284296-cq v7n2 rev4 - chesapeake quarterly · renewing an urban wurban watershedatershed. contents...

CHESAPEAKEQUARTERLYCHESAPEAKEQUARTERLY

MARYLAND SEA GRANT COLLEGE • VOLUME 7, NUMBER 2

Renewing an Urban WatershedRenewing an Urban Watershed

contents Volume 7, Number 2

Cover photo: Green returns to Fulton Street. For a long time local residents fought to bringback a median originally designed in the early 1900s by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of thefamed landscape architect who created New York’s Central Park. The historic median disappearedin 1951 with the widening of Route 1, a north-south trucking route. With truck traffic drawn tobigger highways and after 12 years of community pressure, the city restored a 1.5-mile-long tree-lined median to this West Baltimore neighborhood. PHOTOGRAPH BY SKIP BROWN. Opposite page:The children of Franklin Square Elementary Middle School helped design and plant the flowering“reading circle” that stands in the middle of their schoolyard. This island of green led to theremoval of more than an acre of asphalt from the schoolyard. PHOTOGRAPH BY SKIP BROWN.

CHESAPEAKE QUARTERLY June 2008

Chesapeake Quarterly explores scientific, environmental, and cultural issues relevant to the Chesapeake Bay andits watershed.

This magazine is produced and funded by the Maryland Sea Grant College Program, which receives supportfrom the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the state of Maryland. Editors, Jack Greer andMichael W. Fincham; Managing Editor and Art Director, Sandy Rodgers; Contributing Editor, Erica Goldman;Science Writer, Jessica Smits. Send items for the magazine to:

Maryland Sea Grant College4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300University System of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland 20740301.405.7500, fax 301.314.5780e-mail: [email protected]

We gratefully acknowledge support for Chesapeake Quarterly from the Chesapeake Bay Trust for 2008.

8 Organic OverloadCity storm drains provide a forgotten gateway for organic material into the Chesapeake Bay. New research sheds light on what this means for ecological processes downstream.

11 A Tree Grows on Bruce StreetA little bit of green space goes a long way for one resident and for the block she lives on.

15 Urban Stormwater & the BayWhere does urban stormwater fit in the landscape of efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay?

4 Greening Gray Streets: Can It Clean Waters Below?What will it take to green an ultra-urban watershed and clean up stormwater that flows through a network of subterranean pipes?

Volume 7, Number 2 • 3

If you believe in green, a little bit cango a long way.

In 2005, the city of Silver Spring,Maryland, tore down a parking lot in thedowntown area, leaving an unsightly heapof dirt in the center of the business dis-trict, where the new civic center wouldsoon be built.That summer, while plansfor the proposed Veteran’s Plaza were beingfinalized, the Montgomery CountyDepartment of Public Works and Trans-portation needed a quick way to createpublic space for upcoming events.Theyarrived at a temporary solution. PutAstroturf –– SoftLawn, to be exact ––down over the dirt. Overnight, a newtown square was born.

It’s green space, but it’s not even real grass.Vacuum cleaners,not lawn mowers take charge of its upkeep.The “Turf” becomesa sodden sponge when it rains. It has no bioretentive qualitiesand probably doesn’t help much with stormwater management.

But Silver Spring was so hungry for green that all it took wasa 35,000-square-foot swatch of artificial turf, some securitylights, and evening patrols to bring toddlers and teenagers to thesame hangout, to gin up impromptu picnics and raucous Frisbeegames, to bring a seasonal farmer’s market to the town center,and to draw a world-class jazz festival in the summer.

The Turf in Silver Spring was never meant to be a permanentfeature of the downtown. Now three years later, the long-awaited construction of Veteran’s Plaza and Civic Building isscheduled to begin this summer.And although the design planspromise plenty of green space –– real grass and trees –– manyresidents are loudly protesting the impending loss of the greencarpet.

All of this in a county with some of the best parks inMaryland. Just over a mile from downtown Silver Spring, SligoCreek runs into the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River.With it comes 13 miles of multi-use trail.The nearby RachelCarson Greenway, which is now almost complete, spansMontgomery and Prince George’s counties with nearly 25 milesof creek-lined trails. On those trails in the spring, I’ve watchedfamilies of frogs and tadpoles in vernal ponds. I’ve seen foxes,deer, and hawks.

Green has the power to transform the health of the environ-ment and to build community.At least that’s the idea.

So if a square of artificial turf could bring so much commu-nity to a county already rich with green spaces, what could grassand trees do for an ultra-urban watershed in Baltimore –– onewhere all the streams are buried below ground, where there’s nourban forest, no foxes, no deer –– a place where pavementencases more than 75 percent of its surface area?

It’s an experiment in progress in a 72-block area of WestBaltimore that encompasses twelve neighborhoods –– an areadefined as a watershed by the network of storm drains that carryrunoff beneath the streets. Dedicated people are working tobuild a network of green through gray streets –– ripping upschoolyard asphalt, planting trees, and cultivating rain gardens.

The hope is that less asphalt will improve the quality of waterthat flows through these urban storm drains. Gardens and green-ways will bring people together to tend to the health of theirlocal environment.

Whether this experiment will work remains to be seen.WestBaltimore lacks the surfeit of riches, ecological and otherwise,that Montgomery County claims. But those working to greenthis troubled watershed possess a rare determination –– theirstories reflect the connection of person to place, of human andecological resilience intertwined.

These people –– community volunteers, nonprofit leaders,public servants, and scientists –– are working to combat realfinancial, social, and ecological obstacles in this West Baltimorewatershed.They believe in the power of green. Isn’t that a goodplace to start?

— Erica Goldman

Power of Green

When rain falls in West Baltimore, loads oftrash and contaminants wash off city streetsand begin a subterranean journey thatultimately ends in the Chesapeake Bay. Pipe263 (opposite page) drains urban stormwaterinto the Patapsco River, where it flowsuntreated under a network of highway over-passes (above) into Baltimore Harbor andbeyond. PHOTOGRAPH ON PAGE 4 BY ERICA GOLDMAN; INSET ON

PAGE 4 AND PHOTOGRAPH ON PAGE 5 BY SKIP BROWN.


B eneath the vroom of traffic onRussell Street, the mouth of anoutflow pipe yawns into the

Middle Branch of the Patapsco River.Hidden under this busy Baltimore thor-oughfare, the 25-foot-wide masonry pipeopens onto garbage-lined banks. Plasticbags and newspaper hang from droopingtree branches. Styrofoam containers bobin sickly green water.

