Some parts of the Chesapeake Bay are pristine, but other sections are so full of silt and runoff that they appear muddy even at ground level. Years of unregulated agricultural runoff, the growing amount of impervious surface from suburban sprawl, and the bureaucracy of several states intertwined with their own interests are the main reasons for the decline of the Chesapeake.
The Chesapeake’s watershed covers 64,000 square miles. That territory includes large and small cities, suburbs, farmlands, forests, and wetlands in Washington, DC, and six states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia).
People and organizations, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, have been working for years to improve the bay. Now, increasingly, they are working together and taking a big-picture, watershed approach toward achieving that improvement.
The watershed approach is clearly evident in the latest round of Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction (INSR) grants. These 11 EPA-funded grants (totaling $5.8 million and chosen from 89 proposals) were awarded through the National Fish and Wildlife Fund (NFWF) in late summer 2010.
NFWF has been involved with restoration of the Chesapeake Bay since 1999, awarding more than 670 grants totaling over $59 million. Local matching funds have added up to another $100 million.
Under the name Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund, NFWF operates both the INSR grant program and the Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed (CBSW) grants. CBSW grants, which totaled $3.4 million in 2010, are for smaller, local-level projects. They range from $20,000 to $200,000.
Amanda Bassow, NFWF’s manager for Chesapeake programs, agrees that the INSR grants reflect the growing trend of considering and creating stormwater projects in relation to their watersheds.
“I would say this is absolutely the case in the Chesapeake from the perspective of state and federal agencies and the nonprofit community that is working aggressively to improvement stormwater management in the region,” says Bassow. “Certainly, individual projects still strive to meet their permit requirements on a site-by-site basis, but in the larger picture, the types of projects we fund strive to restore the landscape function of our built environment, which means they really must have a perspective that is broader than simply one development site or parcel.”
Bassow says that the 2010 INSR awardees “represent the most innovative stormwater projects that were the most likely to have a significant impact on reducing pollution to the Chesapeake from urban stormwater.”
That urban stormwater is in unexpected places. “You see innovative stormwater management that you might perceive to be rural and therefore where stormwater might not be an issue–like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the Onancock watershed on Virginia’s Eastern Shore,” notes Bassow.
Farming lands are disappearing from the region. Since “urban stormwater runoff represents the only growing source of nutrient pollution to the Chesapeake, it stands to reason that it is going to be an issue every place that people are building houses, starting businesses, and so on,” explains Bassow. She adds, “It’s great to see these more rural communities getting a leg up on the issue.”
These most recent grants are part of a total of 56 INSR grants made from 2006 to 2010, totaling $32.6 million. INSR grants range from $200,000 to $1 million. They were leveraged with more than $34.2 million of local matching funds. (EPA requires 100% matching for these awards.)
The projects “really represent the state of science, policy, and practice for stormwater,” says Bassow. “Some of the projects are trying to refine the effectiveness of [best management] practices, such as pervious pavement and bioretention, while others are really taking on the big policy questions, like how do local codes and ordinances provide barriers to innovative stormwater management, and how can they, instead, encourage them.”
Regenerative Stormwater Conveyance Wetlands
One of the INSR grants is for the installation of sand seepage regenerative stormwater conveyance (RSC) wetlands on two of the creeks in the Lower Western Shore of Maryland. To the $900,000 grant it received, South River Federation added $3,817,500 in matching funds for this project.
RSC technology uses a high marsh zone (-6 to +6 inches, relative to the normal pool of water) rather than trying to establish plants any lower than 6 inches below the normal pool. It features a greater mix of plants, including trees and shrubs that can thrive in water, for the wetland will do best if it is allowed to evolve over time into a forest.
Water levels don’t fluctuate as much as they did in earlier wetland restoration projects. RSC wetlands are less deep, with gentler side slopes, and definitely not as flat. They include sand weirs, pools, tree roots, and other devices to vary the topography.
RSC, also known as step pool stormwater conveyance, offers another advantage: It can be used inside natural channels without disrupting the adjacent natural ecosystem.
South River Federation chose Church Creek on the South River and Saltworks Creek on the Severn River because they are among the most highly impaired subwatersheds within the Chesapeake watershed. As the land is narrow there, these watersheds are less than half of a mile apart. The RSCs will be less than 3 miles apart.
Watersheds of the Severn and South Rivers are adjoining. Their proximity to Annapolis has subjected both to increasing pollution from expanding impervious surfaces that are inevitable with development.
