Posted: August 10, 2022
Link to My Edmonds News article
Community volunteers are tackling the “motherlode” of invasive bittersweet nightshade in the Edmonds Marsh along Highway 104.
As volunteers manually pull the nightshade vines off the trees, chain-link fence and out of the mud, they are quickly surrounded by creek water that has been blocked for many years by the overgrown thicket of nightshade. Wood pallet “trails” are being used to prevent volunteers from sinking deep in the water/mud areas as they forge through restoring the Edmonds Marsh area on the west side of Highway 104 north of the pedestrian signal.
This is the second season of volunteer work under an “Adopt-A-Highway” Landscape Agreement with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). It allows volunteers to remove chain-link fencing and bittersweet nightshade that have damaged the wetland vegetation and blocked altered freshwater flows from Shellabarger Creek into the Edmonds Marsh-Estuary Wildlife Sanctuary.
During the first season of work, in 2021, volunteers successfully reopened the Shellabarger Creek channel on the east side of Highway 104. This year’s work is focused on opening freshwater flow on the west side of Highway 104 and preventing the nightshade overgrowth from killing more trees.
Edmonds-Woodway High School students were elated to find significant improvements in water quality this month — especially dissolved oxygen — in the areas cleared of nightshade. These students conduct monthly water quality testing with the Edmonds Stream Team in all of the streams and wetlands in Edmonds. It was the students’ data that demonstrated the problems caused by the nightshade thickets on the fence along Highway 104, thus leading to the WSDOT agreement.
Community members interested in volunteering between now and Sept. 15 to help with this marsh restoration project should contact Joe Scordino at joe.scordino@yahoo.com for details and to register as a WSDOT volunteer.
Upcoming volunteer events are scheduled for 9-11 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 11; Saturday, Aug. 13 and Tuesday, Aug. 16. The worksite is on the west side of Highway 104 just north of the pedestrian crossing signal.
— Story and photos submitted by Joe Scordino