Clean Water and Streams for Montgomery County Conference
In a watershed meeting of unprecedented size and ambition, environmental activists, politicians and business leaders will gather later this month in an effort to promote healthy streams in Montgomery County.

The Clean Water and Streams for Montgomery conference will take place on Saturday, Oct 27 between 8:30 and 3:30 in the Montgomery County Council Office Building Auditorium in Rockville. The conference is sponsored by Montgomery County Stormwater Partners, a coalition of 21 national and local organizations. Eighty people are expected to attend.

Speakers will include Delegate Jane Lawton (District 20), who was instrumental in passing the Stormwater Management Act of 2007 and State Senator Jamie Raskin (District 20), a First Amendment lawyer, who will speak about environmental rights of citizens. Councilmember Valerie Ervin will provide the concluding remarks. Ervin, the Environmental Lead, helped Stormwater Partners convince the County Council to include many green street provisions in the latest Road Code Bill. She called effective stormwater management a "huge issue," and said she readily accepted the invitation to speak at the conference as "my small way of saying I'm paying attention."

Despite the improved Road Code and the Stormwater Management Act, much more needs to be done to restore Montgomery County's streams, two-thirds of which are impaired by ineffective stormwater management. Watts Branch is one of those degraded streams. It enters the Potomac just upstream of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission's (WSSC) Potomac shore line water intake. After storms Watts Branch delivers a slug of polluted water to the intake. To avoid the bad water WSSC plans on moving its intake into the middle of the river. The move will cost 20 million dollars. In the late 1990s Maryland castigated Fairfax County Water Authority (FCWA) when it requested permission from Maryland to moves its Potomac River shoreline intake into the middle of the river. FCWA said it had to do so because slugs of polluted water from two upstream tributaries were entering its shoreline intake after storms. Eventually the dispute went to the Supreme Court where Virginia won. Obviously stormwater can cause a lot of problems in developed areas like Fairfax and Montgomery County and downstream as well, including the Bay, which continues to decline. Presently stormwater pollution is the only form of pollution that is increasing in the Bay.

WSSC and FCWA solved their stormwater problems by running away from them. Solutions such as these are killing the Bay. Stormwater Partners wants politicians and bureaucrats to confront the degradation of streams at its source in a watershed by watershed approach. It is an approach that will take time and effort. The conference is an attempt to jump-start the process.

The conference is funded by a $5,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Society. The grant was obtained by Steve Dryden, who is on the board of the Friends of Rock Creek's Environment. In his application to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, Dryden chronicles the efforts of activists in 2005 to improve streams by strengthening the state’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) storm water permit. Soon after, the activists formed Stormwater Partners Coalition. The organization obtained financial support from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Audubon Naturalist Society and hired Dianne Cameron, a water quality policy expert. Cameron researched the issue and helped prepare proposals for the permit's revision due this year. According to Dryden, these revisions will disappoint environmentalists. He hopes the conference will help prepare environmentalist to influence politicians and bureaucrats into writing an environmentally sound NPDES permit in 2011 when the next revisions will be written.

The conference will address five objectives:

  • Raising awareness
  • Promoting collaborative watershed restoration solutions
  • Engaging citizens in community based restoration and protection projects
  • Creating watershed plans
  • Educating students about the Bay.

Besides the politicians mentioned above there will also be a variety of speakers from the environmental community. Tom Schueler of the Chesapeake Stormwater Network will explain the 11 core environmental principles for the implementation of the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007. The principles are contained in a document prepared by Stormwater Partners. Thirty-eight watershed groups across Maryland have agreed to back the principles including Assateague Coast Keepers in the east and the Savage River Association in the west. For conference registration, agendas, and schedule information, click here.