On Tuesday April 19, Blue Water Baltimore conducted our first Outfall Screening Blitz of the year in the upper Stony Run. The Outfall Screening Blitz is a project in partnership with Ridge to Reefs and the Chesapeake Bay Trust that is focused on finding and eliminating pollution that is illegally entering Baltimore streams through the City’s stormwater…
Recently our Water Quality Monitoring program teamed up with Dr. Robert Hilderbrand, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Appalachian Laboratory, to look at another dimension of water health in the Jones Falls stream. Here, Dr. Hilderbrand talks about the microscopic organisms that make the Jones Falls unique. Stream Microbiomes Our…
As the Water Quality Manager at Blue Water Baltimore, my days are usually spent collecting water samples in our streams and Harbor or teaching people how different types of pollution enter our waterways. Earlier this month, I swapped my work boots for a suit jacket when I testified in front of the Maryland House Environment…
On Saturday, August 29, a small group of volunteers conducted an Outfall Screening Blitz (OSB) in the Roland Run, a tributary to the Jones Falls that flows through south central Baltimore County. Volunteers waded through a half-mile section of the stream that runs between Morris Avenue and I-695. They collected water quality samples from two…
Intense thunderstorms last month brought huge chunks of hail to some areas, caused widespread flooding, and led to massive sewage overflows in the Jones Falls corridor. Raw sewage and wastewater debris exploded out of the manholes along the Jones Falls trail, settling on the path that is used every day by joggers, walkers, and cyclists….
With the help of our amazing volunteers and outstanding Site Captains, Project Clean Stream 2015 was the most successful cleanup event in Blue Water Baltimore’s history. We coordinated cleanups at 93 sites throughout Baltimore City and Baltimore County, where over 1,800 volunteers removed 92,308 pounds of trash from their local streets, streams, and Baltimore Harbor….
Project Clean Stream is the biggest environmental volunteer event of the year. Last year 1,056 volunteers removed 49,697 pounds of trash from neighborhood streams and streets at 47 sites throughout Baltimore City and Baltimore County during Project Clean Stream. This is all possible because of our dedicated site captains, and you can be one! Leading a…
Blue Water Baltimore’s new Pollution Reporting Form makes it easier than ever to pinpoint the location of pollution using GPS coordinates or a street address. In fact, accessing the form with your smartphone will automatically fill in your current GPS coordinates if you are at the site of the pollution incident. We encourage you to…
In mid-November, 260 volunteers joined staff from Blue Water Baltimore and Gunpowder Valley Conservancy to remove trash from local streams during the annual Better Waterways Fall Cleanup. At ten cleanup sites, seven in Baltimore City and three in Baltimore County, our amazing volunteers who cleaned up 10,000 pounds of trash! Together we also worked to…
The 2013 Healthy Harbor Report Card is out, and Baltimore’s waterways have received a grade of “F”. Sanitary sewer overflows, illicit connections to our stormwater system, and other chronic pollution issues continue to plague our city and contribute to these failing grades. Last year the grade was a “C-“: even though we saw quantitative improvement in…