however. One looming question is about a series of agricultural ditches that crisscross the site. The 4th Street Preserve Task Force wants to build crossings over those ditches. But, they are waiting on a decision as to whether they can do that, said Rodney Robinson.
“We have to make sure that they are not jurisdictional ditches that require permits to do anything to modify them in any way,” he said. “And it looks like we're going to get a favorable result.”
If that favorable result comes to pass, the task force can place culverts across the ditches, extending the trail network and making it possible for vehicles and heavy equipment to get into the preserve for mowing and maintenance.
