Stormwater Partners Network

The Environmental Site Design training that had been scheduled for Monday, March 15th has been canceled.

We will still hold the March 29 ESD training at Audubon Naturalist Society - Woodend - please plan to attend if you can.  Also, we are looking at a possible mid-April ESD workshop date to give you another alternative date. Please stay tuned.  For more information, please contact Bruce Gilmore at bgilmore@anacostiaws.org.

The Montgomery County Water Quality Advisory Group, a group of diverse citizens representing business, education, environmental, and other communities charged with advising the County on water quality issues, has released its 2009 annual report to the County Executive.

Some of the recommendations include:

• Water Quality Protection Charge- provide incentives for homeowners and business owners to participate directly in water quality improvements; restructuring exemptions from the charge; and, re-examining whether the charge might be considered a fee so that Federal and State properties pay for their water quality impacts.  (The Group had previously written a separate letter to the Executive about the Charge).
• The average citizen of the County is being asked to pay more for resources he or she often does not appreciate or fully understand.  The County should take the lead in developing an interpretative signage plan for its water quality environment.
• Restore the $247,000 cut being made to the County Department of Transportation street tree planting budget. The Anacostia Watershed Forest Management and Protection Strategy has noted the importance of trees not only for water and air quality, but also their connection with property values, shade, temperature, crime reduction, noise reduction, carbon sequestration, aesthetic and recreational values, and other benefits.  Cutting the street budget is short sighted.

A recent letter to the editor of the Montgomery Gazette:

The recent article in the Montgomery Gazette on the impact of melting snow on our local streams and rivers  (“Officials see little impact if melt maintains slow pace,” February 17, 2010) indicates that road salts and other pollutants in snowmelt don’t pose a problem for our waters because the dilution is so great.  This is simply not true. Fish and other life in small local streams can be harmed by road salt dissolved in snowmelt. And, detention ponds, one of the most common stormwater treatment devices, do not remove dissolved pollutants.  The Clean Water Act established that prevention, not dilution, is the solution to pollution. 

The article noted that Maryland has new requirements for developers to capture  and reduce stormwater and snowmelt, through Environmental Site Design methods like use of green vegetated landscaping features, rather than discharge their pollution to our streams.  Some developers are now pressuring legislators to weaken those stormwater requirements, so they can continue discharging polluted stormwater runoff.  They prefer to push the costs of future stream and watershed restoration onto the public.  Let’s go forward, not backward, with green solutions to stormwater and meltwater pollution, and let’s support a fair approach where “the polluter pays” – where each landowner is accountable for reducing, preventing, and paying for their own portion of the stormwater problem on each site. 

Diane Cameron

Conservation Program Director

Audubon Naturalist Society

That is, if a bill newly introduced in the Maryland General Assembly is passed.  House Bill 1125 threatens to weaken the provisions of the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007, especially those regarding redevelopment that are necessary to improve urban streams and waterways.   Please contact your General Assembly representatives and urge them to oppose any weakening of the Stormwater Act.

Audubon Naturalist Society - Woodend
6:30 pm - 7:00 pm social time
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm meeting

Main topic:

* Stormwater Partners’ Comments on DEP’s Watershed Implementation Plans for Montgomery’s Stormwater Permit

Some of the other topics:
* Forest Conservation Law reform update

* Outreach planning and the March meeting.