Many of the goals of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay agreement between states within the watershed were created with a 2025 deadline.
The aim of significantly reducing pollution by that date won’t be met, meaning the governors of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, the mayor of Washington, D.C., the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the administrator of the EPA will have to re-evaluate how to protect and restore the nation’s largest estuary. Earlier this week, the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council met in Annapolis to begin doing just that.
Locally, that work begins with groups like the Friends of the Rappahannock, which was just awarded a grant to tackle similar problems on a smaller scale. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issued a $322,500 Watershed Improvement Plan grant to the George Washington Regional Commission last month. The planning district body approved the funds and will disburse it to FOR, retaining $5,000 for administrative support.
Projects funded by the grant help the river advocacy group work on efforts to keep pollution out of stormwater, a key component of the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, a measure of the pollutants a body of water can receive while still meeting water quality standards.
Angela Nam is the green infrastructure specialist with FOR and has been working with GWRC and the Tri-County/City Soil and Water Conservation District to identify properties where stormwater improvements can be made.
“We have a memorandum of understanding with the district to administer a program called VCAP — the Virginia Conservation Assistance Program — which offers technical, financial and educational assistance to people who are interested,” Nam said.
VCAP focuses on implementing stormwater best management practices, or BMPs, that reduce pollution and soil erosion from public and private lands. These can take the forms of tree plantings, installing rain gardens, harvesting rainwater, bioretention features, permeable pavement, conservation landscaping and native plantings — known collectively as green infrastructure.
To meet the terms of the grant, FOR must identify, design and install one acre of urban tree canopy, three to five stormwater BMPs on private property and three to five on public property.
In April, GWRC and Nam hosted a green charette, a brainstorming meeting that helped identify these opportunities within the planning district’s localities.
They identified three projects that could be funded by the DEQ watershed improvement plan grants: Cosner Park in Spotsylvania County, Cedell Brooks Jr. Park in King George County, and North Stafford High School. The projects are currently in the design phase.
“We try to focus on resource concerns,” Nam said. “How close is something to a water body and is a landowner seeing erosion and runoff and all these issues? By putting in these practices where they actually solve an issue. It’s about finding a solution to an actual problem that you can observe.”
For private landowners in planning district 16 who want VCAP assistance in reducing erosion and installing stormwater BMPs, Nam suggests starting with this online form to get the ball rolling.
“We are all part of this watershed, and we can be good river stewards,” Nam said. “Some of this may seem like it might not make a difference, but each action does make a big difference.”