That is just what’s visible. Unseen areloads of unsavory substances –– heavymetals, bacteria, nitrogen, and phospho-rus, not to mention millions of suspendedparticles that bind toxics tight.Thisspoiled backwater flows under a criss-crossing tangle of highway overpassesbefore emptying its load into the mainexpanse of Baltimore Harbor. Out of thispipe flows some of the dirtiest waterheading for the Chesapeake Bay.

They call it pipe 263.Pipe 263 drains untreated stormwater

from the most urban of urban water-sheds. It’s filled with pollutants that washoff streets and sidewalks or seep into thesystem from illicit sewage connections.Far from the Bay itself, the pavementhere stretches in concrete waves and crabscome only as carry-out.Watershed 263doesn’t harbor a single flowing stream.Not one rocky streambed. No fish. Nowater striders. No ducks.

Watershed 263 is more accurately a“stormshed,” an antiquated system ofunderground pipes that carry awaystormwater coursing off Baltimore’s citystreets. Named simply for the giant pipe

at its terminus,Watershed 263 drains 930acres encompassing twelve neighbor-hoods in West Baltimore. Few trees dotthe landscape –– too few to support evenbirds and squirrels, the hardiest residentsof an urban forest. If not for the vibrantcolors of Baltimore’s rowhouses,Watershed 263 would be a very grayplace.

On Lanvale Street, Matt Cherigo pulls onlatex gloves and a Tyvek suit. He’s gettingready to climb into a storm drain in themid-watershed neighborhood of HarlemPark, where he works as a field techni-cian. His two assistants, Emma Noonanand Melissa Grece, are hooking up a bar-rel-shaped, automated water sampler to asteel cable. Cherigo’s head is uncovered.He forgot to order the suits with hoods.

The day’s forecast warns of heavy rainand the air hangs low.That’s whyCherigo and his field team are takingwater quality samples from the Lanvalestorm drain, as well as from anotherstorm drain at nearby Baltimore Street.Over the last four years they’ve sampledeach major storm event and taken base-line samples every two weeks from thetwo sites. Cherigo works for theDundalk, Maryland-based contract labcalled Microbac, but the overall samplingeffort is conducted through a partnershipbetween the Baltimore Department ofPublic Works and the Baltimore Ecosys-tem Study, a project that studies urbanBaltimore as an ecological system.Thewater samples are analyzed for levels ofnitrogen, phosphorus, bacterial load, andheavy metals.The resulting data make upthe first quantitative record of stormwaterquality from an ultra-urban area withinthe Chesapeake watershed.

Cherigo cleans rust off battery termi-nals on the automated sampler and pro-grams the computer. He’s going toanchor the sampling device inside thestorm drain, where it will remain throughthe duration of the storm. Rising waterlevels inside the storm drain will activatethe automated sampler.The trick is to getthe sampler in place, then get out of theway before the storm hits.

Stormsheds like Watershed 263 interweavemuch of Baltimore City’s subterraneanlandscape.There are 114 outflow pipeslike pipe 263 that deliver untreated

Can It Clean the Waters Below?By Erica Goldman

GREENING GRAY STREETS

6 • Chesapeake Quarterly

stormwater directly into BaltimoreHarbor or the Patapsco River. In Water-shed 263, as urban growth paved over nat-ural streams, city planners built a 43-milenetwork of 355 storm drains to funnelwater out of the city. Like the naturalstreams they replace, many of these stormdrains have base flow, even in dry weather.Due to a deliberate structural decision toleave the joints leaky, groundwater perco-lates into the pipes — an engineeringsolution designed to shunt water awayfrom basements and house foundations.

The water that flows beneath Balti-more’s streets contains concentrations ofnitrate comparable to the region’s agri-cultural areas (nearly 6 milligrams perliter during low flow periods). And levelsof lead, copper, and zinc routinely exceedthe Environmental Protection Agency’slegal levels during storm events, accord-ing to water quality monitoring data.

This stormshed has actually beendefined as a watershed based on waterflow patterns (hydrology). And it’s beingmanaged as such.

This pilotproject is thefirst of its kind –– ajoint effort begun in2004 between theBaltimore City Department ofPublic Works and the Parks & PeopleFoundation, a nonprofit organization thatfocuses on enhancing the quality of lifein Baltimore.Their goal: to enlist thecommunity in restoring water quality and“greening” the watershed.Their plansfocus on reducing impervious surfaces,growing the tree canopy, cleaning streetsand alleys, and creating biofiltration sitesby cleaning and landscaping vacant lotsand schoolyards –– all to improve thehealth of the community and water qual-ity in Watershed 263.

It’s daunting. Life is hard in the neigh-borhoods within this watershed. Resi-dents grapple with economic hardship,crime, drugs, and homelessness. Block

after block, houses stand abandoned. Insome neighborhoods, the number ofunoccupied homes exceeds one in three.The median income of the watershed is$20,000 and unemployment tops 60 per-cent. In these neighborhoods, no streamsflow through urban parks.The stormwa-ter pipes that drain into BaltimoreHarbor hide out of sight, buried deepunder asphalt.The Chesapeake Bay –– itsflat expanses of water, its marsh grass, andits osprey –– seems a distant world. Giventhis gaping disconnect between city andBay, can the people of Watershed 263come together to improve the health ofthe urban environment? Can they helpclean the waters that flow through hid-den streams?

At the bottom of the square-shaped stormdrain, Cherigo’s white Tyvek suit lights upthe dark tunnel. He shouts numbers toNoonan and Grece as they record back-ground measurements and qualitativedescriptions of conditions in the drain.

Cherigo is still in the hole when BillStack arrives. Dressed for the weather in along gray raincoat, Stack pauses briefly toanswer a quick email on his Blackberrybefore heading toward the storm drain.The sampling efforts in Watershed 263hold intense interest for Stack, the waterquality chief for the Baltimore City

Urban life and urban decay exist side-by-side in Watershed 263 (shown outlined in redon map). In some neighborhoods, more thanone in three rowhouses stand abandoned.Drugs, crime, and unemployment plague thequality of life of watershed residents. MAP SOURCE:

BALTIMORE CITY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS;WATERSHED

DETAIL FROM THE PARKS & PEOPLE FOUNDATION. Watershed 263

BALTIMORE CITY

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Department of Public Works. Stack’s theone who manages pollution controlefforts for the city’s stormwater, the onecharged with making things better. Heneeds a way to assess whether communitygreening and other Best ManagementPractices (BMPs) are actually improvingthe quality of Baltimore’s stormwater.

