Baltimore City and County lawmakers took the first step Thursday toward implementing an agreement they signed five years ago to improve 275 square miles of watershed that does not meet federal water quality standards.
A 13-member joint committee met for the first time in Baltimore?s Middle Branch Park to begin identifying solutions to restore 775 miles of streams in the shared Jones Falls, Herring Run, Gwynns Falls and Patapsco watersheds.
The pact was first signed in October 2002 and renewed in December, and committee members are tasked with identifying specific goals in five areas ? stormwater, community greening, development and redevelopment, public health and trash ?by October.
“It won?t be a book that you put on the shelf and 10 years from now we say, ?whatever happened to that commission??” Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said.
Subcommittees will meet frequently to develop goals, and later, funding sources, due October 2008, said David Carroll, director of the county?s Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management. The oversight committee will meet biennially to review progress, he said.
Each jurisdiction already has programs in place that could be expanded to include the other, Carroll said. Dixon trumpeted a new office aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and campaigns to clean litter. Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith cited the popular “Growing Home” campaign that offers coupons for trees at participating private nurseries.
“We?re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” Carroll said. “This is melding it all together and formalizing it.”
Mary Roby, executive director of the Herring Run Watershed Association, said other local environmental groups have started to address the five issues and the new task force will promote “synergy.”
The agreement renewal in December rekindled participants? sense of urgency, she said.
“Sometimes it seems like we?re talking to the choir,” she said. “This is an opportunity to involve more people, particularly citizens.”
