BayBlog Question of the Week: Do I Live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed?
Welcome to the third installment of our newest feature, the
BayBlog Question of the Week. Each week we'll take a question submitted through
the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week's question comes from Sacha:
“My husband and I just recently bought a house in Gainesville, Virginia,
and were told that the creek that runs on our property is part of the
watershed. I’d like to know how I can find out if that is true and if it is,
where I can get more information on what that means for us as property owners.”
Your creek is, in fact, part of the Chesapeake
Bay watershed. As you can see in this
map, Gainesville, Virginia,
lies within the Potomac River watershed, and the Potomac River flows to the Chesapeake Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers more than 64,000 square
miles in the states of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia
and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia, and contains thousands of creeks,
streams and rivers that all eventually drain to the Chesapeake
Bay. But no matter where you are, every creek or stream is a part
of a watershed -- it’s just a matter of finding out which one.
If you want to find out which watershed you live in, start
off by going to the Environmental
Protection Agency’s “Surf Your Watershed” site and plug in your zip code,
city, or even the name of the stream itself. The site will then generate
information for you about your specific watershed, including:
- The
name of the watershed
- The
congressional districts within the watershed
- The
names of citizen-based groups working in the watershed
- Water
quality monitoring data
- Links
to environmental websites dealing with that watershed
- A link
to the National Watershed Network
- An
assessment of the watershed’s health
- Information
from the United States Geological Survey including stream flow, science in
that area and water use data
- A list
of places included in the watershed (counties, cities, states and other
watersheds upstream and downstream)
As property owners, it is important to learn about this
information so you are aware of the health of the water near where you live.
You also might want to look into the citizen groups
that work in your watershed to help improve or maintain the health of your local
waterway. Volunteering with your local watershed group is a great way to help
the environment and the Chesapeake Bay.
With that information, check out our Help the Bay
section, which details dozens of ways you can make a difference around your
home and backyard to help the Chesapeake Bay and
your local stream.
The health of the Chesapeake Bay
begins with the health of every creek or stream that flows into it. So treat
your local waterways well, and the Chesapeake
will one day follow!
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
Shades of Blue
If I told you that within the Chesapeake Bay watershed,
there was a wilderness oasis, devoid of the drone of highway interstate traffic
and the ever-present hum of electricity, where you can run your fingers along
the rigid surface of billion year old exposed granite and relish in your
escapism from modern development knowing you’re surrounded by 80,000 acres of
protected and never-to-be-destroyed-for-any-reason forests, would you believe
me?
I wouldn’t believe myself had I not touched the rocks with
my own fingers, experienced the almost overpowering silence with my own ears
and sighed in relief when I learned that the beauty I was completely
encompassed by was actually safe. Really safe. Like I can bring my own children
here someday and they will see with their eyes exactly what I saw through mine,
safe. Of course, I’m speaking about Shenandoah
National Park and the misty Blue Ridge
Mountains of the great state of Virginia.
As I began my 35 mile trek along Skyline Drive, the
signature route through the Shenandoahs, I travelled through a 700 foot tunnel in
the belly of Mary’s Rock Mountain where I was reminded by a quirky sign that,
‘only 1,300,000,000 years ago this rock was still molten magma’. . . lest I
forget, of course. I occasionally pass the wayward backpacker, no doubt
following the 101 miles of the Appalachian Trail
that transect the park, and I’m offered a casual wave and a glance that I can’t
help but interpret as, “You get it, too . . . this place is special”. Although
I’m visiting the park in the winter, I honestly feel a bit like a peeping tom
but in the best way possible. With the trees having shed the last of the autumn
leaves, I can see deep into the woods and eavesdrop on the inner workings of a
forest from squirrels climbing tall knobby chestnut trees to white-tailed deer nuzzling
through the fallen leaves in search of food.
At the tallest point of my journey, I pulled over at
Thorofare Mountain Overlook which is approximately 3570 feet higher than my
cubicle on the third floor of the Chesapeake Bay Program Office in Annapolis, MD
(not that I’m measuring). It was here that I experienced the deepest silence of
the journey. Sitting on a segment of a stone wall that runs almost the length
of Skyline Drive built with hard work and sweat by the boys and men of the
Civilian Conservation Corps early last century, my feet seemed to dangle on the
edge of the world. To my right, vast, open farming segments nestled comfortably
within the valley. To my left, row after row of misty near-ethereal Blue Mountains, each succeeding into a fainter shade of
blue until the last mountain blends almost artistically into the horizon. Yeah,
I get it. This place is special.
So, if I told you that within the Chesapeake
Bay watershed, there was a place 75 miles from our nation’s
capital where the mountains are enchantingly blue, the silence is deafening, and
you could experience true, unspoiled nature the way nature is intended to be, would
you believe me? Well, I guess you’ll just have to go and found out for
yourself.
Forest buffers featured at latest Forestry Workgroup meeting
Judy Okay
is a riparian forest buffer specialist on detail from the Virginia
Department of Forestry working at the Chesapeake Bay Program office.
In early October the search was on for a site in the Bay
watershed for the November 18 Bay Program Forestry
Workgroup meeting. Educational workgroup meetings are good because members
can get out of their offices and visit the fields and forests of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. After a few calls, the Virginia Tech
Mare Equine
Center in Middleburg, Virginia,
separated itself from other choices. It was a perfect location for the forestry
workgroup meeting because it has a 23-acre riparian forest
buffer, and forest buffers would be the focus of the meeting.
Riparian forest buffers are a topic near and dear to my
everyday life. People often tell me I live in “buffer land” because my job is
very specific to that area of forestry.
I really am very interested in watersheds as holistic ecosystems and
think of forest buffers as the integral link between what happens on the land
and how those actions are reflected in the water quality of streams and rivers.
Along with other Bay
goals, the
riparian forest buffer goal will fall short of the 10,000-mile commitment
made for the 2010 deadline. The number of riparian buffer miles achieved
annually has dropped off from 1,122 miles in 2002 to 385 miles in 2007. Since Forestry
Workgroup members represent state forestry agencies, NGOs, and other groups
interested in Bay forests, they are the logical group to come up with ways to
address barriers that stand in the way of achieving state riparian forest
buffer commitments. We spent the afternoon of the Forestry Workgroup meeting discussing
the barriers to riparian forest buffer plantings and ways to eliminate those
barriers.
The Forestry Workgroup meeting also featured two
presentations on new riparian forest buffer tools intended for use by local
governments, watershed groups, and local foresters. The first presentation, given
by Fred Irani from the U.S. Geological Survey team at the Bay Program office, was
about the RB Mapper, a new tool developed for assessing riparian forest buffers
along shorelines and streambanks. The other presentation, given by Rob Feldt
from Maryland DNR, was about a tool for targeting the placement of riparian
forest buffers for more effective nutrient removal. (You can read all
of the briefing papers and materials from the Forestry Workgroup meeting at the
Bay Program’s website.)
After all the business, it was time to experience the Mare Center,
their streamside forest buffer and the rolling hills of Virginia. A tractor and wagon provided transportation
to the pasture to see the buffer, which was planted in 2000 with 2,500 tree
seedlings. It was a cold and windy day, and there were actually snowflakes in
the air. We had planned to ride the wagon out and walk back, however, with a
little bit of a bribe, the wagon driver waited while we checked out the forest
buffer for survival, growth, and general effectiveness for stream protection.
The Forestry Workgroup meeting was productive, educational,
and enjoyable. How often can we say that
about group meetings? Sometimes it is
worth the extra effort to provide a meeting place with an outdoor component that
conveys the endeavors that the Bay Program workgroups are all about.