The number of wetlands in Baltimore's Inner Harbor doubled over the weekend, as the Waterfront Partnership installed the first of two small floating marshes.  It was a welcome touch of "good" green in a water body plagued at times by algae blooms. 

As Jamie Smith Hopkins reported in The Baltimore Sun, a batch of 11 rectangular floats holding lush-looking grasses got towed Sunday from their assembly point at the Living Classrooms Foundation to their mooring by the World Trade Center.  The frames got their bouyancy from discarded plastic bottles collected from the harbor and stuffed into mesh tubes by student volunteers. 

Aiding in the design and plantings was Biohabitats Inc. The project was funded with air-pollution settlement funds provided by the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper.

Another floating wetland, this one put together by the National Aquarium, is to take up position  Wednesday. The only other wetland in the Inner Harbor is similarly tiny, a strip of vegetation along the Lancaster Street shoreline at the Living Classrooms Foundation.

Though too small to do much for improving the harbor's water quality, scientists will monitor the floating wetlands over the next year or so to see how they fare.   If they survive and seem to be soaking up at least some of the nutrients feeding the harbor's algae blooms, they're likely to spawn other floating wetlands. 

In the meantime, they're great conversation starters for discussing the harbor's water-quality problems and the partnership's ambitious goal of making the harbor swimmable by 2020.  Stop by and check them out.

(Baltimore Sun photos by Algerina Perna)