Russia Catchs US Military Building 'Mysterious' Island in Chesapeake Bay

Actually a relatively nice and truthful article about Poplar Island in Pravda.  Remember this is written for an audience with little or no background on the Bay.

US Army builds artificial mysterious island in Atlantic Ocean

The U.S. Armed Forces have increased the area of ​​their country by 460 hectares. However, it does not go about the conquest of a territory during an armed conflict. The U.S. Corps of Engineers summed up the first results of a unique project to restore the land and deepen the seafloor in the Chesapeake Bay. Internet users monitored the progress of the work and suspected the presence of some insidious plans that the U.S. government harbors.

Those internet users should have asked the local fisherman for a trip out to take a look.  Nothing more mundane than a big pile of dredge spoils.

The Chesapeake Bay is the de facto a part of the Atlantic Ocean. The bay juts into the mainland - it is located between the states of Virginia and Maryland. There used to be numerous small islands in the bay. The islands were inhabited by tribes of Indians, and were later conquered by European colonists. Poplar Island was one of them.

About 100 years ago, the island diminished in size from 400 to not more than 10 hectares. As a result, the new territory of the island became located on three pieces of land. The rest of the island was simply washed away by the sea. About 15 years ago, U.S. authorities approved the financing of a unique project to restore Poplar Island. The work began in 1998. For the time being, the square of the island makes up 460 hectares.

Many other islands in the bay are suffering a similar fate, including James, Barren, Holland, and Bloodsworth. Sharp's Island is already gone. Erosion along their margins has made them all shrink.  Contrary to popular opinion and lots of propaganda, sea level rise is not their problem, since salt marshes like these rise as sea levels rise, at least up to a point, the way coral reefs grow.

The video recording, made from NASA satellite images, became quite a bombshell on the Western Internet and caused skeptical reactions from many Internet users. For example, the news about the restoration of Poplar Island was published on gizmodo.com under an ambiguous headline that it was the US Army that was building an island off the coast of the United States." In this regard, people wrote in the comments to the article that the story was about some secret military facility.

I never heard of this initial controversy; too bad, it would have given me a good laugh. 

In 1996, a U.S. Senate committee approved the allocation of $15 million to begin the work on the draft to restore the island. The total cost of the works for 25 years was the estimated at $307 million. In 2011, a recalculation showed that the spending had exceeded $660 million.

By design, the goal to restore the island was not the basic goal of the whole project. Poplar was supposed to be made something like a "latrine." The governments of the states that surround the Chesapeake Bay had been preoccupied were the problems of navigation for a long time. The depth of the bay in many areas, involving waterways, does not exceed 15 meters, making navigation complicated. For example, a Russian tanker ran aground in the Chesapeake Bay in 2008.

Calling it a "latrine" just because we dump the shit from Baltimore Harbor there!  Now, that wasn't very charitable, was it?  Truthful, but not charitable.

An ambitious project was proposed as a solution to the problem. It was offered to remove a layer of soil from the shallowest parts of the bay, particularly from the waters of the port of Baltimore and then take the soil to the area of ​​Poplar Island. Ecologists would never allow dumping the collected mud somewhere near the coast. Thus, American officials were hoping to kill two birds with one stone: to solve the problem of navigation and restore the island.

Honestly, I think that restoring the island was the lesser part of that twofer.  Without a need to dispose of dredge spoils, I doubt the idea of restoring the island would have ever been seriously considered.  And, by the way Pravda, we call the dirt that accumulates under water "sediment", not soil.  Just sayin'.

The noble mission was entrusted to the U.S. Corps of Engineers of Baltimore County. The work began with creating a concrete frame around the perimeter of the future island that had been divided into cells. Next, the form was filled with the soil from the bottom of the bay, NASA said and published satellite images of the object.

Noble mission!  If only our own press were that, uh, compliant.  I guess that's why Pravda translates as "truth" huh?

The project for the construction of the artificial island did not meet any resistance on the part of environmentalists. There were only environmentally friendly materials used during the construction.

If by environmentally friendly material, you mean sediment from the bottom of a harbor that's been horribly contaminated by toxic organics and trace metals.

Nowadays, the island serves as a natural reserve. There are no predatory animals living on the island. Sea turtles and some bird species gradually retrieve their populations. It is not clear yet whether U.S. defense officials confirm the fears of vigilant Internet users or not.

Don't worry, coons, foxes, coyotes and other predators will make it there as soon as there's enough to make it worth the effort. "Retrieve?"  What, did you use Google translator to help write this?  The word you want is "rebuild" or less likely "revive."