Before monitoring efforts began inWatershed 263 in 2004, Stack had noquantitative data to identify the scope and


Anticipating the approaching storm, thefield crew (opposite page, right) — MattCherigo (middle), Emma Noonan (left), andMelissa Grece (right) — lower an automatedwater sampler into a storm drain in Watershed263. There it will record flow rates and takesamples for measuring water quality.The Balti-more Department of Public Works, under theleadership of water quality chief Bill Stack(above, bottom), oversees the effort to collectwater quality data from two sites within thewatershed. Cherigo (above, top) heads under-ground to see that the device is working. PHOTO-

GRAPHS ABOVE AND OPPOSITE PAGE, RIGHT BY ERICA GOLDMAN.

The Problem with Pavement

Missing chunks of concrete leavelarge pockmarks in the curb atthe corner of Lanvale and Stricker

streets, maybe knocked loose by a cartaking the turn too fast.The chipped curbleaves the stenciled red letters on theopening of the storm drain hard to read.But from the top, the words remainlegible –– “Trash Kills Crabs.”

The banged-up corner captures theneighborhood’s contradictions. It carries anenvironmental message, one crafted toeducate the public about the connectionbetween city storm drains and the Bay. Onthe other hand, as chunks of the curbcame loose and fell into the street, they nodoubt ended up in that very drain, sendingcrumbled bits of pavement laced withnutrients and heavy metals into thestormwater network.

Dirty streets make the biggest contribu-tion to the water quality problem in Water-shed 263. Streets contribute 70 to 80 per-cent of the total suspended solids and 30to 40 percent of the nitrogen and phos-phorus to stormwater in this watershed,according to data from the sampling effort.Most of that comes from car emissionsdepositing chemicals onto asphalt. Imperviousstreet surfaces also serve up other nasty sub-stances, such as volatile organics from fossilfuel combustion, heavy metals, and vehiclefluids like oil and antifreeze.

Bill Stack and his colleagues at the Depart-ment of Public Works are experimenting witha suite of urban Best Management Practices(BMPs) to figure out which efforts might bringthe biggest benefits for water quality.This sum-mer, the Department plans to implement sixdifferent urban BMPs in tandem, with the cityof Baltimore contributing over $300,000 forthis effort. Stack is particularly excited about acurb-extension greening project that will bringbiofiltration capacity to the storm drains.These will help to treat stormwater before itreaches the drain and improve the aestheticcharacteristics of the area, he explains.

The ongoing water quality monitoring dataallow for a before-and-after comparison ofthe success of these practices in improvingwater quality. So far, street sweeping is theonly BMP that has been studied in a rigorousexperimental manner.

Street sweeping dates back to the 1930sand, with new technologies developed in the1990s, it’s become an effective way to preventcoarse particles of organic matter from reach-ing the stormwater network.This is key, Stacksays, since pollutants like heavy metals tend toenter the system attached to larger particles.

An unswept street delivers 75 percentmore particulate matter than one that hasbeen swept, according to findings by graduate

student Catherine DiBlasi at the University ofMaryland Baltimore County. But her researchalso found that increasing the frequency ofstreet sweeping has little effect on the overallconcentration of contaminants in thestormwater. Baltimore should keep sweepingits streets, but that alone will not likely provea magic bullet for the health of the city’sstormwater.

— E.G.

Buried Streams in the Gunpowder-Patapsco Watershed

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8% Buried40% Buried81% Buried98% Buried100% Developed0% Developed

Urban vs. Forested Storm Hydrographs

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Streams go underground in increasing num-bers as they move from forested areas towardurban centers like Baltimore (map above). InWatershed 263, where all the streams lie buriedunderground, impervious surface area tops 75percent — which leads to high-volume, flashystormwater flows, compared with forested areaswhere rain is absorbed by the ground (stormhydrograph above).

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W hen Ken Belt looks around West Baltimore on rainy days, hesees streams everywhere. A strange thing, since streams inthis part of the city went underground long ago to make way

for streets, parking lots, rowhouses, and storefronts. Belt’s not imaginingthings. He just looks at the situation a bit differently than most.

For Belt, a hydrologist and professional engineer with the UnitedStates Forest Service, each gush of water that runs down a street andinto a storm drain is a headwater stream, a small waterway that eventu-ally joins others to form larger streams. If underground pipes arebranches of a tree, he says, then these street-level “streams” are twigs.Belt estimates that every city block has at least two connections to thedrain, meaning that hundreds of these “zero order” streams cover urbanneighborhoods.When he counts these untraditional streams, he sees anexponential increase in the number of tributaries.

Storm drains are designed to get water off the landscape as quicklyas possible, Belt explains. It’s a design that appears to work too well inWatershed 263, a hydrologic basin in West Baltimore that flows entirelythrough storm drains (see “Greening Gray Streets, p. 5”).This subter-ranean watercourse is the product of what Belt feels was less enlight-ened engineering in a previous era.With nearly three-quarters of thewatershed covered by impervious surfaces like roads and parking lots,few grassy areas remain to absorb the flow. During a storm, torrents ofrainwater flow from gutters, driveways, and roads, picking up leaves, dust,dirt, and trash — what Belt calls “schmutz” — along the way.Thisschmutz can make its way into storm drains and ultimately through theoutfall pipe into the Patapsco River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

The components of storm flow — especially organic matter — havegrabbed Belt’s attention.With carbon as its backbone, organic matterforms the base of the food web and supports all life on earth. In bothits dissolved and particulate forms, organic matter plays an importantrole in traditional stream ecology. Bits of leaves, algae, and debris serveas food for microorganisms, including those that take up nitrogen andphosphorus — nutrients frequently blamed for poor water qualitythroughout the Bay and its watershed.

But organic matter has downsides too. Its decomposition can suck upoxygen and lead to hypoxia in aquatic ecosystems.The Chesapeakeexperiences this nearly every summer when vast swaths of algae dieand decompose, creating low or no oxygen zones. Organic matter isalso described as chemically “sticky” because it can bind tightly to metalsand toxic compounds, including carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs), pesticides, and flame retardants.

Belt thinks leaves and other debris that get washed into storm drainsmay be loading urban stormwater with organic matter.While leaves arepart of natural stream ecology, urban areas don’t have the natural land-scape characteristics that allow leaves and other organic matter todecompose — helping to form soil, for example. In an urban landscape,leaves and other woody debris, along with chemicals and trash, washdirectly into storm drains and into the Bay.

