Citizens Aren’t Waiting on Politicians for Clean Water

Call it Occupy the Bay if you will, but citizens around the Chesapeake Bay watershed are getting together to take ownership of clean water and Bay restoration.

In Virginia alone, hundreds of clean-water advocates are rolling up their sleeves and volunteering to help clean up local waterways themselves instead of waiting for local, state, or federal officials to decide what to do. It’s almost as if these “can do” citizens are weary of “can’t do” politicians who say the time isn't right to clean up the Bay.

More than 100 volunteers, for example, turned out last weekend to pick up litter and debris swept by stormwater runoff into Richmond’s Bryan Park, a city green space where three urban streams converge to form Upham Brook, a tributary of the Chickahominy River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

Luke Garcia, a sixth-grader at Seven Hills School in Richmond, and his dad, Felix, were among the volunteers who filled scores of bags with trash, plastic bottles, cups, cigarette butts, and other urban flotsam and jetsam. Here’s how Luke described the experience in a school report:

“There are 3 streams that connect…in Bryan Park. I hit the jackpot (a lot of debris) when I was following someone. It was huge, I mean huge. You think you saw a lot of debris in one place (but) this was as big as 1/5th or 1/6th of this room. I have never seen this much debris in one place; everywhere I looked I saw more debris. Even though we thought we cleaned all of it we didn’t; that was how bad it was. It probably took us about 3 hours to clean all this.”

The stream cleanup was a partnership effort by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), the Friends of Bryan Park, and REI Inc. and is part of a larger Upham Brook restoration project that will involve community residents in other cleanups, streambank restorations, tree plantings, and education activities in the coming months. It’s just the kind of whole-community project that can serve as a model for citizen involvement across the Bay watershed.

Another example of a community seizing the initiative for clean water: Given the opportunity to learn more about local Bay restoration plans, more than 70 citizens packed a conference room in downtown Norfolk recently for an early-morning breakfast symposium to discuss ways they can ensure their local waters are cleaned up.

The diverse crowd heard presentations by local experts, asked questions, and left armed with ways they can become directly involved in the clean water decisions being made in their Hampton Roads localities. Many pledged to involve their friends and neighbors and further engage the community.

And hundreds of miles from Hampton Roads in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, 70 volunteers of all ages came out on recent Saturday morning to help plant 1,200 trees on a neighbor’s farm. The objective: provide some old-fashioned stoop-labor to help a local farmer in his efforts to reduce runoff and protect water quality in a local creek, one of the Chesapeake Bay’s headwater streams. See a video of the project here.

These citizen actions send a very different message than one heard from some local, state, and federal politicians about Chesapeake Bay restoration. While most of these officials proclaim they’re for a clean Bay, some are calling to halt or delay further cleanup efforts because Bay restoration (pick one) costs too much, shouldn’t be done in a weak economy, is based on bad science, will kill jobs, or is unconstitutional.

While perhaps not surprising, this pushback is lamentable, given that Virginia and the Bay region have been saying for three decades the Bay must be cleaned up, the Clean Water Act and state law require it, voters consistently demand it, and -- political rhetoric notwithstanding -- Bay cleanup (and environmental restoration generally) boosts jobs and the economy, especially in recessionary times like these.

As in other arenas of life, it seems citizens are out in front of many politicians when it comes to environmental protection. It’s encouraging that so many residents are not waiting for our leaders to act (or not act) but in true American fashion are taking responsibility for their own communities and futures.

Are you tired of waiting? Click here to learn ways you can take the initiative for clean water.

Chuck Epes
Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Photo credits (top to bottom): Mandy Yarnell/CBF; Felix Garcia; Mandy Yarnell/CBF; Andrea Moran/CBF.

Comments

[Steve Talley]

Thank you for the Bay Daily. What a wonderful way to keep abreast of Bay 'goings on'!

We are lucky to have such gifted and committed Bay bloggers.

Keep up the good work.

Steve Talley, Staunton, VA
Director, Headwaters Soil and Water Conservation District

[Chuck Epes]

Thank YOU, Steve, for all the good work you and your staff do in the Valley! It all starts up there...
Chuck Epes

[Waddell Robey]

This is the beginning of, I hope, an international ethic. Soon instead of having to seek out and gather up trashy substances we will become devoted to never discarding trash in a careless way.

The real challenge is a technical one, in which we expand and enhance the way we process trash and apply those enhancements to both construction products and energy generation. Yes we do some of that now, but come on it is a wide open, money making field that also promises many employment opportunities.

Hey Obama, comprende'?

[Maury Tobin]

Volunteer clean-ups of local waterways aren't the only way that citizens are trying to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay.

In Charles County, Maryland, for instance, citizens are making their voices heard with elected officials about why they oppose a proposal to create a new development zone in Port Tobacco that may allow a developer to build 1,500 homes near the Port Tobacco River.

Watch a 2 minute video http://vimeo.com/35337809 to learn how citizens are fighting back against the irresponsible land-use decisions made by local governments, in this case, in Charles County, Maryland.