Research Archives - Center for Watershed Protection

PCB Source Assessment for Baltimore County

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a class of human-made compounds widely used from 1929 through 1979 in manufacturing and industrial applications because of their exceptional fire-retardant and insulating properties. Rising concerns about the toxicity, human health effects, and persistent nature of PCBs in the environment led to a federal ban on the sale and production of PCBs in 1979. Even though PCBs have not been manufactured for many years, their unregulated, historic uses have led to “legacy” PCB contamination. In Baltimore County, Maryland, PCB total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) have been established by the state for four waterbodies; however, few [...]

admin2023-11-29T10:51:07-05:00November 28th, 2023|

Maintaining Forests in Stream Corridor Restoration

A recent, rapid increase in the implementation of stream restoration projects in the Chesapeake Bay watershed has led to growing controversy over the short-term adverse impacts of these projects on streamside forest buffers. Stream restoration may also contribute to long-term impacts on the riparian community as delayed tree loss occurs due to altered water levels, soil compaction, and other effects from the adjacent construction activity. Both stream restoration and forest buffers are a significant component of state plans to restore the Chesapeake Bay by 2025; therefore, the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program has a vested interest in promoting synergy between efforts [...]

admin2023-05-23T13:46:38-04:00November 28th, 2022|

Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Land Protection in the Savannah River Basin

The mission of the Savannah River Clean Water Fund is to protect and restore forests in the Savannah River Basin to help provide safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water for the communities and businesses in the region. The Fund was formed based on the shared recognition among public and private interests in the Savannah River Basin of the explicit connection between the Basin’s land resources and uses and their impacts on raw water supplies. To maintain the quality of the Savannah River as a drinking water source, the Fund has set a goal of maintaining 60% natural cover in the [...]

admin2022-05-31T11:11:17-04:00March 29th, 2022|

The Self-Recovery of Stream Channel Stability in Urban Watersheds

For more than 10 years, stormwater engineers in Carroll County, Maryland have experimented with the retrofit of existing stormwater ponds originally designed to reduce the rate of runoff to downstream receiving streams. Modeling results indicate that these retrofit designs—specifically, enhanced sand filter and wet pond designs—capture and retain enough rainfall that peak flows from the two-year storm are less than those from a wooded site in good condition. Carroll County also observed that the highly eroded streambanks downstream of the retrofits stopped retreating and began to re-vegetate over months or years after the construction of the retrofits. Given these results, [...]

admin2022-01-25T10:22:06-05:00January 24th, 2022|

Fishable and Swimmable Goals in the Delaware River Basin

The William Penn Foundation provides extensive funding for protection and restoration activities in the four-state Delaware River Basin towards the long term goal of ensuring all 25,000+ miles of stream are fishable and swimmable. In 2020, the Center led a study for the Foundation to assess the feasibility of developing Basin-wide metrics to measure progress on securing sustained regulatory protections for streams. As part of this study, the Center reviewed state Clean Water Act policies and analyzed data provided by the Basin states. This analysis showed that only 6% of Delaware Basin streams are currently meeting both fishable and swimmable [...]

admin2021-11-22T16:21:33-05:00November 19th, 2021|

Stormwater Improvements at Audubon Naturalist Society’s Woodend Sanctuary

The Audubon Naturalist Society’s Woodend Sanctuary is a haven for native plants that is visited by thousands of students, individuals, and families from the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area each year. The Center assisted with an ambitious plan to improve the property that included green infrastructure projects, a permeable path along the stream, and a large play space. The Center designed, obtained permits, and managed construction for a series of green infrastructure projects to address severe stream erosion and polluted runoff. The Center’s design converted 1,400 feet of eroding stream running through the property into a series of 45 sequenced step [...]

admin2021-08-18T12:16:27-04:00August 18th, 2021|

Expert Panel on Nutrient and Sediment Removal Performance of Nontidal Wetland Projects

The 2014 Chesapeake Watershed Agreement establishes wetland restoration as a fundamental objective to a more comprehensive Chesapeake Bay watershed restoration goal. Bay partners committed to “create or reestablish 85,000 acres of tidal and nontidal wetlands and enhance the function of an additional 150,000 acres of degraded wetlands by 2025.” Key to the advancement of this strategy is the ability to quantify how increased wetland coverage helps to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution to the Bay. The Center, in partnership with Virginia Tech and the Nature Conservancy, led a Chesapeake Bay Program Expert Panel to quantify the pollutant reduction benefits of [...]

admin2020-12-02T14:24:55-05:00December 2nd, 2020|

An Evaluation of Municipal Policies and their Role in Protecting Forests from Development Impacts

Over the past eight years, the Center has expanded its reach to the Delaware River Basin, which spans four states and includes 42 counties and 838 municipalities. With the support from the Academy of Natural Science at Drexel University’s Delaware Watershed Research Fund, the Center recently finalized a three-year research project in partnership with Rutgers University and the Pinchot Institute for Conservation to analyze the role of municipal land use controls in forest protection. The goal of the research was to identify areas of the Delaware River Basin that would benefit from improved regulatory protection for important forest lands such [...]

admin2020-09-18T09:15:51-04:00July 22nd, 2020|

Ethics and TMDLs: The ugly truth about meeting regulatory requirements

As I reflect on the New Year, I can’t help to recall my first New Year’s as an environmental professional some 40 plus years ago. It is truly amazing how the mind works in that I recall those early days quite vividly and yet struggle to remember the movie that I watched last Saturday. So why choose a subject of “ethics” and why focus on total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) when so many bigger environmental problems exist that involve ethics (e.g., climate change)? First, let’s define “ethics.” According to Merriam-Webster, ethics is “the discipline dealing with what is good and [...]

admin2020-03-20T08:46:14-04:00March 19th, 2020|

Research, Implementation and Guidance on Roadside Ditch Management in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

A 2016 report from the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee found that improved management of the roadside ditch network could be a cost-effective means of reducing pollution from roads, developed areas, and farmland in many rural and/or un-regulated portions of the Bay watershed. Following the release of this report, the Center for Watershed Protection participated in a Chesapeake Bay Roadside Ditch Management Team to discuss a path forward for defining, crediting and verifying this group of practices. The Center has continued to advance the practice of roadside ditch management through research, implementation and development of guidance. Several [...]

admin2019-07-30T12:24:14-04:00July 29th, 2019|