Chesapeake Bay Trust

The Chesapeake Bay Trust awarded three grants last week for environmental projects in Anne Arundel County.The Maryland Ornithological Society and Anne Arundel Bird Club will share $1,450 for a "Birds and the Bay" program for county schools; the Alliance for Community Education will receive $1,000 toward a conference on land use and transportation in the county; and Folger McKinsey Elementary School in Severna Park will get $1,390 for field trips with the...

In the holiday spirit of giving, grants were doled out today to support environmental causes in Maryland and nationwide. First, the National Environmental Education Foundation announced a $3 million grant from Toyota Motor Sales USA  to help community groups that support parks and other public lands.  The announcement was made at Fort McHenry here in Baltimore, with top federal environmental officials in attendance and students...

Gov. William Donald Schaefer has appointed County Executive Robert R. Neall to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, a non-profit agency that finances private bay cleanup efforts.As a member of the trust's 19-member board, Neall will help award grants to groups undertaking projects to help the bay. The General Assembly created the trust in 1985 to solicit private donations and involve the public in the bay restoration.Nine Anne Arundel County organizations received $62,000 in May. Grants to county groups included $20,000 to Maryland Save Our Streams to help Glen Burnie residents restore Sawmill Creek, and $1,000 to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to plant trees andshrubs in the Back Creek Wildlife and Nature Preserve.

They've grown up during an era of unprecedented interest in the environment, and on Oct. 7, students from Pot Spring Elementary School and Dulaney High School turned their knowledge, and public service intentions, into action. Upperclassmen in John Enders' horticulture class at Dulaney joined first- and third-graders from Pot Spring to plant more than 30 trees on the fringe of a forested area between the two schools. Along with other recently planted trees and the long grasses that surround them, the new trees will act as a buffer for a stream that runs through the woods behind Pot Spring.

At Sparks Elementary School, "Sister Earth" teaches students about the environment while wearing a long flowered skirt, a wig and, when not in bare feet, flip-flops. The teacher behind the costume, Elizabeth "Pokey" Fair, also dresses in a lab coat and goggles - and a cowboy hat. Some days, she's joined by another teacher who is decked out as a surfer. "I like to do characters with the kids," Fair said. "It's something to catch their attention." Yesterday, Fair, 36, was recognized as one of the Chesapeake Bay Trust's teachers of the year.

10 a.m.: Senate convenes, State House.11 a.m.: House convenes, State House.1 p.m.: Senate Budget and Taxation Committee hears testimony on legislation to extend the current income tax checkoff for endangered species and the Chesapeake Bay Trust, Room 100, Senate Office Building.There are 74 days remaining in the 1992 General Assembly session.

Under overcast skies with light winds and water temperatures in the 70s, 644 swimmers plunged into the bay last weekend for the Toyota Great Chesa peake Bay Swim. The 4.4-mile route, from Sandy Point State Park to Steven sville, raises money for the March of Dimes and the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Hashawha Environmental Center has been awarded a $1,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to add a handicapped-accessible ramp to the boardwalk surrounding restored wetlands at the center.The grant was one of 85 awarded around the state for community restoration and education projects. The Hashawha project is part of a public education program for the wetlands."The area was probably a wetlands before the beginning of modern agriculture," said Loren Lustig, Hashawha's director. "The restoration project was designed by the Soil Conservation District."

The Belair Edison neighborhood was awarded $31,100 to develop a design for a heavily traveled portion of Erdman Avenue to green the street and control polluted runoff. The neighborhood will work with partners, including business owners, residents and environmental groups on the plan for the grant, administered through the Chesapeake Bay Trust, an independent grant-making organization chartered by the state. The program, paid for by the Trust and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was created to support street greening projects by urban communities.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust has awarded Katherine Maria Cruz of Ellicott City with the Honorable Arthur Dorman Scholarship. She was presented the scholarship Thursday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards Dinner, held at La Fountaine Bleu in Glen Burnie. The scholarship honors a Maryland student who shows interest in and commitment to the environment and the Chesapeake Bay, and strengthens communities by promoting diversity and respect. Cruz, a senior at Mount Hebron High School, was selected to be a student representative for the Howard County Human Rights Commission in 2002.

