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N e w s l e t t e r
July 2020
Half of All Maryland Towns and Cities 
Now Participate in Sustainable Maryland 

The Town of Upper Marlboro recently became the 79th municipality to register with Sustainable Maryland (SM), meeting the program milestone of engaging  50% of Maryland's 157 incorporated towns and cities.
 
Upper Marlboro is the county seat of Prince George's County. The Town has an active Historical Committee, which produced an excellent Walking Driving Tour Guide, and also recently joined the County's Pet Waste Management initiative, which will provide pet waste stations and outreach materials for residents.
 
This is a true tipping point for the SM program. We now work with registered municipalities in every one of the 21 Maryland counties that have municipalities (Howard and Baltimore Counties do not have municipalities). SM staff look forward to working with the rest of Maryland's municipalities.  
 
To learn more about the SM program and how it helps build sustainable and resilient communities, check out the recent article Seeing Green.     
New Course Available at the MOST Center 
  
EFC and the MOST Center are pleased to announce a new online course: Making Pet Waste Management Work for Your Water Quality Goals
 
Pet waste left on the ground washes into local waterways, polluting rivers, creeks, and streams. Bacteria and pathogens found in pet waste can also cause severe illness in humans. Implementing a pet waste management plan can help local governments meet their MS4 permit and TMDL requirements, protect public health, and improve community aesthetics. This course provides an overview of the different types of pet waste management plans and presents case studies on programs currently being implemented in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. By the end of this course, you will be able to identify the type of plan that works best for your community and have a wealth of resources to start your own program.
  
In case you missed it - our Funding Urban Forestry Programs course launched in March. Sign up to learn about funding opportunities available for planning and carrying out tree planting and maintenance programs in your community.  
 
 
Can Different Ingredients  Bake Similar TMDL  Cakes ?

To meet the Chesapeake Bay pollution reduction goals, hundreds of communities in six states throughout the watershed must overcome barriers to local implementation of water quality projects. What are these barriers? Are there common barriers across communities, or are they more locally specific? These questions prompted two EFC projects funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund  Small Watershed Grants Program .
 
EFC partnered with the Brandywine Conservancy in the Elk Creeks and North East Creek watersheds of Chester County, Pennsylvania, and the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance in Sussex County, Delaware,  to identify similarities and differences between communities with respect to water quality   project implementation, focusing on stormwater management.  Both landscapes are comprised of small towns surrounded by agriculture, but local government structures differ considerably.
 
The advisory groups in both landscapes identified improved coordination of water quality education initiatives as catalytic to achieving Bay pollution reduction goals. Identifying local matching funds to gain access to more federal or state grant support was another common challenge. Also, many municipalities in both states are relatively new to the municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) program, so they lack experience planning projects or accessing grant and governmental support for program development and project implementation.

Key differences between the projects included local partners' experience with collaboration. Governments in the Elk Creeks and North East Creek watersheds have been collaborating through the Oxfo rd Region Planning Committee since 2013. Partners in the Nanti coke watershed have not sustained collaboration over the years, but they will likely adopt collaboration as part of a future funding strategy.  Another notable difference between these geographies is the role of tax ditches in Delaware. Tax ditches are special assessment districts created to drain water from the land. Members pay a small annual fee to maintain drainage; collectively these could be used to match grants for water quality projects.

 EFC continues to work with the local partners in both areas to develop specific funding strategies and capacity to implement water quality projects. A full report comparing and contrasting our experience to date in these two parts of the Chesapeake Bay watershed will be available soon on the EFC website.
     
COVID-19 Emphasizes the Need - and Provides an Opportunity - to Improve Community Resiliency

As the pandemic unfolded this spring, those working to advance climate change adaptation and improve communities' resilience to disasters began to note the similarities between these seemingly unrelated issues. Unfortunately, most of the similarities between the impacts of climate change and of the pandemic involve the most vulnerable populations in society. The coronavirus has disproportionately harmed people of color and poor communities, as well as the elderly and people with preexisting health conditions. These same groups are also more vulnerable to climate change impacts. The pandemic has exacerbated and highlighted these inequities--just as climate change was beginning to do the same. Through our Sustainable Maryland, MOST Center, and other projects, EFC is here to help support communities in cultivating a culture of equity, inclusion, and resilience preparedness.
 
Although the pandemic threatens to slow our progress on climate issues, our response to the crisis can also build our resiliency to climate change-if done strategically. Many organizations have prepared guidance on how to recover from the pandemic in a resilient and equitable way. The overarching message shared by the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) is that "our nation's response to the COVID-19 crisis must be harnessed to create communities that are more just, inclusive, and climate resilient." ASAP also notes that be most effective, "responses to both crises must reduce social inequity, remove barriers, and enhance well-being for all."
 
One immediate recovery recommendation is that policies and investments, especially stimulus bills, should advance climate resilient actions and seek to create a future-facing workforce in sectors that will be crucial in the new economy: renewable energy, sustainable community development, public health, and green infrastructure.
 
ASAP's public policy messaging toolkit is available here .
      
FOLLOW EFC ON SOCIAL MEDIA
 
You can follow EFC and some of our programs on social media: EFC is on Twitter @EFCUMD , Sustainable Maryland is on Facebook , and the Municipal Online Stormwater Center (MOST) is on Twitter @TheMOSTCenter


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