All this adds up to what Belt calls the “gutter subsidy,” the idea that acity’s vast network of storm drains provides a sometimes forgottenpathway for organic material. It’s an urban myth that urban streams aredevoid of organic matter, Belt feels. Curious to find out whether organicmatter entering storm drains has ecological effects, he approached hisfriend and colleague Sujay Kaushal at the University of Maryland Centerfor Environmental Science.

As a biogeochemist, Kaushal’s first instinct was to suggest that he andBelt study the chemistry of the water to determine the amounts andsources of organic carbon present.The project became part of the Balti-more Ecosystem Study, a long-term effort to better understand the city’surban environment.

Belt, Kaushal, and their team collect water samples at thirteen studysites ranging from 100-percent forested in Baltimore County’s PondBranch to 75 percent impervious surface-covered in Watershed 263.

Belt uses innovative sampling techniques to study transport along gut-ters, inside underground storm drains, and along streams, while Kaushalanalyzes the chemistry of the water. Using instruments from handmadesieves to state-of-the-art automated samplers, they record measure-ments at one-to-two-week intervals and throughout storm events.

One indicator of the abundance of organic matter, Kaushal says, isoxygen consumption. As microbes decompose organic material, they useup oxygen. Data from Watershed 263 show the highest oxygen demandof all the sites, especially during storm events.

Kaushal suspects this is because the high percentage of impervioussurface cover in Watershed 263 allows organic matter-laden water towash into storm drains efficiently and quickly.The drains act like hugefunnels, he says, collecting and concentrating organic matter. “It’s comingin at a much faster rate than organisms can take it up or remove it.”Efforts to add more green space in the watershed could help slow theflow. Landscaping features like grassy medians and rain gardens act likesponges, soaking up water before it can reach the drain.

From their work so far, Kaushal says, they’ve found there’s a significantamount of organic matter coming into these urban streams. But it’s acocktail, a mix of compounds.Their next steps will entail confirming thematter’s exact source and make-up and studying what its presencemeans for the ecosystem. Recent funding from the National ScienceFoundation and the Chesapeake Bay Program will help them crack thischemical recipe for organic matter in urban streams.

It’s work that could have implications for the larger Bay restorationeffort, Kaushal says.Their research may ultimately “link up what happensin the storm drain down to the Chesapeake Bay.”

Because of its ability to bind toxic chemicals and deplete oxygen,organic loading deserves more attention, Kaushal believes. “Nitrogenand phosphorus are the elements that people talk about, but ultimatelyit’s organic matter that does all the damage.”

— Jessica Smits

Organic Overload

A mix of matter — grass, leaves, and everything in between — littersthis West Baltimore alley. As gutters and rainspouts empty onto streets andalleyways, this organic debris begins its journey toward the Patapsco River.Ken Belt (above) and Sujay Kaushal have teamed up to study the effects oforganic matter as it washes from the urban ecosystem downstream to theriver and the Bay.

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scale of the problem. Monitoring datafrom the Chesapeake Bay Programreaches only as far as the outer portion ofBaltimore Harbor, where tidal watermixes and dilutes pollutant loads flowingfrom the outfall pipes.

Data also help Stack make the case forurban stormwater as part of the biggerlandscape of Bay restoration priorities. Herecently presented some of the data fromWatershed 263 at the annual meeting forthe Bay Tributary Strategies, roadmaps forimplementing river-specific cleanupstrategies for the state. Stack also testifiedbefore the state legislature in March toappeal for targeted funding for urbanstormwater BMPs in the new Chesa-peake Bay Trust Fund created this year.

Cherigo climbs out of the drain, stripsoff his grimy Tyvek suit and gloves andwalks over to greet Stack, who quicklyfinishes typing a message and stuffs hisBlackberry in the pocket of his raincoat.Data collection has been runningsmoothly at the Lanvale site, Cherigoreports, but nearby Baltimore Street hasproblems.The base flow in the stormdrain at Baltimore Street is so high thatthe added storm flow velocity seems tobe overwhelming the automated sampler.It may be necessary to alter the samplingprotocol, Cherigo tells Stack.

As it turns out, high base flow isn’tthe only irregularity in the BaltimoreStreet catchment area.The water qualitydata from this site show unusually highlevels of nitrogen and phosphorus ––high even for Watershed 263.Wheremight these nutrient loads be comingfrom?

Arriving at Bruce Street, a street so nar-row that a single car can fill its width,Guy Hager closes and locks the car doorand crosses the street. On one side of thestreet sneakers hang from overhead powerlines in an empty lot, overgrown and fullof litter. On the other side of the streetmetal doors barricade the opening to theBruce Street stables. The doors standpartially ajar, framing several bright redwagons with yellow wheels.

Standing outside the stables, Hager

announces his presence, identifying him-self with the Parks & People Foundation.Wearing a baseball cap, he squints againstthe glare as he looks inside. Over thebarks of a large dog tethered just inside agate, a young man working in the outercourtyard nods at Hager and shouts tostable owner Ed Chapman to alert himthat he has visitors.

Inside the stable, where ponies live inclose quarters, Hager finds Chapmanstooping low under the weight of a shov-elful of horse manure. His small, wiryframe tenses with the effort.The pungentsmells of manure and hay fill the stable, ahistoric building that has stood on BruceStreet for more than 150 years.

Chapman turns the shovel over anempty wheelbarrow and pushes the loadtoward the stable entrance, arousing awhinny of interest from a small brownpony in the corner. Steering the wheel-barrow over a makeshift ramp –– a boardpropped over the uneven curb –– hepushes into the glare of the outsidecourtyard.There the manure shed standswith doors open.

When the younger man starts unload-ing the manure from the wheelbarrowChapman finally stops to greet Hager.They haven’t seen each other for a while.

Chapman and his friends are part of adwindling group of Baltimore “arabbers.”The term “arabber” derives from Britishslang,“arab,” used to describe people whomade their living hawking on the street.Arabbers drove colorful horse-drawncarts filled with fruits and vegetables toareas underserved by grocery stores,announcing their arrival by distinctivehollers or songs.A historic way of life inBaltimore, arabbing was once commonall over the East Coast, an entrepreneurialpractice that dates back to the Civil War.Now it’s disappeared from every cityexcept Baltimore.The number of arab-

bers today hovers around a dozen.Chapman has been doing the job sincehe was 12, and on occasion he still driveshis horse-drawn cart to sell produce inWest Baltimore.At 88, he’ll probablyretire soon.

