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Volume 2, Issue 5 |
May 2010 | |
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IN THE ZONE
is a service from
the Maryland Department of Natural Resources' Chesapeake & Coastal Program (CCP)
that delivers timely information, tools and
resources to those who live, work and play in
Maryland's coastal zone. |
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CCP
SPOTLIGHT: OCEAN PLANNING AND OFFSHORE RENEWABLE
ENERGY OPEN HOUSES HELD IN ANNAPOLIS AND OCEAN CITY
CCP Spotlight is a feature of
the In the Zone e-mail service that highlights
programs that have been developed by the Chesapeake
& Coastal Program or through partnership and support
from federal, state and local partners helping to
advance coastal management in Maryland.
On April 5th and 12th, Maryland
DNR
and the Maryland Energy Administration (MEA)
conducted open houses for the public in
Annapolis
and in the Ocean City/Berlin area. The purpose of
the open houses was to begin engaging the public in
a discussion about the future of our ocean and to
provide citizens an opportunity to learn about the
State's ocean mapping and planning efforts, with a
focus on offshore renewable energy.
The open houses were designed to allow citizens to
ask questions and provide feedback at their own
pace. Experts from the two agencies and their
project partners were on hand to answer questions
and provide information about ocean mapping and
planning, offshore wind, project timelines,
anticipated processes and opportunities for
community response.
To provide those citizens and stakeholders who were
not able to attend the April open houses the
opportunity to access the information and to
participate in the discussion, the Chesapeake &
Coastal Program has created a Virtual Open House website. The site
provides access to all of the information displayed
at the open houses and access to the public comment
database.
After viewing the posters and maps, please let us
know if you have any comments or questions.
You can contact us in one of two ways:
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Click here or on the "Public Comment"
link in the Virtual Open House to access our Public
Comment Database,
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Watershed Assistance
Grant Program Awards $136,000
 The Chesapeake Bay Trust, in partnership with
Maryland
DNR
and as part of the Watershed Assistance
Collaborative, is proud to announce that five awards
have been made for the Watershed Assistance Grant
Program (WAGP). These five grant
awards total $136,000 of funding. This round of
WAGP was unusually competitive, as the program saw
an unprecedented amount of interest. A total of 17
applications were submitted, requesting over
$478,000. The
recipients and awards are as follows:
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Herring
Run Watershed Association will be awarded $23,110
for the development of designs for seven rain
gardens to be installed at Baltimore
City public
schools in the Herring Run and Jones
Falls
watersheds.
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Severn
Riverkeeper Program will be awarded $35,000.00 for
the design of a Regenative Stormwater Conveyance in
the Cabin Branch of the Severn
River.
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Baltimore
County Department of Environmental Protection and
Resource Management will be awarded $32,252.00 for
the development of the Small Watershed Action Plan
for the Loch Raven Reservoir watershed.
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West/Rhode
Riverkeeper will be awarded $26,000.00 for the
design of a treatment wetland and forebay at YMCA
Camp Letts on the Rhode
River.
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Caroline
County Department of Planning and Codes will be
awarded $20,000.00 for the development of multiple
12-digit watershed plans in Caroline County, MD.
The Watershed Assistance Grant Program, through the
Chesapeake Bay Trust and Maryland DNR, welcome
requests for technical planning and design
assistance associated with protection and
restoration programs and projects that lead to
improved water quality in the
Maryland
portion of the
Chesapeake Bay
watershed and the Maryland Coastal Bays. The funding
partners invite local governments and non-profit
organizations to submit requests for this
assistance. The purpose of this
assistance is to help grantees accomplish the
earliest phases of restoration projects. Recipients
of this technical assistance and design funding may
use the resulting plans and designs to:
Local communities interested in learning how the
Collaborative can connect them to the financial and
technical resources they need to undertake
comprehensive watershed restoration projects in
Maryland
should contact Carrie Decker with the
Chesapeake &
Coastal Program or call 410.260.8723. |
CCP AND COASTAL TRAINING PROGRAM HOST NOAA COASTAL
INUNDATION MAPPING COURSE
 On May 4th and 5th, CCP partnered
with the Chesapeake Bay National Estuary Research
Reserve Coastal Training Program and NOAA's
Coastal
Services
Center
to host a two-day, hands-on course providing an
introduction of coastal inundation and coastal
inundation mapping. There was an overwhelming response
to the course offering, and space was booked to capacity
within a day of the announcement being released. Participants
included representatives from the National Parks
Service, The Nature Conservancy, Maryland National
Capital Parks and Planning, Baltimore City, Harford, St.
Mary's, Queen Anne, Anne Arundel, Talbot and Caroline
Counties.
