CCP SPOTLIGHT: CHESAPEAKE & ATLANTIC COASTAL BAYS TRUST FUND UPDATE

Announcing Funds for Local Watershed Restoration  

Governor O'Malley with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson listen on as Arlington Echo's Steve Barry explains the Watershed Stewards Academy.

Richmond, VA (July 11, 2011) - At the Chesapeake Executive Council Meeting, Governor Martin O'Malley announced that Maryland is 98 percent on the way to reaching its 2-year milestone commitments for reducing nitrogen and phosphorous into the Chesapeake Bay - a sign that the state is making significant progress toward reaching its short term Chesapeake Bay pollution reduction goal. 

The underlying theme of this year's meeting was focused on individual stewardship and local government assistance.  Maryland was able to highlight this effort by showcasing Anne Arundel County's Watershed Stewards Academy (WSA).  WSA was originally funded in part by the Chesapeake and Coastal Program, via NOAA's Coastal Zone Management Grant.  WSA supports community leaders to serve as Master Watershed Stewards in the protection, restoration and conservation of our watersheds, working to reduce the negative impacts of stormwater runoff in Anne Arundel County.  The Academy has become a model for engaging citizens region wide and most recently through the creation of the Watershed Stewards Academy for the National Capital Region.  For more information contact the Anne Arundel County Director, Suzanne Etgen at setgen@aacps.org.   

"While along with the other Bay states, we must await confirmation of our numbers from the EPA's computer model at year's end, our BayStat process allows us to accurately track our progress on a monthly basis," said Governor O'Malley. "With our farmers planting record numbers of cover crops, our citizens planting trees and growing oysters, our municipalities upgrading wastewater treatment plants, and our legislators enacting important new laws, these numbers once again prove that here in Maryland, we don't make excuses, we make progress."

Click here to read the full Executive Council Meeting press release.

New Service to Help Local Governments Assess Financing Options to Promote Best Practices in Stormwater Management  

A new service has been added to assist locals create strategies for financing stormwater management as part of the State's Watershed Assistance Collaborative - a partnership that provides services and technical assistance to communities to advance restoration activities and project implementation. Led by the University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center, the new Stormwater Financing and Outreach Unit will help municipalities assess various financing options to promote best practices in stormwater management while addressing multiple community priorities such as increased green space, decreased infrastructure costs, and improved water quality.  The Unit will work with two Maryland communities per year and will also hold a series of workshops for municipal stormwater managers throughout the state. 

The town of Berlin, on Maryland's eastern shore, has been selected as the first municipality who will benefit from the services of the Unit.  A feasibility study for the town will be completed in Summer/Fall 2011.  In addition to helping municipalities build a financing strategy, the Unit will also help to implement community outreach on the need for sustainable financing for stormwater management.   

For more information on the Stormwater Financing and Outreach Unit and to learn how your community can benefit from these services, please contact Joanne Throwe, Director of the UMD Environmental Finance Center, at 301-405-5036.  For more information regarding additional opportunities for local government assistance, including opportunities offered through the Watershed Assistance Collaborative, please e-mail Collaborative Program Manager Brenton McCloskey of the Chesapeake & Coastal Program or call 410-260-8722.

"The resources available to us are really incredible and help us make more informed and better decisions." - Ann Gutierrez Carlson, MET

In June, the Maryland Environmental Trust, Defenders of Wildlife, and CCP delivered a training for local land trusts to demonstrate the importance of incorporating tidal and nearshore ecological data - the Blue Infrastructure - and climate change adaptation benefits into parcel-level conservation evaluations and project decisions.  The goals of the training were to inform local land conservation planners about the availability of new data and its benefit in evaluating coastal zone properties; provide tools for incorporating climate change into conservation easements; and to facilitate a dialogue on the challenges local land trusts are facing. 

Coastal land trusts and managers have an important role in climate change adaption in Maryland. Program staff provided a demonstration on how to incorporate coastal zone conservation targeting datasets into parcel-level conservation assessments using the Coastal Atlas and a climate change evaluation form.  The combination of identifying Blue Infrastructure and climate change effects of sea level rise will help inform decision-makers about the properties' aquatic ecological value and climate resiliency and adaptability.  Attendees and training partners discussed the challenges of drafting conservation easements that consider the potential impacts of climate change while at the same time protecting conservation values and purposes of the property.

To learn more about these new datasets, visit Maryland's Coastal Atlas. The Shorelines mapper houses all of the climate change data, including new data on long-term projections of coastal wetland response to sea level rise. The Estuaries mapper contains the data used in the Blue Infrastructure nearshore assessment. 

For interest in any future workshops, please e-mail Chris Cortina with the Chesapeake and Coastal Program.