"No one was breaking the law," said Darin Crew, restoration manager for the Herring Run Watershed Association, which has discovered buried streams around the city's northeastern neighborhoods. "It was just the old engineering - get it as quickly as possible off the street and as quickly as possible into the storm drain."
Kaushal estimates that Baltimore city and county have covered over more than 900 miles of streams. The water, however, never got the message. When it rains, the water continues to follow centuries-old flow patterns. It wants to go into the stream, whether buried or not, because that's where it always went.
Far more difficult than locating the streams has been restoring them, a process known as "daylighting." Many flow under roads or houses that realistically can't be torn down. Even where stream restoration is possible, the cost is about $200 per linear foot - a large investment for projects in obscure locations that few will see. And even when a stream can be uncovered, it needs a large floodplain in which to drain, and often part of that has been paved over, too, said Bill Stack, the city's water resources chief.
"The opportunities for daylighting are very, very slim," he said. "We're lucky if we do one a year."
Stack said the city has uncovered one stream buried in a storm drain near Stony Run in North Baltimore. Workers removed part of the drain to create a meandering channel, instead of having water go through concrete and pipes. Funding came from city motor vehicle funds as well as a small state grant, Stack said. The city expects to begin work on a similar project next summer in the Maiden Choice area, using funds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Stack agrees with Kaushal's assessment that the buried stream in Carroll Park has contributed to an "ecological Chernobyl" and said the city is trying to improve the water quality.
The problem is not limited to the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Nationwide, developers routinely paved over streams, making ditches to direct the water away from the land, said Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. Only now, he said, are regulators demanding that developers take stormwater into account when planning for future growth.
"There are a lot of local governments that do a good job of dealing with this sort of thing. Some have learned the lesson the hard way," Larson said. "If you leave floods alone, they'll leave you alone. But you've got to give them room."
