Similar headland breakwater structures have been successfully implemented at other sites on the Great Lakes to create beach shoreline. Since being constructed over twenty years ago, both Sims Beach in Euclid, Ohio and Maumee Bay State Park in Oregon, Ohio have retained their original shapes and not required any beach nourishment.
Figure 7 Sims Beach, Euclid Ohio in 1992Figure 8 Maumee Bay State Park, Oregon, OH, 1992
Similar channeling and potholing projects have been used at other sites on Lake Ontario to restore wetland diversity and habitat suitably. Excavation of channels and shallow open water areas are proposed as a method to diversify conditions in the emergent wetlands of Braddock Bay that are currently dominated by mono-typic cattail stands. This process, termed channeling and potholing, aims to increase the amount of open water areas interspersed within the wetland complex, allow a pathway for fish to enter the marsh interior and fringe sedge-grass meadows during flooded conditions, and ultimately increase the diversity of wetland habitats present. The variable topography and hydrology created through channeling and potholing will create a wider variety of conditions that can support a greater diversity of emergent, submergent, and sedge-grass meadow plant species within the interior of the marsh. Excavations to restore interspersion have been shown to be beneficial to marsh-nesting birds and increased species richness in cattail/reed dominated wetlands at Long Point, Lake Erie (Schummer, 2012). Similar channeling and potholing activities have been undertaken by The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on other cattail dominated wetlands on Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. USACE has and will continue to coordinate with these agencies to ensure the best technical knowledge is applied to project designs. In October 2014, Tom Jasikoff, manager of the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge, stated that the work done there over the last three years to open up the marsh with large open areas to increase diversity and wildlife use of the project has not experienced troubles with invasive species in the areas disturbed as part of the project.
Schummer, M. L., Palframan, J., McNaughton, E., Barney, T., & Petrie, S. A. (2012). Comparisons of Bird, Aquatic Macroinvertebrate, and Plant Communities Among Dredged Ponds and Natural Wetland Habitats at Long Point, Lake Erie, Ontario. Wetlands, 32(5), 945-953.