With many people in the midst of enjoying trips to the beach, it?s worth remembering that a battle is being fought on Maryland?s shores.
It is a struggle of huge proportions waged by school children, retirees, teachers and volunteers. They wear baseball caps, soggy boots and muddy jeans, and they carry shovels, rakes and picks. They plant trees along stream banks, pick up cans, bottles, plastic containers and sometimes peer under rocks to look for bugs.
Their mission is simple ? to restore the Chesapeake Bay?s health.
It?s no secret that the Bay is struggling. Too much fertilizer is spread over lawns, too many pollutants run off farm fields and paved surfaces, too much sewage is spilled into rivers. All of it, or most of it, ends up draining into this giant, but delicate, estuary ? the Chesapeake Bay. These contaminants make crabs, fish and oysters sick, help parasites flourish and kill plants and Bay grasses.
While the battle remains uphill, thepicture isn?t entirely bleak. In 2005, more than 78,000 acres of Bay grasses were surveyed in the Bay and its tributaries, up 7 percent from the previous year. Levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, the leading pollutants harming the Bay, have decreased in many of its tidal tributaries. Since 1996, more than 4,600 miles of forest buffers have been restored, adding important natural filters along streams, creeks and rivers. And, the “citizen soldiers,” the volunteers who give up their time to clean up the Bay, are having a profound, positive impact.
Near Baltimore, the South River Federation has adopted the South River, a Chesapeake tributary that runs through Anne Arundel County. This river has been tainted so much that catfish were found with cancerous tumors on their lips and in their livers. Committed to making a difference, volunteers have spent weekends creating natural shorelines that filter out pollutants while creating a breeding ground for crabs and fish, including the catfish.
While these steps might seem small to some, they are taking on a momentum all their own and giving people, and our Bay, hope.
Mary Roby, director of the Herring Run Watershed Association in Baltimore, has seen her group grow to nearly 2,000 volunteers. The association has organized stream cleanups, water quality tests, and tree and rain garden plantings in some of the city?s most neglected areas.
Melvin Noland, a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, is creating the same kind of enthusiasm within the Baltimore County Forestry Board. The organization plants thousands of trees each year in the Baltimore region, and Noland himself has planted close to 100,000. His mission is to expand Maryland?s forests as he knows that more trees mean cleaner air, cleaner water and a cleaner Bay.
According to the Chesapeake Bay Commission, restoring the Bay will cost at least $19 billion and many are working toward this goal, including the Chesapeake BayTrust, an organization that raises money from the sale of Treasure the Chesapeake license plates and uses the proceeds to provide grants for Bay restoration projects. The trust has committed $10 million over the next three years to help restore the Bay, the largest amount of funding in the organization?s 20-year history.
Regardless, the cleanup battle rages on. The Bay needs these citizens who fight to reduce phosphorus and nitrogen from entering streams, who encourage government to do more, who prevent our treasured blue crab population from reaching dangerously low levels. There are countless ways they choose to contribute to the effort: volunteering on river restoration projects, managing run-off on their own property and simply buying a Bay license plate. More citizens need to get involved, and these citizens need greater financial and technical support from government, businesses and the community at large. And while significant measurable progress will take years, these volunteers are committed to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, drop by precious drop, and will not stop until their goals are met.
David O?Neill is the executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust, a nonprofit, grant-making organization in Annapolis founded 20 years ago. His e-mail is [email protected].
