Getting aboard the low-impact development train
Mike Fritz is with the U.S. EPA at the Chesapeake Bay Program office.
Here at the American Society of Civil Engineers International Low-Impact Development (LID) Conference in Seattle, I’m swept up body and spirit by the
growing throng of several hundred enthusiastic devotees to the cause of polluted
runoff (a.k.a. “stormwater”) reduction. As a non-engineer EPA bureaucrat,
I’m a first-time participant in this biennial LID pilgrimage. But after three
days of PowerPoint presentations and an all-day field trip to Portland, Oregon,
which is the other “LID Mecca,” I’m just about ready to compose my own rap tune
out of cool LID lingo and design “treatment trains” (combinations of multiple
LID techniques) in my sleep. When I get home I’ll definitely take a new look at
my own roof downspouts and concrete driveway, and think about how much
reinforcement my carport will need before I can put a vegetable garden on the
roof!
I used to be an engineer when I was a kid growing up in the
suburbs of hilly central Connecticut.
One of my favorite activities was building snow dams in the street gutter when
the rain finally came and melted the snow on our particularly steep hill. It
was great fun to pack the snow into a big ice dam and then, when the call came
to go inside for dinner – invariably at 5:00 sharp – kick the dam open and send
a big slushy gusher down the street.
Down at the bottom of the hill it always flooded out of the street and
into the Perraults’ front yard. (Maybe that’s why I felt guilty when I saw them
at Sunday Mass.)
Of course at that time, I didn’t see any connection between
that phenomenon – the runoff gusher – and the fact that we could always catch
trout in the Quinnipiac
River upstream of the
city but never caught any downstream. Or why we never found any oysters when we
went way downstream to tromp through the mud in Long Island Sound, even though
my grandfather and uncles told great stories of burlap sacks full.
From what I’ve learned thus far, the “treatment train” at a
house like mine would go something like this:
- First,
don’t cut down any trees and plant as many additional trees and shrubs as
possible.
- Basically
get rid of the lawn.
- Catch
all the rain you can on a green
roof, where it either evaporates or gets used up by the plants. That’s
evapotranspiration.
- For the
remainder of the water that comes down your downspouts, run it directly
into a rain garden,
where a lot of mulch, trees, shrubs and native plants soak it up (more
evapotranspiration), and lots of it goes through the soil into the groundwater.
That’s infiltration.
- If you
have a driveway, garden path or sidewalk, replace the non-porous
(impervious) concrete and asphalt with porous (pervious) stuff. More
infiltration.
- If
there’s still a surplus of water, run it through a vegetated
swale (more evapotranspiration) and into another basin with more trees,
shrubs and mulch. The surface of the swale should be a little lower than
the surrounding land so that it may form a pond for a little while when
there’s a really heavy rain. That’s biorentention.
By that point, you should have pretty well mimicked what the
Chesapeake Bay watershed used to be: a
beautiful hardwood forest with clean waters in healthy streams. With this LID
“treatment train,” now we can all be engineers! Choo Choo!
Gearing up for the Executive Council meeting
The 2008 Chesapeake Exective Council meeting is just two days away, and agencies throughout the Bay Program partnership are busy finalizing details for this annual event. This year, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, and representatives from Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, West Virginia, the USDA and the Chesapeake Bay Commission will be on hand to review the past year's Bay restoration efforts and set a new agenda for 2009. You can read more details about the meeting at the Bay Program's website.
The meeting will be held at Union Station in Washington and is open to the public from 12:30-3 p.m. We're also planning to have a live webcast of the meeting on our website; stay tuned for that link.
Welcome to the Bay Program blog!
Welcome to the Chesapeake Bay Program's blog, our newest web tool to help you, our web visitors, learn more about the Bay Program and what's going on with the Bay restoration effort.
We've created this blog to give you unique insight into the science, policy and events taking place within the Bay Program. You'll hear from the people who work at our Annapolis office and, occasionally, those who work at organizations throughout the Bay Program partnership. In our entries, we'll tell you about what we do and why we've dedicated our careers to helping advance Bay restoration. We'll also highlight places you can visit to experience the Bay and ways you can make a difference in the Bay restoration effort.
We want to hear from you, too. Use the comments feature of this blog to tell us how you are helping the Bay, or ask us questions about what's going on with the Bay. We'll do our best to answer your questions and use your comments to guide future content on the blog and our website.
Thanks for visiting; we're excited to share our new journey into blogging with you!
An afternoon at the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center
Alicia Pimental is with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay at the Chesapeake Bay Program communications office.
Yesterday I visited the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center (CBEC), located in Grasonville on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It's an excellent spot for an afternoon walk, with trails that wind through salt marshes and loblolly pine stands. According to its website, CBEC has four miles of trails, two observation towers and two observation blinds, which are great to take photos from. There's also a one-mile water trail, with canoes and kayaks on-site available to rent (though it was a little too chilly to be out on the water yesterday!).
CBEC is also part of the Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network, a network of over 150 sites in Maryland, Virginia, D.C., Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York. Gateways include water trails, parks, wildlife preserves, museums and more. If you're looking for a way to experience the Chesapeake Bay or your local river, the Gateways Network has lots of spots to offer.
CBEC is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. It's about a 20-minute drive from the Bay Bridge and there's a $5 per person admission charge. I hope you're able to go check it out!
A boardwalk through the marsh leads to a small beach area, where terrapins nest and lay eggs each spring.
One of the observation blinds is located on a small pond and offers great photo opportunities.