Thumbs up to a new environmental organization that unveiled itself yesterday, called "Blue Water Baltimore." Five groups with strong track records of cleaning up urban streams in Baltimore have merged to multiply their muscle and clout.
They have a big task ahead of them. An investigation by The Baltimore Sun's Timothy Wheeler this weekend shows that bacteria levels in the Inner Harbor are sometimes more than 10,000 times higher than EPA would consider safe for swimming. Wash your hands, kayakers and paddle boat renters!
One of Blue Water Baltimore's first projects will be repaving alleys and street corners in East Baltimore with water-permeable materials, which will reduce storm water runoff pollution in Baltimore Harbor and the Patapsco River.
Local efforts like this help everyone in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, because a healthy network of streams is like a healthy system of capillaries feeding the great estuary.
The groups that have now teamed up include the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, which joined the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in a lawsuit to stop toxic runoff pollution oozing from the Sparrows Point steel mill site. Also in the new coalition is the the Jones Falls Watershed Association, which has organized popular annual cleanups and festivals, and helped to coordinate a city reconstruction project to rebuild this beautiful north-central Baltimore waterway. The other organizations joining Blue Water Baltimore are the Herring Run and Gwynns Falls watershed associations, and the Baltimore Harbor Watershed Association.
For more information about what Blue Water Baltimore is up to, click here.
By Tom Pelton
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
(Photo courtesy of University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science)
We're thrilled to have a considerably stronger voice and reach with this merger, and we look forward to working with the residents, businesses, schools and churches of Baltimore on fun, attractive, low-cost measures to help restore our streams, harbor and Bay.
Posted by: Ashley Traut | 01/31/2011 at 11:40 AM
More power to you, Ashley!
Posted by: Tom Pelton | 02/01/2011 at 05:32 PM
i love places in baltimore
Posted by: writer jobs | 03/24/2011 at 10:28 AM
I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.
Posted by: Mulberry Alexa Outlet | 12/14/2011 at 04:10 AM