Groups piping up about threat of many small drains to water quality
Studies reveal amount of sewage discharged into streams may be much greater than thought
By Lara Lutz, Chesapeake Bay Journal, November 2011
Some solutions for restoring the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers arrive by way of high-tech, scientific processes. Others begin by pulling on boots.
Over the last 18 months, the Center for Watershed Protection studied several urban Maryland streams to investigate pollution flowing into them from storm drains.
The center worked with local water management agencies and nonprofit watershed groups to look closely at Sligo Creek in Montgomery County, and Western Run, Moores Branch, and a small part of the Jones Falls in Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
The research hinged on a task that cash-strapped public agencies can rarely afford: inspecting the entire length of the streams on foot.
Supported by grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Rauch Foundation and the EPA, researchers walked the streams and conducted water quality tests at the ends of open pipes.
Their findings suggest that relatively small pipes releasing untreated sewage into streams may collectively be sending more nutrients to Bay tributaries than previously suspected.