Church Creek is on the South River. Its watershed is 42% impervious, and it sits downstream of five major shopping centers and two major highways. Saltworks Creek, a tributary of the Severn River, is equally distressed, thanks to runoff from the nearby Bestgate Road and the expanding Westfield Mall, with more development planned.
South River Federation will work with the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Lab to monitor the effectiveness of the RSCs in Church Creek and Saltworks Creek. The two-year monitoring period will assess both reduction of volume and quality of downstream waters.
The RSC projects on these two creeks will create more than 10 acres of high-quality non-tidal wetlands to treat stormwater from watersheds that continue to grow more impervious. Waterfowl and fish will gain much-needed habitat. Sediments and nutrients reaching the Chesapeake Bay will be significantly reduced.
Church Creek’s installation (set for mid-2012) will treat an estimated 2,975 pounds of nitrogen, 905 pounds of phosphorus, and 140 tons of sediment per year. The project on the Cabin Creek branch of Saltworks Creek (scheduled for late 2011) will reduce nitrogen load by 40%, total suspended solids (TSS) by 60%, and phosphorus by 40%.
The two projects should be excellent models of an innovative, cost-effective, and sustainable way to reduce pollution. Chuck Fox, special assistant to the EPA administrator for the Chesapeake Bay, suggested, at a meeting in Annapolis in October 2009, that RSC projects are applicable at many places within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Sara Caldes, of the Severn Riverkeeper Program and South River Federation, is project manager for the Cabin Creek Branch/Saltworks Creek installation. She says she has “been pleasantly surprised by the level of support that residents and neighboring property owners have exhibited. To date, everyone has demonstrated a high level of understanding that these are distressed watersheds and a desire to see them improved.”
A Dual Urban and Agricultural Strategy
Another INSR grant centers on the town on Onancock (population 1,500). Founded in 1680, it is one of series of small towns on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. It’s situated between two forks of a creek, with small streams and farmlands nearby.
Onancock is a place where time slows down a bit. The tourists sit on porch swings of restored bed and breakfast inns and visit the art galleries and boutiques. The locals take their grandchildren out boating and fishing even on weekdays.
Onancock’s INSR grant is for $500,000, matched by local funds of $866,000. The project stresses an innovative, whole-community approach incorporating both urban and agricultural stormwater BMPs. Onancock represents the two major sources of pollution of the Chesapeake Bay.
Unregulated agricultural runoff, from both small farms and the large poultry farming operations of the Delmarva area, has been widely faulted for its role in degrading the bay. Less attention has been paid to the effects of urban stormwater runoff. The population growth of major cities along the mid-Atlantic seaboard has changed small towns into small cities as commuters seek affordable housing. Those small cities have stormwater problems that result in damage to the Chesapeake watershed and, ultimately, the bay.
That dual urban and agricultural strategy in Onancock’s grant is essential. Its watershed has been identified in the top 25% of nutrient-yielding areas for nitrogen and phosphorus from both urban and agricultural sources.
The Onancock Watershed Restoration Project has four focus areas: 1) whole-community engagement, 2) stormwater runoff control, 3) improvement of agricultural nitrogen use efficiency and the commencement of nutrient trading, and 4) restoration of riparian buffers in residential and agricultural areas.
Besides the city and county, other partners in the grant include the Eastern Shore Resource Conservation and Development Council, the Eastern Shore Soil and Water Conservation District, Virginia Cooperative Extension, the Center for Watershed Protection, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Large poultry operations in a relatively small area have caused the soils to become saturated with phosphorus from the longtime use of poultry litter. Farmers must use inorganic nitrogen fertilizer to grow crops. If they can apply that nitrogen more effectively and reduce its runoff, that will ultimately help restore the watershed.
Grant money will be use to purchase and demonstrate variable-rate infrared sensor nitrogen application equipment. The equipment will be used on about 11,250 acres of corn and about 7,500 acres of wheat, resulting in 288,750 fewer pounds of nitrogen applied annually and 15,630 pounds of nitrogen kept from entering the Chesapeake Bay.
Staff members from the partnering agencies will hold community workshops on the technology and subsequent
nutrient trading. Farmers who use this technology will be encouraged to meet the baseline BMP requirements necessary for them to participate in nutrient trading in Virginia. If widely adopted, variable-rate fertilizer technology has the potential to reduce nitrogen application to corn and wheat acreage on Virginia’s Eastern Shore by 770,000 pounds annually.
The agencies will also hold workshops on ditch maintenance and water-quality protection, because many ditches on farms and in urban areas feed into tributaries of Onancock Creek. Besides riparian buffers in residential areas, riparian buffers of native warm-season grasses totaling 8,000 linear feet will be installed on farms.