Back in 2006, Hager knew nothingabout the Bruce Street stables. He wasworking across the street on a greeningproject when a film crew from The Wire,an HBO police drama, showed up onBruce Street and began painting a muralof horses and cowboys on the outside ofthe stables.That tipped Hager off to thehorses and gave him the clue that horsemanure might be leaching into the catch-ment area’s stormwater.

He discovered Chapman and otherelderly stable hands had been leavingmanure on the concrete pad outside thestables.When it rained, the manurewashed straight through a hole into thealley adjacent to the stables.The nutrient-laden water then rushed into the stormdrain and through the pipe that runsunder Baltimore Street.

At the Bruce Street stables, Hager andhis team had uncovered an off-gridhotspot of pollution –– one that hadbeen missed by the detailed GeographicInformation System (GIS) mapping con-ducted at the beginning of the project in2005.

The runoff of manure in BaltimoreCity came as a surprise.“I can tell youthat the Chesapeake Bay model doesn’thave point-source pollution from cityhorse manure in its calculations,” saysHager.

Hager quickly realized that any solu-tion that would require hauling themanure an extra distance would provedifficult for these elderly men. But clearlythe problem needed to be addressed.

Hager and his team from the Parks &People Foundation began to work withthe men at the stables, first helpingChapman and fellow arabbers build anexercise yard for their horses in the adja-cent lot.They worked to explain thewatershed connection and brainstormedways to troubleshoot the manure prob-lem.The team proposed a metal pallet-

“The Chesapeake Bay modeldoesn’t have point-sourcepollution from city horse

manure in its calculations.”


type device that would keep the manureoff the concrete pad.The men couldwheel it out to meet a garbage truck thatcould pick up the manure on the street.It would be a fairly low-cost solution.But so far, Hager says, he’s not succeededin making the case for funding.

Chapman understands there’s a lot atstake in keeping manure out of the stormdrains and making sure that his stable iswell run and clean.The city-owned stableat Retreat Street was closed last year,condemned by the Housing Authority.When that stable closed, 49 horses facedrelocation outside the city.

Arabber stables are generally exemptfrom city zoning laws because of theirhistoric designation and the priorityplaced on preserving the cultural heritageof arabbing in the city.According to

Baltimore city health code, only arabbersand participants in the carriage trade areallowed to keep horses within city limits.But the stables have recently come underscrutiny for their structural integrity andhorse care practices. Chapman has a lotvested in making sure the Bruce Streetstable does it right.And he’s made somechanges to make sure he’s on track.

The manure shed now boasts a newroof, sidewalls, and wooden doors ––Chapman has overseen its recent rebuild-ing. He and his fellow arabbers are nowusing the shed properly, storing themanure piled high behind closed doorsuntil it can be bagged and moved out. It’stough going, shoveling manure and nego-tiating the heavy wheelbarrow at his age.He’s not sure how much longer he’ll beable to do it. But for now there’s no otherway.And Chapman is still going strong.For 75 years and counting, he’s been sell-ing on the streets of Baltimore.And nowhe’s buying into cleaning them up.

Tension crackles in the air of the drabconference room at the Bon SecoursHospital Community Center on NorthFulton Street.The turnout at themonthly meeting of the Watershed 263Stakeholder Advisory Committee issmaller than usual. Only three out of thetwelve neighborhoods have representa-tives present, and one of them is upset.

This is despite today’s good news.Aconsiderable infusion of cash is cominginto the watershed — the Department

Nitrate and Phosphorus Concentrations in Watershed 263

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Base FlowNitrate Phosphorus

At the Baltimore Street sampling station,concentrations of nitrate and phosphorus rivalagricultural watersheds under base flowconditions — the median values shown inthe graph above were derived from waterquality analysis conducted in biweekly inter-vals between October 2004 and January2006. GRAPH DATA SOURCE: WATERSHED 263.

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Horse-drawn commerce survives in Balti-more, thanks to a dwindling number of producevendors known as “arabbers.” Stable owner EdChapman (above right) works with GerrylLouden (top, with Chapman, and middle) tomake sure that manure doesn’t add unwantednutrients to the city’s stormwater. In 2006,manure sat uncontained outside the stable (bot-tom), causing a pollution problem when itrained. Chapman’s work and a rebuilt manureshed have stopped this runoff. Continued on p. 12


C harlenePinkneycrouches

near the base of hernewly budded dogwoodtree, her slight framebent low. She points toa daylily poking up nearthe rain barrel shemaintains in the cornerof her garden.

“It’s a determinedflower,” she says. “Thatdaylily keeps poking itsway through, eventhough the rain barrelblocks its path.”

Some might say the same of Pinkney. For over 10 years, she’s livedon Bruce Street, in the heart of West Baltimore, just down the blockfrom the Bruce Street stables (see opposite page). She lives in the onlyoccupied house on her side of the street, next to an overgrown lot.Trash and broken glass litter the alleys and lots — it crunches under-foot as you walk. On the other side of the block, more than half of therowhouses are boarded up. And where the boards are not secure, asshe points out in one house, unauthorized tenants often make them-selves at home.The street also sees its share of vandalism and “traffic,”she says, meaning drug deals.

Pinkney grew up in this area and it pulled her back home. She’sraised her two children here, now 15 and 16. And she’s worked hard tocultivate a peaceful oasis on her corner of Bruce Street.

On the alley-facing side of the garden, two evergreen trees provideshade from the afternoon sun. Pinkney says that she sometimes brings achair out here just to sit. “I need this place.The solitude gives me peaceof mind.”

But it takes most of her spare time to make her garden the placethat it is — a green space filled with carefully chosen flowers anddetailed landscaping. She can’t grow anything edible in the gardenbecause rats will get to it. “It’s a constant struggle to keep them away,”she says.

Early on, Pinkney’s interest in gardening helped her connect with theParks & People Foundation.They helped her get started with hergarden initially and worked with her to set up a rain barrel to help withstormwater management. Now Pinkney also serves on the Watershed263 Stakeholder Advisory Council.

Parks & People planted two large trees on the curb outside her gar-den and she helps maintain them, which makes the whole corner a littlegreener. Pinkney’s children are both alumni of KidsGrow — an after-school program run by the Baltimore Ecosystem Study since 1994 tohelp children understand their connection to the environment and pro-mote stewardship.

