MoCo’s Stormwater Partners Coalition Pushes for Greater Watershed Protection
Montgomery County’s streams are in trouble. Especially in the lower third of the County, but increasingly in fast-growth places, such as Clarksburg, our streams are being heavily polluted and degraded by construction mud, lawn fertilizers, street dirt, and bacteria from pet waste. Beyond these pollutants, the millions of gallons of gushing stormwater that course through our down county streams from paved-over lands during rainstorms blow away the life—the fish, insects and amphibians—that need more gentle flows to survive. For these creatures, it’s as though each rainstorm were a relentless hurricane, leaving them homeless, injured, or dead.
Our local Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the State of Maryland have been tracking these biological stream losses, and the figures are sobering. According to DEP, 38 percent of our county’s streams are degraded—of either “Poor” or “Fair” biological quality as measured by the presence of fish and insect species. According to the Maryland Department of the Environment, at least 16 out of 22 of our county’s major streams are designated as “impaired—not meeting criteria for aquatic life, or levels of bacteria, nutrients, and sediment. Watts Branch in the Potomac area is so polluted by stormwater that WSSC is now spending $15 million to reach farther out into the Potomac for cleaner drinking water and bypassing Watts’ excess sediments and nutrients. But we think that pollution prevention, not a longer intake pipe, makes much more sense.
Montgomery County DEP and other agencies have stormwater pollution reduction and watershed restoration programs, but these programs aren’t fully in line with the federal Clean Water Act. The Stormwater Partners Coalition, comprised of twenty organizations including ANS, is proposing to upgrade the County’s stormwater permit under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”). We want pollution “caps” along with source controls with objective criteria, written into the County’s NPDES permit, up for renewal this summer of 2006. And we want MDE to use this upgraded permit as a template for other municipalities statewide, including our upstream neighbor Frederick County, whose NPDES stormwater permit is up for renewal in 2007. We are proposing that Montgomery take the lead in pollution elimination through widespread use of rain gardens and other on-site controls, and through strict requirements, like those applied to Upper Rock Creek, where all new developments must preserve a minimum of existing open space and use these areas as stormwater “sponges.”
So far, the Stormwater Partners Coalition has met with a good deal of official resistance to our proposals, but we continue to try to engage Montgomery County councilmembers, and other county and state officials, in a constructive dialog. County Executive Doug Duncan cancelled a scheduled May 18 meeting. We remain hopefully that we can meet with him soon and that Montgomery County can take the lead in protecting and restoring watersheds.
It’s vital that the sources of our Potomac drinking water receive permanent, verifiable protections.—Diane Cameron, Stormwater Partners Coalition Coordinator, [email protected]
ACTION
Consider sending a letter or email to County Executive Duncan, asking his support of greater watershed protection (and a stronger NPDES permit).
Douglas M. Duncan
101 Monroe Street
Rockville, MD 20850
Phone: 240-777-2500
Fax: 240-777-2517 [email protected]