The Belair Edison neighborhood was awarded $31,100 to develop a design for a heavily traveled portion of Erdman Avenue to green the street and control polluted runoff. The neighborhood will work with partners, including business owners, residents and environmental groups on the plan for the grant, administered through the Chesapeake Bay Trust, an independent grant-making organization chartered by the state. The program, paid for by the Trust and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was created to support street greening projects by urban communities.

You can talk all you want about cleaning up the environment, but sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty. That's the lesson a muck-spattered Ben Boor says he's picked up from his summer job clearing debris from Back River, one of Maryland's most degraded waterways. And some think it could be a lesson on how to tackle the Chesapeake Bay, too. As the sun blazed overhead Wednesday morning, the 21-year-old from Bel Air and three other area college students waded across the mudflats downriver from Interstate 695, reaching into the shallow water to wrest tires, a plastic garbage can and a waterlogged foam cushion from the murky ooze.

In a year when green initiatives are few in Annapolis, Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. is pushing for creation of a Chesapeake Conservation Corps in the state. The idea is to enlist students and young adults in community service projects promoting energy conservation and environmental protection while also training them for jobs in those fields. The bill was inspired by a proposal floated last fall in the Obama administration's draft Chesapeake Bay restoration strategy to create a multistate conservation corps along similar lines.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust announced Thursday that it awarded $225,000 in grants to local groups to plant more trees. Mayor Sheila Dixon presented 13 awards to groups in the region, including five in Baltimore. The trees are intended to improve the quality of life in urban areas, including low- and moderate-income communities, reduce pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay and help residents save on energy costs. The mayor said the trees fit in with an effort she's launched to "green" the city.

Under overcast skies with light winds and water temperatures in the 70s, 644 swimmers plunged into the bay last weekend for the Toyota Great Chesa peake Bay Swim. The 4.4-mile route, from Sandy Point State Park to Steven sville, raises money for the March of Dimes and the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

At Sparks Elementary School, "Sister Earth" teaches students about the environment while wearing a long flowered skirt, a wig and, when not in bare feet, flip-flops. The teacher behind the costume, Elizabeth "Pokey" Fair, also dresses in a lab coat and goggles - and a cowboy hat. Some days, she's joined by another teacher who is decked out as a surfer. "I like to do characters with the kids," Fair said. "It's something to catch their attention." Yesterday, Fair, 36, was recognized as one of the Chesapeake Bay Trust's teachers of the year.

A Chesapeake Bay restoration group whose goal is to improve the bay's water quality gave $50,000 to plant trees in mountainous Western Maryland. "Planting trees in Cumberland benefits the rest of the watershed," said Molly Alton Mullins, a Chesapeake Bay Trust spokesman, "because it soaks up nutrients and pollutants before they enter any stream or river. Every stream or river affects the Chesapeake Bay." Cumberland joined Baltimore, Annapolis, Hyattsville and the Herring Run Watershed Association of Baltimore in receiving a total of almost $200,000 in so-called tree canopy grants.

A Chesapeake Bay restoration group whose goal is to improve the bay's water quality gave $50,000 to plant trees in mountainous Western Maryland. "Planting trees in Cumberland benefits the rest of the watershed," said Molly Alton Mullins, a Chesapeake Bay Trust spokesman, "because it soaks up nutrients and pollutants before they enter any stream or river. Every stream or river affects the Chesapeake Bay." Cumberland joined Baltimore, Annapolis, Hyattsville and the Herring Run Watershed Association of Baltimore in receiving a total of almost $200,000 in so-called tree canopy grants.

Margaret Paul pointed to a patch of ground behind Towson High School and explained that the plants that grow there -- black-eyed Susans and five types of grasses -- are native to the region. She led visitors to a spot that was once clay but that, after a lot of hard work by her students, has been turned into soil suitable for a garden with 150 plants. She gestured toward a field near Herring Run. Students and the school's neighbors have planted more than 80 trees there. Paul, an environmental science and biology instructor at the school, has been teaching her students to seek the grants that pay for projects, which the students design.