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.     

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.

 

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 .