Activists See Chance To Cleanse Streams

State Review Spurs Campaign

For environmental groups in Maryland, advocating for neighborhood streams and creeks has been a struggle.

This year, however, the groups have come together in a campaign to take advantage of a rare renewal of a storm-water management permit in Montgomery County that they believe will set the tone for how the state protects its most vulnerable waterways.

"All of these groups have been watching storm-water problems for years," said Steve Dryden, a member of Friends of Rock Creek's Environment. "Last year when the renewal of this permit was in view, the groups started talking to one another and decided to make a concerted effort to influence the decision making and set the bar higher."

This summer the groups launched an awareness campaign to educate communities and local officials about what they say are alarming pollution levels in suburban streams that feed tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay.

The groups have been meeting with county officials and sending them photographs of polluted waterways, and they plan to attend meetings on the permit renewal.

"These are the veins going into the landscape, and the Chesapeake Bay will become what those veins have acquired from the land," said Jim Long, a member of Friends of Mattawoman Creek in Charles County.

Said Dryden: "It's a big stew. You get oil, you get fuel. There's sediment, dirt, clay soil and mud from open construction sites. And you get fertilizers and herbicides from the suburbs and farm areas from storm-water runoff."

About 15 community environmental organizations in Montgomery have joined forces under the umbrella of the Stormwater Partners Coalition to promote solutions to the runoff problem.

In the coming months, the county will renew the storm-water management permit, issued every five years by the Maryland Department of the Environment, and the coalition sees this as an opportunity to reduce the pollution and begin the process of restoring the streams' health.

"With storm-water runoff and stream and river pollution, we have two challenges: the sins of the past, all the paving we have now; and the new development upstream such as malls and new subdivisions," said Diane Cameron, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Audubon Naturalist Society, which is coordinating the coalition. "If we don't fix the problems at the beginning, we will end up having to spend more money in the end to correct it."

The pollution is easily recognizable, environmentalists say.

In January, chlorinated water was discharged into the Wheaton branch of Sligo Creek, killing much of the aquatic life in the stream, which flows through Silver Spring and Hyattsville.

Development in Crofton has affected portions of Beaver Creek, where several trees have been damaged, with many falling into the stream and causing bank erosion that has made the creek muddy.

The conditions for aquatic life in Cattail Creek in Anne Arundel County was rated poor by the Department of Natural Resources, whose biologists attribute most of the degradation to development.

Recently, 600,000 gallons of sewage from a main near River Road in Montgomery County spewed into Cabin John Creek, which runs through Montgomery County, dumping bacteria and sediment along the waterway.

"There's a very clear relationship with the health of the streams and the amount of development upstream," said Daniel Boward, a biologist with the DNR, which has trained more than 800 volunteers through its Stream Wader program to assess the health of aquatic invertebrates. "The biggest impact is where the land has been urbanized."

Some groups are pressing local officials to be proactive to save unharmed streams.

Long said, for instance, that his group has found that Mattawoman Creek remains in good health but that one of its tributaries has been degraded by development. He said the group fears that the county will approve development, as well as construction of a four-lane cross-county connector, near tributaries of the creek, ultimately degrading the creek.