Watershed

IN ELDERSBURG this week, the Carroll County commissioners held a ceremony at which they reaffirmed the county's intent to better control rampaging development in its share of the watershed of Baltimore's Liberty Reservoir. A bit of pomp was certainly in order, for that re-signing - loudly resisted by two sets of county commissioners for seven years - was itself a watershed, so to speak, in this region's often losing fight against sprawl. It also was very much a credit to Julia Walsh Gouge, who's served as a county commissioner off and on since 1986 and who in recent years has been a lonely voice on that body for controlling Carroll's growth.

Farmers may be leery of anyone from the federal government promising help, but here's one offer that sounds too good to refuse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service announced this week that it is making up to $315,000 available to "farmers, ranchers and forest landowners" in the Catoctin Creek watershed in western Frederick County. The offer is part of a new water quality initiative by the NRCS directing technical and financial help to 157 watersheds nationwide.

The Chesapeake Bay Commission says a new report outlines the Chesapeake Bay watershed's biofuel potential. The report, scheduled to be released today by the commission and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, will detail the findings and recommendations of the Chesapeake Biofuels Advisory Panel. The report is the third and last in a series by the commission. The commission says the emerging biofuels industry has the potential to provide thousands of jobs over the next 12 years and significant amounts of fuel while helping to achieve bay restoration goals.

Nearly all of the toxic pollutants in Maryland's waterways come from the watershed that enters the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, according to a report released Thursday by an environmental watchdog group. The Gunpowder-Patapsco Watershed, which stretches above the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and as far west as Mount Airy, had more than 1.3 million pounds of toxins dumped into it during 2010, the nonprofit group Environment Maryland concluded. That's 98 percent of the chemicals released into the state's waterways that year, the report said.

After 25 years working often literally in Maryland's trenches trying to help restore waterways that feed into the Chesapeake Bay, 53-year-old John L. McCoy came back to Columbia for a very special job. "I've come home," said the beefy, crew-cut and mustached new Columbia Association watershed manager. Five years short of a full state pension, McCoy, of Clarksville, resigned his Department of Natural Resources job to return to Columbia, where he had worked part-time for CA as a college student.

Several hundred people got a new perspective on the Loch Raven Reservoir Sunday, watching the Gunpowder River pour over the spillway as they stood on the dam itself, just a few yards from the water. It was the Baltimore Department of Public Works' third Loch Raven Day, one day a year when the public is invited into an otherwise off-limits area for the unusual view. "It's awesome," said Dave Wilmot, a fire safety engineer from Lutherville, expressing a sentiment heard often during the unexpectedly sunny afternoon that drew families outdoors.

A pair of Chesapeake Bay Foundation employees left Annapolis Saturday morning on a 1,300-mile journey through the six states in the bay's watershed — by bicycle. John Rodenhausen and Beth McGee will attempt to ride through the 64,000-square-mile watershed, which stretches to Cooperstown, N.Y., and as far west as the Shenandoah Valley, to raise money for the Bay Foundation. They will spend their first night in southern Pennsylvania, pedal to New York and circle back through western Pennsylvania, then to Virginia and return via the Eastern Shore over the next three weeks.

Officials from Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's counties signed an agreement yesterday to protect the water supply of the Upper Patuxent watershed, which lies in the three counties.Howard County Executive Charles I. Ecker, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and Prince George's County Executive Wayne K. Curry agreed to maintain the water quality of the Triadelphia and T. Howard Duckett reservoirs -- an area of 85,000 acres that overlaps into the three counties -- for the estimated 700,000 residents who get their drinking water from the watershed.

COULD THIS be called a watershed event in regional government cooperation?Officials of Baltimore County and Baltimore City are insisting that the "conservation" and "agricultural" zoning for land around Liberty Reservoir be retained by Carroll County, per a 13-year-old agreement.Rezoning any portion of the watershed for commercial or industrial use would threaten the reservoir, the source of drinking water for 1.6 million people in the metropolitan Baltimore region, they say.Everyone wants clean, abundant supplies of potable water.

