By Jeremy Cox/Chesapeake Bay Journal Barely three months ago, there was nothing here but open water — about 12 vertical feet of it from the gray-green surface to the silty bottom.   Now, there stands a brand-new dot of land. It’s small but has room for multi-ton construction vehicles to roam hither and yon on a 12-acre plain interspersed with dunes. Everywhere is sand, and there’s more of it with each passing minute. “From nothing, we’re creating something,” said Devon Carlock of the dredging firm Cottrell Contracting Corp., based in Chesapeake, VA. “You can see it building every single day.” “It” is James Island. Nearly two decades after the project was first conceived, the new island is taking shape in the mouth of the Little Choptank River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Construction began in June. Joe Bieberich of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers monitors the construction of James Island in August 2026 as sand is dredged from the nearby bottom. (Jeremy Cox/Chesapeake Bay Journal) The Lexington, a 200-foot dredge vessel, is moored in the river where it meets the Chesapeake Bay. Crews work around the clock siphoning millions of cubic yards of sand from the river’s bottom. The silt is mixed with water, creating a gritty broth. A pipeline carries the solution to the island, where it gushes out onto the landscape. When the island’s outer walls are finished, sand for the interior will be sourced from the shipping channels outside the Port of Baltimore and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The work will continue until around 2058. By then, the island will be shaped something like a croissant, with its longer side facing the Bay. Its highest point will be 20 feet above sea level. As the project planners see it, they aren’t just making new land; they’re making history. “It’s very exciting,” said Alex Baldowski, a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the work. “We’re taking material that would normally have gone out into the Bay or the ocean to just be dumped. Thankfully, this is now an alternative.” Bulldozers spread sand dredged from the Chesapeake Bay bottom as crews begin the first phase of the James Island restoration project off Maryland’s Eastern Shore. (USACE Baltimore Public Affairs) The Army Corps partners with the Maryland Port Administration to dredge more than 2 million cubic yards of silt annually from the upper Bay shipping channels, keeping them passable for cargo vessels. Maryland banned the disposal of dredge spoils in the open Bay in the 1990s, so that muck has to go somewhere else. Since early 2001, that “somewhere” has been Poplar Island, which sits about 10 miles south of the Bay Bridge along the Eastern Shore. Around 200 years ago, Poplar measured more than 1,000 acres and supported a population of about 100 residents. But erosion and rising water scoured away all but a handful of acres by the time the Army Corps got to it. Today, Poplar is nearing its planned build-out of 1,715 acres of new land. It has become a magnet for guided tours. Its first bald eagle hatchlings have been recorded. And its salt marshes are proving to be rich, resilient habitat. But Poplar Island will reach capacity within five to eight years, said Katie Perkins, the Army Corps’ lead engineer for the James Island project. “That’s why we’re really pushing to get the construction started [at James Island] and keep our momentum going to make sure there’s no disruption to the maintenance-dredging cycle,” she said. Katie Perkins of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers points to blueprints for the James Island reconstruction project during a trip to the Maryland site in August 2026. (Jeremy Cox/Chesapeake Bay Journal) The Army Corps analyzed dozens of potential sites before selecting James Island in 2009. Like Poplar, it’s also on the Eastern Shore, about a dozen miles farther south. It also was much bigger, around 1,350 acres in the 1660s, before getting whittled down to almost nothing: a tiny sandbar just south of the new island, visible only at low tide. Poplar Island holds the title as the East Coast’s largest “beneficial reuse” project for dredged sediment. But James Island will be even bigger, spreading across more than 2,000 acres — about 1,570 football fields’ worth — of formerly submerged earth. Over its lifetime, the effort is expected to cost about $4.4 billion. That price tag includes a smaller ongoing restoration at nearby Barren Island, where local dredged material is creating 72 acres of land. James Island is intended to be more than just a storehouse for excess Bay sediment. As with Poplar, the landscape will be designed to encourage migratory bird nesting. During an Army Corps-led boat tour around the emerging island in August, hundreds of brown pelicans and royal terns were already foraging along the shoreline. “The bulldozer is kind of pushing that sand up into piles to allow it to dry,” said Joe Bieberich, another project leader for the Army Corps. “And what you’re seeing here is, our birds love the material that gets dredged up. There’s lots of little benthics [bottom-dwelling creatures] in there, lots of little snacks for these types of birds. So, they’re always hanging out here whenever that thing is operating.” Jeremy Todd of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photographs James Island in August 2026. The island is being rebuilt near the mouth of the Little Choptank River in Maryland. (Jeremy Cox/Chesapeake Bay Journal) The new land mass is also expected to help slow erosion at nearby, low-lying communities, such as Taylors Island and Madison. “It’s going to help to act as a buffer to higher wind and higher waves that you might get from a nor’easter or from a tropical storm or a hurricane,” Baldowski said. In the late 1800s, James Island was substantial enough to support about 20 families, dirt roads, a Methodist church and a school. As it has eroded, many residents of Taylors Island worry that their community could be next. “Without a barrier island there, that puts the island in jeopardy,” said Aidan Enders, the dockmaster at a boat marina near Taylors Island. Fred Pomeroy, a longtime crab potter and conservationist, has a special connection to James Island. He proposed to his wife there more than two decades ago during a camping trip. The marriage has lasted; the island did not. He said the island’s loss hurt crabbing in the area. Crabs tend to congregate near the shoreline. When the island disappeared, so did the crabs. He looks forward to fish being more plentiful as well. They tend to be drawn to underwater structures, and that’s been the case with Poplar Island and its protective, rocky perimeter, he said. “I think it’s a net plus for Maryland and the Bay,” Pomeroy said. ...read more read less