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.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation's recently released 2012 State of the Bay Report tells us the health of the Chesapeake Bay has improved 14 percent since 2008. But that doesn't tell the whole story. Throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, we hear about local governments, businesses and citizens rolling up their sleeves to reduce pollution from all sectors: agriculture, sewage treatment plants, and urban and suburban runoff. They are working to restore local rivers and streams.

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.

The Maryland Watershed Protection Plan has the potential to prevent, and even reverse, the erosion that is damaging our streams and the Bay. However, the county's decision to pay for this through a property tax based on the "total impervious structure" is misguided. Impervious structures aren't the only thing that lead to the negative consequences of runoff. Fertilized lawns and pesticides have a major impact on the Bay. Taxing someone for runoff from their house and driveway, but not for their expansive lawn is not rational.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Optimism might seem out of place after the Waterkeeper Alliance's bitter loss in a recent lawsuit to hold Perdue Farms and its grower Alan Hudson responsible for polluting waterways with poultry manure. But it's possible to at least be hopeful of solutions, perhaps within the current decade, to this widespread bay pollution. Reasons for hope were less likely when the lawsuit was filed three years ago. Witness a survey recently presented by University of Maryland ag scientist Kenneth Staver.

The math is daunting: More than 2,300 pages of prose winnowed down to 190, including photographs and the occasional blank sheet that signals chapter breaks. Yet, that's exactly the challenge that author and historian Taylor Branch tackled when he condensed his three-part history of the U.S. civil rights movement into one slender volume that could be taught in the nation's classrooms. Never mind that Branch, now 66, devoted more than 25 years of his life to crafting his acclaimed trilogy.

It's close to Interstate 97, just down the road from Lures Bar and Grille and 10 minutes from the heavy traffic of Annapolis. Yet as you set foot onto Anne Arundel County's most recent environmental management enterprise, you'd swear you had entered the most remote regions of the Blue Ridge mountains. A barely used path twines through growths of wild blackberry and Virginia creeper, follows a plunging ravine past dogwoods and poplars, and disappears near a cedar tree whose bark has been stripped near the roots, a telltale sign that a buck has made his way through.

On good days, the Tiber Hudson tributary of the Patapsco is a pleasant part of the scenery in Historic Ellicott City as it flows through a stone channel by Tonge Row, beneath Tiber Alley alongside Main Street and past the B&O Railroad Museum before it spills into the river. It's a troubled waterway nonetheless, not considered able to support life, paved over in spots and surrounded by lots of asphalt. The urban and suburban surroundings that drain into the Tiber Hudson - its "watershed" - will be inspected early in December by teams of consultants and volunteers as part of a continuing private, county and state effort to improve the streams and rivers that ultimately flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Focusing on areas some distance from its channel, the crew of about 15 will spend four days driving around, looking for possible pollution sources and ways to better protect the Tiber Hudson.

Maryland made history yesterday as the first state to approve gay marriage at the ballot box. The outcome on Question 6 was notable not just for what it will mean for thousands of gays and lesbians whose relationships will now be recognized as equal to those of their heterosexual peers but for what it says about the state of gay rights in America. There is good reason to believe that yesterday's vote was not just a victory for equality but a turning point. Technically, Maryland appeared to be tied for the first-in-the-nation distinction, as a similar measure was poised for passage in Maine on the same day. Another was on the ballot in Washington.

To help mark the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, tree plantings are scheduled this weekend, and also in November, in the Loch Raven and Prettyboy watersheds. Both the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy and the Prettyboy Watershed Alliance will each host plantings on Saturday, Oct. 20, and the Prettyboy group will also conduct a planting on Saturday, Nov. 10.  The new trees are intended to help protect both the Loch Raven and Prettyboy reservoirs from runoff, and will also absorb pollutants that would otherwise enter the water supply. Together, the two reservoirs provide drinking water to 1.8 million people in the region every day. The Prettyboy Watershed Alliance received two grants from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, totaling $5,666, which will be used to plant 500 trees.

The county will apply for additional state funding to continue preservation efforts in the Little Pipe Creek watershed, a 35,000-acre area on Carroll's western edge.The county commissioners approved yesterday a request by Philip J. Rovang, county planning director, to draft an application seeking funding through the state's Rural Legacy program. County officials have not determined how much Carroll would seek.The $29 million program, part of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's Smart Growth initiative, was created to protect land that might not qualify for other preservation programs.

Criminals paid to restore a stream that runs through a Bel Air park. They also are covering the cost of upgrades to septic systems in the Sassafras River watershed and an effort to find new ways to detect illegal pollution discharge in Montgomery County and Cumberland. In January, the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy will begin a two-year project to improve the Middle River and tidal Gunpowder watersheds, courtesy of lawbreakers. All of the work is possible because local Coast Guard inspectors caught shipping companies dumping pollutants in the ocean and a federal judge ordered them to pay $1.3 million in restitution.

You'll read in various accounts that Tropical Storm Agnes, the great and hurtful deluge that struck the Chesapeake Bay 40 years ago this month, was the magnitude of storm that only strikes every two or three centuries on average - maybe even a 500-year storm. But from the bay's standpoint, it was arguably unique, like nothing else in the thousands of years the estuary has existed. To this day, significant parts of the Chesapeake ecosystem have not regained their pre-Agnes health.