Stormwater Partners Network

The Baltimore Sun reported last Thursday that a coalition of veteran Maryland leaders including former Governor Harry Hughes, former Representative Wayne T. Gilchrest, and former Senator Joseph Tydings, stood up with other environmentally concerned citizens to denounce attempts in the Maryland General Assembly to weaken the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007.

The article reports of former Governor Hughes: “Hughes said the new rules were needed and ‘reasonable,’ because polluted runoff from developed land is growing.”   Regarding House Bill 1125, which weakens the Stormwater Act: “It’s my hope the committee will kill the bill,” Hughes said. “If not there, in the House; and if not there, in the Senate.”

Maryland needs clean water. We need to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and other waters, even as the state continues to grow and develop.

Three years ago, the Maryland General Assembly enacted the Stormwater Management Act of 2007 – a strong clean water law that requires developers to design sites to retain and reuse rainwater.  The Stormwater Management Act requires use of green techniques like street trees; green roofs; and permeable pavements to slow down, spread out, and soak in stormwater rather than funneling it into our streams.  Now, developers and their allies want to weaken this clean water law, with dirty water amendments that would allow projects to be built using obsolete techniques that will continue to kill our streams.

Developers want to weaken the Stormwater Management Act, so they can continue business as usual - to keep funneling polluted stormwater runoff into our streams and to let the public pick up the tab in the form of erosion, continued dead zones in the Bay; damage to public infrastructure; and future “stormwater retrofit projects.”

Existing damage from stormwater to Maryland’s streams – erosion damage that is yet unaddressed – has been estimated to cost the public $12 billion in unmet restoration costs.  This price tag will continue to mount if the dirty water legislation is allowed to weaken the Stormwater Management Act.  Let’s not let that happen.

Action:

Write or call your Maryland legislators today.  Tell them to vote No on HB 1125, the “Dirty Water Bill,” and all other bills and amendments, that would either delay or weaken the Stormwater Management Act of 2007.

To contact your legislators, go to the General Assembly’s home page, at:

www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/07leg/html/ga.html

-Environmental activist Fred Tutman as quoted in the Washington Post’s article today Maryland eases environmental restrictions on some developers.   Instead of requiring development projects to apply Environmental Site Design to all projects getting final approval after May, the Maryland Department of the Environment has allowed some projects to follow the old standards so long as they apply by 2013.  This is viewed as a compromise to prevent the passage of House Bill 1125, which would have been even more harmful.

H.L. Mencken described the Chesapeake Bay of his youth as a “immense protein factory” out which the people of his home town Baltimore ate divinely.  That Bay is no more, and today it is still waiting for Marylanders to make it a priority.

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 tree budget is short sighted.