A local effort to clean up the Macatawa Watershed has restored about 80 acres of wetlands in Ottawa County.
In 2015, the Outdoor Discovery Center's program Project Clarity used donated land to create 42 acres of new wetlands south of Holland and 38 acres of new wetlands in Zeeland Township.
The projects involved reworking the land into basins and replanting native plant species over several months.
Project Clarity fundraising director Lynn Kotecki tells the Holland Sentinel that the goal of the projects is to improve water quality in Lake Macatawa and its watershed.
She says sediment and phosphorous runoff are especially bad around the two sites and that the wetlands will help filter out the runoff.
The sites create more than 150 acre-feet of water storage.
