Federal, Local Governments to Work Together to Clean Up Patapsco River

If the troubled Patapsco River is to improve its health, it will need the cooperation of individuals, organizations and government. A new federal urban waters initiative may make that easier.

The Baltimore Sun and others reported theEnvironmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of the Interior announced a program last week that will promote greater cooperation among 11 federal agencies and local governments in cleaning up waterways. Baltimore is one of seven pilot cities chosen for the program.

It’s a start toward doing a better job of working together on the federal and local level to improve the health of the nation’s urban waterways—in Maryland, that means the Patapsco—with a goal of having the worst areas be swimmable and fishable by the end of the decade.

At least one local activist doesn’t think such a goal is too lofty.

“I’m cautiously optimistic. Just to have established a goal like that is a very worthwhile thing,” said Kit Valentine, president of The Friends of Patapsco Valley and Heritage Greenway Inc. “That’s one of my goals, personally.”

The environmental group’s mission is “preserving, protecting, interpreting and restoring the environment, history and culture of the Valley between Daniels and Elkridge, MD,” according to its website.

Valentine, president of the group for 12 years, said cooperation has been acceptable between governments, locally and federally, but it could be better.

“There’s certainly been some good coordination in the past,” he said. “But anything that can be done between the state and the counties as far as establishing more progressive water monitoring, that would be helpful.”

Valentine said Patapsco pollution is monitored, but not in the detail he’d like. And without much historical data to work off, it’s been difficult to read pollution trends scientifically.

“We no longer have raw sewage coming down the Patapsco,” Valentine said. “The sense is our water quality has improved, but we have precious little data to back it up.”

But with new federal and local cooperation, better water quality testing may be possible.

According to The Washington Post, the U.S. Geological Survey, one of the 11 agencies taking part in the initiative, is involved in water quality studies.

Though no new money will be pumped into improving the health of urban waterways, greater cooperation with local government may lead to a better dispersal of existing funds, officials said.

Other agencies involved include the Department of Agriculture, Army Corps of Engineers, theDepartment of Transportation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to The Washington Post.

Collaboration on planting trees and repairing erosion on stream banks to better storm water management will be helpful, Valentine said, but perhaps the most important piece of better governmental cooperation is tied to the publicity it may generate.

Maybe the cooperation could help create an advertising campaign that is sorely needed, he said.

“[If we] got all the organizations in all the counties and [Baltimore] involved and really came up with a focus program to address the major issues from an environmental perspective, that has some real potential as far as I’m concerned,” Valentine said. “And that would require all these organizations and government to work together and contribute financials to make that happen.”