Charlene Pinkney’s garden helps her find the center of her innerworld. But it also flickers a bright light on Bruce Street, helping to anchorthe troubled block she lives on. Amidst the abandoned houses and lit-tered lots, her corner is clean and her garden is carefully tended.

When Pinkney’s hydrangeas bloom, she cuts them and hands themover the fence to children who pass by on their way to school.They’veasked if they can take them to their teachers. She smiles at the thoughtthat her flowers spread flashes of color to the neighborhood beyond.Something beautiful from Bruce Street.

— E.G.

Charlene Pinkney’s flowering dogwood tree (top right) casts a gracefulsilhouette on troubled Bruce Street. Her carefully tended garden (below, withPinkney looking on) provides a welcome oasis on a block plagued byabandonment, vandalism, and drugs. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERICA GOLDMAN.

A Tree Grows on Bruce Street


of Transportation has earmarked$900,000 for a proposed greenway, andit’s put a plan on the table for how tospend it. But Inez Robb isn’t ready tobuy in. Not yet.

“It looks like it’s already planned,” sheobjects.“We only have a couple of peo-ple from the watershed here. Had weknown this [would be discussed], wecould have had a huge crowd.… That iswhat should have happened.”

The problem isn’t the plan. JessicaKeller, the Planning Division Chief forthe DOT in Baltimore, proposes puttingthe money into greening efforts in thearea near the MARC train, where thecity is already investing a hefty sum.Keller’s plan would leverage the impactof a relatively small dollar amount.

The problem is the process.The deci-sion on where to spend the money seemsto be a done-deal — and a deal donewhen many of the stakeholders are not inthe room, especially those representingthe affected neighborhoods of UnionSquare and New Southwest.“I believe inteams, in hearing people, in buy-in,” saysInez Robb, who represents the watershedfrom the neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester.Without that buy-in, thebest-laid plans will seldom work, whether

it’s cleaning old stables or building newgreenways.

Community plans have a better shotat success when people like Robb buy in.Soon after she bought her first home inSandtown-Winchester, on a newly reno-vated block in an otherwise troubledneighborhood, she joined the board ofher condominium association and soonbecame its president. It is “not a thankfuljob,” she says, but she’s served faithfullyfor 17 years.“I’m a committed person,”she says.“That’s with everything. If I sayI’m going to do it, I’ll do it.”

Robb’s work with her condo boardspawned a deeper involvement in com-munity issues. She now serves on at leastfive different neighborhood or commu-nity advisory groups, including theWatershed 263 Stakeholder’s AdvisoryCouncil.That’s in addition to her day jobas an IT specialist for the Social SecurityAdministration in Woodlawn, where she’sworked for 41 years.

But it is not just about doing it her-self. It’s about building capacity, she says.“I like empowering, sharing what I knowto help you grow…I’m there with you110 percent, but you need to do it.”

True to character, Robb takes hercommitment to Watershed 263 seriously.

She sees communication and educationas essential to success.“Those that areaware of the watershed and make theconnection between greening, renovatedlots, [Baltimore] Harbor, and the Bay, Ithink they love it.… But [with water]being underground, we don’t oftenthink about it.” She says it is hard forpeople to make the link between eatingcrabs from the Bay and trash on thestreets of Baltimore.

Starting the construction of the long-anticipated greenway project in Water-shed 263 offers an exciting opportunityfor the project –– Robb agrees withthat. She realizes that many decisionsremain to be made about exactly what$900,000 will buy and what the projectwill entail. But Robb knows that thepeople affected by new construction ofany sort should be at the table. She’llmake phone calls. She’ll go door-to-door. She’ll do whatever she can to helpget them there.

Hager walks into the center of the “read-ing circle” at Franklin Square ElementaryMiddle School. His baseball cap shieldshis eyes from the noon sunshine, a dis-tinctive white beard on his otherwiseyouthful face. He sees dogwood trees just

A bright spirit, community leader Inez Robb (left) has served her Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood ever since she became a homeowner there 20 years ago(her block above, with its new grassy median). Robb’s connection to communitymade her a natural for her role on the Watershed 263 Stakeholder AdvisoryCouncil. She helps link residents in the watershed with an ambitious pilot projectaimed at improving both environmental quality and the quality of life.

beginning to flower around the ring,shrubs growing full and thick and grass inthe center that needs trimming — allsigns that the rich organic soil is doing itsjob, all signs that community buy-in canwork in unexpected ways.

A reading circle in the middle of anasphalt schoolyard didn’t seem to makesense from a landscaping standpoint, saysHager, but the students asked for it.Andit made a visual statement –– an island ofgreen in a sea of black asphalt.

Then the island grew.The citypitched in the funds to remove the rest ofthe asphalt in the courtyard.Volunteersfrom the community and the school

went to work with Parks & People to fixup the schoolyard.Their tally: 24 treesplanted along with 200 perennials andshrubs, 3 benches built, 100 square feet ofgarden habitat installed, all designed bythe students at Franklin Square. Greennow covers the 1.1-acre schoolyard,except for one small parking area nearthe school entrance.

There were no “reading circles” whenschools were built in West Baltimore. Inthe 1970s, during a period of attemptedurban renewal, the city quickly toredown residential houses, and schools wereliterally “dropped in place,” says Hager.

The planners and

builders failed to remove existing base-ments, simply laying asphalt over existingproperty, thinking it would be easier tomaintain, he explains. Paving over exist-ing foundations instead generated the so-called “heat island” effect, Hager says, adome of elevated temperatures that bakedthe asphalt schoolyard, discouraging recessand outside play.

So far Watershed 263’s efforts haveremoved more than 4 acres of asphalt inschoolyards and 14 acres citywide.Schoolyard asphalt removal has been oneof the “runaway successes” of the project,says Hager. Bill Stack made the case tothe city that removing these impervious

surfaces would improve water quality,according to Hager. So the city ofBaltimore has made money forasphalt removal available. It’s notcheap, roughly $70,000 per


In the new green space by Franklin Square Elementary Middle School, Parks &People’s Guy Hager (left) clips a tie from a young tree that’s now strong enough tostand on its own. Only a small fringe of asphalt remains in this once paved-over school-yard, where children now enjoy a backdrop of green as they congregate during a breakfrom class (above, bottom). PHOTOGRAPHS ON PAGES 12 AND 13 BY SKIP BROWN.