The course was a combination of lectures and exercises
that allowed attendees to gain a better understanding of
different types of coastal inundation, coastal
inundation products, elevation data and how to integrate
it, and the creation of inundation maps. Additionally,
there are continuing education credits available for
Certified Floodplain Managers that attended this course.
"The NOAA Inundation
GIS
training course was very helpful to me - strengthening
my understanding of public sector agency data and
analysis needs and private sector partnership
opportunities," said participant Mark Gradecak of
Davis, Bowen & Friedel, Inc. Gradecak added,
"It clarified how Federal efforts can be applied to
enhance local understanding of hazard response and
mitigation planning by building a common language and
methodology. Hands-on exercises demonstrated how current
Federal models and resources can be effectively used and
incorporated into projects at the local level. As usual, the
"devil is in the details," and this course shines a
useful light on those details...what works, how it's
done, and why."
Margaret Kaii-Ziegler, a participant from the Anne
Arundel County Department of Planning and Zoning, shared
her experience: "We are in the initial stages of
developing a Sea Level Rise study and the workshop has
provided us with a thorough understanding of our
available data and has helped us to formulate how to
proceed. The fact that this training was made available
to us under the current austere economic conditions, is
absolutely awesome and worth every penny. The training
will not only help the County with planning for long
term issues like sea level rise, but also for emergency
storm preparedness."
Anyone interested in more information about this course
and future climate change related trainings and
workshops, please contact Gwen Shaughnessy with the Chesapeake &
Coastal Program at 410.260.8743.
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 RECAP OF PILOT COURSE OFFERING,
"PLANNING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE USING A GREEN
INFRASTRUCTURE APPROACH"
The pilot course offered by The Conservation Fund, the
National Geographic Society, NOAA, Maryland
DNR,
and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission was held
on May 26th through 28th at the
National
Conservation
Training
Center
in
Shepherdstown,
West Virginia.
Interests were high with a full course of 33
participants from local and state government and NGOs
from
Maryland,
D.C., and
Virginia.
Participants focused on creating and comparing
conservation plans for climate change scenarios in
Hampton Roads, Virginia and Dorchester County, Maryland;
two distinctly different areas both facing similar
future impacts from climate change, including sea-level
rise, increased storm surge events, changes in
precipitation and increased temperatures.
Highlights of the workshop included presentations on a
new storm surge and sea-level rise map for the
Chesapeake Bay by National Geographic and a presentation
by Michael Culp from the Federal Highway Administration
who outlined policies and strategies for responding to
the impacts of climate change for the built environment.
Using the knowledge participants gained from the course
presentations, as well as the group discussions,
the participants utilized many unique
approaches to create green infrastructure network
designs that incorporated climate change, sea level rise
and storm surge scenarios. The
green infrastructure network designs and proposed
implementation plans developed by the
course participants will be shared with both
Dorchester
County
and Hampton Roads planners.
If you are interested in learning more about this course
or future course offerings, click here to visit The Conservation
Fund's website and listing of upcoming courses.
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POULTRY HOUSE FLOORING
THAT REDUCES AMMONIA EMISSIONS IS LATEST PROJECT OF
MARYLAND'S INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY FUND
Photo provided by
AviHome, LLC.
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The Innovative Technology Fund, a partnership between
Maryland DNR,
the
University
of
Maryland
and the Environmental Protection Agency, is continuing
to accelerate Bay restoration through the development of
new technologies.
A research and development grant has been awarded to
AviHome, LLC, a company developing poultry house
flooring to reduce ammonia emissions.
AviHome developed new ventilated plenum flooring,
currently being tested at the University of Maryland
Eastern Shore (UMES), for poultry houses that will
result in drier manure thus reducing the volume and
weight of waste by using less bedding material, as well
as lowering ammonia emissions. Field
trials to test the effectiveness of the flooring,
conducted by UMES, found that the ammonia-producing
bacteria need a basic pH to thrive, and AviHome's
flooring prevented the pH from going above seven (the
neutral line between an acid or base), which greatly
reduced the production of ammonia.
Ammonia, when in excess, provides fuel to algae
resulting in algal blooms in water bodies, thus
deteriorating the water quality of
Chesapeake Bay.
If you are a business or researcher interested in
applying for assistance, want to learn more about the
AviHome project, or if you have questions about the
Innovative Technology Fund, please e-mail Sarah Lane
with the Chesapeake & Coastal Program or call
410.260.8788.
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 Please feel free to contact us
with any comments, questions or ideas for future IN THE ZONE
e-mails. Sincerely,
Your Chesapeake & Coastal Program Team
Maryland Department of Natural Resources |
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A
publication of the Maryland Coastal Zone Management Program
pursuant to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Award No.NA09NOA4191070. This publication is funded (in
part) by a grant/cooperative agreement from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The views
expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or any of its
sub-agencies.
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