You'd think fish, of all creatures, would be smart enough to go with the flow.I was telling a group of fifth-graders about the amazing migrations of spawning herring and shad, how they used to climb the tributary rivers of the Chesapeake Bay, bucking the spring runoff for hundreds of miles, thrashing all the way from the ocean to upstate New York and the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.The kids were intrigued, and glad to learn that Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania are breaching and bypassing dozens of dams in hopes of restoring the historic runs.

The Harford County public and municipal elected officials in Aberdeen, Bel Air and Havre de Grace need to pay particularly close attention three bills on water and sewer issues that are scheduled for hearings before the Harford County Council this Tuesday, March 13, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Though the bills to some degree reflect a move in the general direction of a unified water system for the county, the question whether the county needs such...

So it turns out the  University of Maryland's award-winning green home garnered some real green in selling it to Pepco.  The Washington area utility paid $200,000 for WaterShed , the solar-powered, water-recycling dwelling that beat out 19 other university entries to capture the grand prize at last year's Solar Decathlon in Washington The university didn't disclose the sale price when it announced the deal on Monday, or...

There's an old joke about "denial" being more than a river in Egypt. Far less amusing is the denial some in Annapolis seem to have about pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and what's required to bring Maryland's sewage treatment plants into compliance with federal regulations. What has lawmakers grousing is Gov.Martin O'Malley's proposal to double the "flush tax" from an average $2.50 to $5 per month. Since the fee is assessed on water consumption, some people (those who use 2,000 gallons per month)

What can we say about the half-acre of stream valley forest that developer William Tarbutton recently, blatantly bulldozed near Federalsburg on Maryland's Eastern Shore? He will likely be fined by the Maryland Department of the Environment, which has recently proposed $240,000 in fines for previous violations by the Easton developer. He might get sued by adjoining landowner Charles Long, whose forest was part of what Mr. Tarbutton knocked down - "but I don't know if it's worth the lawyers' fees," Mr. Long said.

The University of Maryland took first place Saturday in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon 2011 with a solar-powered, energy-conserving WaterShed House that was inspired by the Chesapeake Bay. The design features a green roof that retains rainwater, solar panels that provide year-round power and a patent-pending indoor waterfall — key factors in an international competition that required the winning home to produce as much energy as...

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office reported Tuesday that the body of a Baltimore City man missing in the area of Liberty Reservoir since Sept. 9 had been found. According to the Sheriff's Office account, Baltimore City Watershed Rangers patrolling the reservoir were stopped by a motorist just before 9 a.m. on Sept. 13 along Liberty Road (Route 26) reporting an object floating in the reservoir north of the Liberty Road bridge. With the assistance of a Baltimore County Police Helicopter, rangers located a partially decomposed body in the water and called Sheriff's Office deputies and the Rescue Dive Team from the Gamber and Community Volunteer Fire Company to assist.

Anne Arundel County should manage the 78-square mile Severn River watershed as one unit, rather than continue to allow piecemeal development, and repair environmental damage caused by older communities, a draft study for the Severn River Commission says.In addition, new communities in the watershed should be squeezed into clusters, leaving other areas pristine, while communities built before storm water control laws were enacted should be required to fix their drainage systems, the study says.

Is it just me, or was there actually a time when ethanol was the great, green hope? Didn't Al Gore tell us it would fight global warming through cleaner motor vehicle emissions? Didn't George W. Bush promise this homegrown grain byproduct would reduce U.S. dependence on expensive foreign oil? And even though they had grave misgivings, didn't the folks at the tri-state Chesapeake Bay Commission conclude they had to embrace this political reality and make the best of it? I may have been the only dope who fell for any of this, but the U.S. Senate has set me straight.

Rays of sunlight filter down through a 200-foot-high canopy of tulip poplars and pines to dance across the forest floor at Rocky Gorge Reservoir. The dappled shade and serene setting draw recreational users to the watershed like deer to a salt lick. But horseback riders there say that they can't enjoy the woods as much these days since they've been banned from the decades-old equestrian trail nearer the water. In its place, they've been told to use an access road along the property's perimeter that they describe as "steep and rock-strewn.