Project partners will assess stormwater BMPs for the town of Onancock. Three stormwater BMPs will be installed. A bioretention system and wet swale will be installed where stormwater drains directly into Onancock Creek from the town’s two largest paved surfaces. The new community health center will have a stormwater treatment wetland on its grounds.
Finding Cheaper Ways to Fight CSOs
A 300-year-old urban center, Lancaster, PA, has a large amount of impervious surface and a combined sewer system that is subject to overflows during significant storm events. The aging infrastructure lets about 1 billion gallons of untreated mixed sewage and stormwater flow into the Conestoga River each year.
Over the past 12 years, Lancaster upgraded its existing infrastructure as much as funds would allow, spending more than $18 million. The city has the first wastewater treatment system in Pennsylvania to meet nutrient removal requirements. Pumping stations were made to run more efficiently as well.
But despite these expenditures, combined sewer overflows (CSOs) into the Conestoga are still too high. One storage tank alone carries an estimated price tag of $70 million, and it would manage only one-tenth of Lancaster’s annual CSO volume. The estimated cost to store and treat the total overflows would be well over $250 million. Lancaster chose a cheaper way to manage its stormwater: green infrastructure.
Danene Sorace, executive director of LIVE Green, says her agency and the city of Lancaster began by securing a grant from Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. They used that grant to develop a long-term plan for adding green infrastructure.
“It’s the first GI plan in any class 3 city in Pennsylvania,” says Sorace.
Then Lancaster applied for, and won, its INSR grant of $400,000, which it matched with $750,000 of local funds. The money will pay for several highly visible green infrastructure projects. These projects will keep 119,500 pounds of sediment, 1,546 pounds of nitrogen, and 229 pounds of phosphorus out of the Conestoga River watershed each year.
Lancaster’s Sixth Ward Park now has a porous basketball court. It manages about 700,000 gallons of stormwater that is piped under the court from adjacent streets.
At Brandon Park, which is shaped like a bowl, new green infrastructure is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. Porous paving, bioretention ponds, and vegetated swales will handle the most runoff–5 million gallons–of any of the six projects.
Four parking lots–at Plum, Mifflin, Penn, and Milburn Playground–will be retrofitted with porous pavement, infiltration beds, and bioretention areas. The total capture will be 1,642,000 gallons of stormwater.
The exterior renovations at Carter Macrae Elementary School will be enhanced with green infrastructure. Roof runoff will flow to a large cistern. The students’ paved play area will be porous pavement. Total capture will be 624,000 gallons of stormwater.
A porous basketball court with infiltration bed and vegetated swales will be installed at Crystal Park in the spring of 2012. Estimated runoff from adjacent streets and parking lots is 789,000 gallons of stormwater.
At the intersection of Walnut and Plum Streets a concrete median will be converted to include a tree trench with
infiltration bed and bioretention garden. Estimated capture is 1,234,000 gallons.
The Lancaster Public Library will get rain barrels, a cistern, a bioretention area, and, if the funds hold out, a green roof. If all parts of the project can be done, the estimated capture will be 706,000 gallons.
These projects “will all be monitored for performance after installation,” Sorace says. “This first round of GI projects is all on public property, facilitating maintenance and evaluation.”
Following its long-term plan, Lancaster will develop more green infrastructure projects to reduce runoff and overflows. The city wants to change from being a contributor of pollution in the Chesapeake to serving as a model for other urban areas in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
By working with the Pennsylvania Departments of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and the Lancaster County Planning Commission (LCPC), the city hopes reduce pollutants as much as 100-fold over the next five years.
Blue Water BaltimoreBlue Water Baltimore matched its $600,000 INSR grant with $790,000. The project began under the leadership of Herring Run Watershed Association. In February 2011, that group officially merged with four other local watershed protection groups to form Blue Water Baltimore. This merger reflects the trend of focusing beyond the neighborhood watershed. The groups also saw advantages in terms of funding, numbers of volunteers, and greater civic influence.
Modeled on Chicago’s Green Alleys program, the project is called Creating Blue Neighborhoods and Alleys in Baltimore City. It will use curbside bumpouts (bioretention), permeable pavement alleyways, rain barrels, downspout disconnection, and other green infrastructure to manage stormwater in an older, highly urbanized area of the city.
The project will keep about 36 pounds of nitrogen, 10 pounds of phosphorus, and 1.3 tons of sediment out of the waterways. It will serve as a model to be implemented in other Baltimore neighborhoods as their streets need to be repaved and by priority of watershed.