Celebrating a heroine of the FranklinSquare neighborhood, a building-sized mural(right) honors the legacy of Ella Thompson(third from left). After her daughter Andreawas murdered near Fayette Street in 1988,Thompson embarked on a personal crusade tosafeguard and enrich the lives of WestBaltimore’s youth. Within a year of herdaughter’s death, she became the director ofthe nearby Martin Luther King Jr. RecreationCenter, a post she held for seven years. In1996, she joined the Parks & People Foun-dation as one of the directors of KidsGrow, aprogram that introduces urban youngsters toecological sciences and community steward-ship. In 1998, while driving a car full ofdonated computer equipment to a cityrecreation center, Thompson, only 47,suffered a fatal heart attack.


acre in each schoolyard. But it is moneywell spent, says Hager.

School children at the four differentWest Baltimore schools have helpedgreen their schoolyards, planting trees andwetland plants to create bioretentionareas by the schoolyard storm drains.Harlem Park Elementary School nowhosts an Urban Watershed EcologyCenter, which teaches students and trainsteachers in environmental education.Franklin Square Elementary MiddleSchool hosts the KidsGrow Environmen-tal Education Program, developed by theBaltimore Ecosystem Study. Since 1994,the after-school curriculum has helpedelementary and middle school youth inBaltimore appreciate their natural envi-ronment and become better stewards oftheir community.

These efforts to green the watershed,beginning with the schoolyards, have builtmomentum and capacity, according toHager.The original Schoolyard GreeningTask Force has now evolved into a GreenSchool Task Force, which is working toimplement a green school certificationprocess.An active and committed Com-munity Stakeholder Council, with repre-sentatives from each of the neighbor-hoods, now helps to monitor the overallefforts of Watershed 263 and set priorities.

One of the most ambitious elementsof Watershed 263’s so-called “Frameworkfor Greening” is a proposed “greenway,”six miles of trail that would link parks,schools, trails, and business districts,explains Hager.The trails would be morethan an intervention to reduce impervi-ous surface area, although it will do thattoo.The network could have a keyimpact on the quality of life in the water-shed, Hager says.The proposed greenway,which will see its first progress withmoney from the DOT earmark, wouldconnect with the existing 15 miles of theGwynn Falls Trail in the adjacent water-shed.The hope is that it will help foster apedestrian and bicycle culture inWatershed 263, help build community,and provide safe outdoor spaces forneighborhood youth.

Like a stone tossed in a pond, the

“reading circle” spread outward, theisland of green grew wider. Hager nowpoints to the success of asphalt removal inthe schools with a sense of pride. In his10 years with Parks & People, and his 40years as a public official and city plannerbefore that, Hager sees his work withgreening efforts in Watershed 263 as ahighpoint in his career of service to thecommunity.

Noontime traffic roars down RussellStreet, a continuous stream of cars head-ing for I-95 and the Baltimore-Washing-ton Parkway. Guy Hager parks at the BPgas station adjacent to Watershed 263’soutfall pipe and starts down the “river-walk,” part of the 15-mile Gwynns FallsTrail. He’s walked this chainlink fence-lined path dozens of times, but the waterlooks pretty bad –– even to him.

The Watershed 263 demonstrationproject can point to many significantaccomplishments –– more than 800 treesplanted, 4 schoolyards and 200 vacant lotsrestored, 14 acres of asphalt removed,school children engaged, and stakeholderinvolvement growing everyday.

The “kicker,” says Hager, would be “ifwe’ve changed the quality of stormwa-ter… if we’ve had environmental out-comes that we can detect and monitor,”he says. But the water quality data doesnot show signs of improvement yet.“We’re not quite there.”

Where the garbage strewn, murkygreen water flows from the outfall ofWatershed 263 marks the site of the pro-posed “Celebration Park,” according tothe project’s Framework for Greening.But the watershed has a long way to gobefore it will be celebrating improvedwater quality.

To make a difference in water qualityin Watershed 263 will take a full frontalassault: removal of impervious surfacescombined with focused greening, con-struction of a pedestrian and bicycle“greenway” throughout the watershed,and full implementation of urban BestManagement Practices.

It won’t come cheap. Roughly $7.5million will buy treatment of only 25

percent of the watershed’s impervioussurfaces, according to the WatershedManagement Plan developed to meet therequirements of the City’s stormwaterpermit (see Urban Stormwater and theBay, p. 15).And that price tag does notinclude the greenway or the treatment ofstormwater in the remaining 75 percentof the watershed’s impervious surfaces.

Watershed 263 will need more thanpublic funds.The health of the waterflowing beneath Baltimore’s streetsdepends on the people above.The water-shed needs the professional commitmentof people like Bill Stack and Guy Hager,the personal investment of communityresidents like Inez Robb and EdChapman, and ultimately the stewardshipof the next generation, the school chil-dren that are learning to cherish greenspace in their lives.

Improving water quality remains atall-order task for a watershed with analready overflowing plate.The fix will notbe quick or easy. But people are hard atwork.— email the author, [email protected]

For More InformationParks & People

www.parksandpeople.org/Baltimore Ecosystem Study

www.beslter.org/Tales from Urban Forests (Watershed 263

radio program)www.talesfromurbanforests.org/index.php?theme=1

Center for Watershed Protectionwww.cwp.org/

A Stormwater Primerwww.mdsg.umd.edu/CQ/V04N4/side1/

Baltimore Department of Public Works –Bureau of Water & Wastewaterwww.ci.baltimore.md.us/government/dpw/water/

Urban Stream ResearchSujay Kaushal

www.kaushallab.cbl.umces.edu/www.mdsg.umd.edu/news/kaushal

Margaret Palmerwww.palmerlab.umd.edu/#research

Andrew Elmorewww.al.umces.edu/research_new/ watershed_hydrology_biogeochemistry/buriedstreams.html

Chris Swanuserpages.umbc.edu/~cmswan/ index.htm


S tormwater from city streets ends upin the Chesapeake Bay, carryingheavy metals, organic carbon, nitro-

gen, and phosphorus to the mix. Butamong the expensive problems facing thetroubled estuary, where does urbanstormwater fit in?

This is not easy to answer, says TomSimpson, who’s served for 10 years as chairof the Nutrient Subcommittee of EPA’sChesapeake Bay Program.The subcommit-tee’s Urban Stormwater Work Groupdevotes most of its energies right now toplanning for stormwater management innew development, he explains, not onretrofitting older systems.