Nick Lindow, Ph.D., LEED AP, a water resources engineer with Biohabitats Inc., is lead engineer on the project. Ashley Traut is senior program manager and stormwater manager for Bluewater Baltimore. Baltimore City’s Department of Public Works and Department of Transportation are also involved, along with the Center for Watershed Protection.
Traut says the project has benefitted from earlier similar projects. “The designers from Chicago, Virginia, and two local projects have been gracious enough to share their designs, specs, and lessons learned with us.”
He sees the most difficult part of the project as “working through permitting with the city. This is meant as a pilot project though where we can identify these challenges and work on ways to streamline the system in the future.”
Lindow describes the Blue Neighborhoods retrofit as “a very exciting project from a collaboration and community involvement perspective. For the Butchers Hill and Patterson Park neighborhoods, the grant money means that they actually get to construct some of the LID [low-impact development] practices in their neighborhoods that they have been hoping to do for a while now.”
He adds, “From the city’s perspective, the project has brought together two city agencies–DPW and DOT–into one project so that they both get a mutual benefit toward meeting their NPDES permit requirements.”
Reflecting on how projects such as this one help the entire watershed, Lindow says, “There again, I think this project has become a focal point for the agencies to start thinking about new ways to implement LID practices, streamline permitting for projects like these, and work together toward a common goal, which is to clean up our runoff and the inner harbor.”
Campus Improvements
Another interesting INSR grant project involves Prince George’s County, MD, and the University of Maryland. Situated on the university’s campus in College Park, the purpose of the three-part project is to reduce runoff volume and nutrient load to the Anacostia River, one of the most impaired rivers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
The first green infrastructure project is the retrofit of an existing bioretention cell of about 1,950 square feet to enhance its capability to remove phosphorus. Several tons of local aluminum-based water treatment residual will be added to the existing cell, incorporated into the media to a depth of about 16 inches. The result will be about 4% to 5% aluminum. Then new plants will be added.
“Based on an extensive laboratory study, we have found that aluminum-based water treatment residual as an amendment to traditional bioretention media will greatly enhance the uptake of phosphorus from runoff,” says Allen P. Davis, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland.
The second green infrastructure project on the campus is a new bioretention structure (about 1,000 square feet) to manage runoff from an existing parking lot of about 20,000 square feet. It will be underdrained to an underground cistern. Water from the cistern will be used to irrigate an adjacent garden. The net result should be a zero-discharge parking lot.
The third project, a campus parking area, will be converted to permeable pavement, which will then be underdrained to a subsurface chamber with media and piping to promote denitrification. The overflow will go to nearby Campus Creek.
Davis said that students in civil engineering, landscape architecture, natural resources sciences, and other fields are involved in these and other campus sustainability projects. Large kiosk signs for all such projects educate both visitors and students.
More INSR Grants
The Shenandoah Resource Conservation and Development Agency received an INSR grant for better use of nitrogen and phosphorus in food and fiber production on a regional scale, assisting farmers to develop whole-farm continuous improvement plans and promoting the purchase by of bay-friendly products that have a positive water-quality impact.
The Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education’s INSR grant was for evaluating and promoting pervious concrete and soil amendment practices. The Chester River Association will use its grant for education and outreach to farmers, suburban residents, and other groups to promote practice that lower nutrients in runoff through cropping systems, expansion of urban tree canopies, and restoring wetlands.
The Maryland Department of Agriculture’s grant is for work that focuses on winter cover crop management to reduce runoff with nutrients in two important regions of the Chesapeake Bay watershed (Coastal Plain and Piedmont).
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University will use its grant to reduce ammonia emissions and runoff from broiler (poultry) litter in two counties in the Shenandoah Valley and two counties on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Potomac Conservancy’s grant addresses one of the frustrations of designing and implementing green infrastructure, especially when trying to affect change in a large watershed, such as that of the Chesapeake Bay. Partnering with other agencies, the conservancy will assess how local development policies in 37 counties and cities work, then target code revision in nine localities.
The INSR grants went to projects that will clearly cause many Chesapeake Bay watershed residents to be more aware not only of how the bay has come to be so polluted, but also of what they can do to lessen or even stop it. The projects should have a long-term effect on improvement of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Looking ahead, Bassow says, “There has been a lot of focus on understanding the stressors and solutions to restoring the Chesapeake Bay over the past couple of decades. What we’re seeing now, and will continue to see for the next decade, is an intense focus on putting that knowledge to work on the ground.”