To him, this allocation of effort withinthe Bay Program makes sense. New devel-opment offers an opportunity to get itright the first time when it comes tostormwater infrastructure.“The dumbestthing we can do is to keep creating newproblems when we can’t solve existingones,” Simpson says.

Cost and Benefit

But existing stormwater infrastructure,especially in older urban areas, clearlyneeds to be upgraded to protect localwaters as well as tidal waters downstream.And the Bay Program has a mandate toaddress large-scale urban stormwater prob-lems, explains Simpson. Maryland’sTributary Strategy, in fact, requires a retro-fit of 40 percent of all stormwater infra-structure in developed land by 2010.

“Frankly, the 40 percent was not some-thing that anyone ever felt was achievable,”says Simpson. He says that this high num-ber came as a concession to bring otherpractices, like agriculture, to higher levels.“It’s the piece we’ll never get to.”

According to calculations, retrofitting40 percent of existing stormwater infra-structure would reduce nutrient loadingsby 5 to 10 percent — at a cost of $7 to$8 billion. By comparison, changes in agri-cultural practices and sewage treatment

plant upgrades could cut nutrient loads by80 percent — at price tag of $2 to $3 bil-lion.“If the priority is nutrient reductionin the Chesapeake Bay, urban stormwateris not the wisest expenditure,” he says.Targeting agriculture would bring thegreatest impact, he says, which “leaves theurban side out in the cold in terms ofretrofitting.”

There is a disconnect between localstormwater issues and Baywide restorationgoals, says Simpson.“We keep trying toportray our need for good stormwatermanagement under the auspices of tryingto restore the Chesapeake Bay. Maybe thatisn’t why we should do it.… We need tobuild a case on local merits of needs forstormwater [management].”

Local governments are well aware ofthe merits of managing stormwater. Rightnow, the responsibility for managingstormwater falls squarely on their shoul-ders, thanks to regulatory requirementsfrom the National Pollution DischargeElimination System (NPDES).“We wantto do our part to protect Bay and tidaltributaries, but we have significant prob-lems within…local streams,” says MeosotisCurtis, who administers the stormwaterpermitting system for Montgomery

County’s Department of EnvironmentalProtection. Local governments needmoney to meet those requirements, hesays, but they are getting little financialassistance from watershedwide efforts likethe Bay Program.

Permits and Pollution

The NPDES permitting process forstormwater, created in 1972 by the CleanWater Act, requires municipal separatestorm sewer systems (MS4s), like Water-shed 263, to develop stormwater manage-ment programs that prevent harmfulpollutants from being washed into the sys-tem and then discharged into local waters.

Currently MS4 permits are more “pro-grammatic” than regulatory. Counties mustmonitor water quality of stormwater, workto reduce discharges of compounds (suchas nitrogen, phosphorus, and total sus-pended solids), and provide outreach andeducation.

An MS4 permit says that whatever youare doing must improve water quality,explains Curtis. It is basically a mandate to“do good things.”The current languagedoes not set any limits for how muchnitrogen and phosphorus, for example, can

Urban Stormwater and the BayBy Erica Goldman

Urban issues like stormwater receive less attention than agriculture in the context of Baywiderestoration efforts. With limited dollars and big problems, many argue that focusing on agriculturewill bring more bang for the buck when it comes to reducing nutrient loads to this troubled estuary.But with the combined pressures of suburban development and aging infrastructure, Baywide goalsto reduce of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment in urban areas are losing ground.

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be present in stormwater. But future per-mits may set “load limits” for stormwaterrunoff.

Such so-called “load limits” alreadyapply to the permitting process for indus-tries, power plants, and sewage treatmentplants.These daily limits, or TotalMaximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), wereoriginally established by the Clean WaterAct to protect local waters from cumula-tive pollutant loads from a range of poten-tial sources. Both Simpson and Curtis saythat these TMDLs would also set morestringent requirements for the quality ofstormwater runoff.With such a change,stormwater outfall pipes, like sewage treat-ment plants, would not be allowed to dis-charge nutrients or sediment above a cer-tain fixed amount. In some instances, theseload limits already exist, says Curtis. In theAnacostia, for example, load limits havebeen established for sediment, coliformbacteria, and biological oxygen demand (aproxy for the metabolic activity of bacte-ria).Tougher regulations will soon becoming nationwide, Curtis says, and thesewill act as a big “regulatory hammer” forstormwater management.

New load limits for stormwater may

produce positive ripple effects in otherenvironmental areas –– such as air pollu-tion.“If we have to actually remove nitro-gen from stormwater, we don’t have a lotof tricks,” says Simpson, so prevention iskey. Since much of the nitrogen loading instormwater comes from airborne exhaustfrom cars and power plants that driftsdown to road surfaces, urban areas mayhave to push for more stringent air pollu-tion controls.“The best BMP [BestManagement Practice] is for it [nitrogenoxides, etc.] not to fall,” he says.

Finding Funds

With load limits required by MS4 permits,it would be easier to make the case forfunding stormwater management –– atboth local and federal levels.When theClean Water Act was first passed, the fed-eral government provided money formunicipal wastewater upgrades. If loadlimits are imposed on stormwater, saysCurtis,“we would hope that fundingwould come from higher levels. It will costa huge amount of money.”

Some good news for funding urbanstormwater projects came this year whenthe state legislature created the newChesapeake Bay Trust Fund, seeded at $25million for the first year.Within the Trust

Fund will be the Chesapeake BayNonpoint Source Fund to provide finan-cial help for urban and suburban stormwa-ter management.

So is urban stormwater a local orBaywide issue? The answer appears to bethat it is both.“To build a case forstormwater, urban stormwater can’t beabout the Bay,” says Curtis. It’s about thequality of life in the urban environment,she says.

Simpson agrees.“If you’ve got peoplefeeling good and connected to localwaters, he says,“just as the waters connectto the Bay, they will connect too.”

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Stormwater, continued New Online FeaturesCheck out our new BayBlog and our photogallery, two new features of ChesapeakeQuarterly Online, www.mdsg.umd.edu/cq.Read and comment on the first blog entry,some behind-the-story thoughts aboutWest Baltimore by Erica Goldman.Thephoto gallery contains more images of theBaltimore neighborhoods she visited andthe people she spoke to while working onthis issue of the magazine. These onlinefeatures are part of an effort to providereaders with more in-depth coverage ofthe challenges facing the Chesapeake andits watershed.

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