Sustainable City

ooking at the Inner Harbor or boating out of Bowleys Quarters, it’s hard to believe the water there has been affected by what someone has done hundreds of miles away. Yet that’s the case with many of the watersheds that feed into the Bay. The Gunpowder Valley Conservancy (GVC), a land trust and watershed conservation organization, works to protect the Gunpowder watershed that begins at its headwaters in York, Pennsylvania, travels through networks of rivers and streams through Baltimore and Carroll counties, then empties into Middle River and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay.

Along the way, that water picks up everything we dole out: pesticides from agriculture, yes, but also fertilizer from lawns, litter, road salt, motor oil, and other contaminants. While Baltimore has real problems—leaking sewage pipes, dumping—GVC’s executive director, Kim Pause Tucker, says it’s easier to finger point at these bad actors than to look at how we as individuals impact water quality.

“A lot of people, if they don’t see a stream near them, don’t think they’re part of the watershed, but eventually all water goes into a storm drain or seeps into the water table,” says Tucker. While there is a Gunpowder Riverkeeper who is a steward of the actual water, GVC is focused on protecting water by protecting land (they have more than 2,000 acres of land in conservation easement, an agreement that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect it).

That’s because much of what affects water quality takes place on the shore. GVC has planted a lot of trees, over 34,000. Deforestation causes erosion, filling streams with sediments that degrade the water quality and can pollute the environment for submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). According to NOAA, healthy SAVs upstream reduce water acidity downstream, not to mention providing food, nutrients, and habitat. They’re also super consumers of carbon dioxide. Despite their importance, in the early 20th century nearly 90 percent of the Bay area’s SAVs disappeared. The population has been clambering back ever since.

Streams and riverbanks filled with healthy plants (riparian buffers) and tree-lined city streets keep streams and stormwater runoff cool as well. “If the temperature of streams is too warm, even just by a few degrees, that can impact aquatic species or cause algae blooms,” says Tucker. Tucker adds that we need to be smarter about land development, too, adaptively reusing structures already on the coast rather than developing virgin riparian areas.

More than a land trust, Tucker says GVC is a connector—connecting people to the environment and to resources. GVC staff leads volunteers on tree plantings and stream cleanups, distributes rain barrels, and runs an adopt-astream program.

Its Clear Creeks program is a citizen-based initiative that works with communities to install bayscapes (native plant gardens), rain barrels and rain gardens, and to implement micro-bioretention buffers (similar to rain gardens but treating larger volumes of runoff, like from parking lots). Working with a homeowners association of 740 townhouses in Middle River, GVC installed 137 trees, 10 bayscapes, four rain gardens, eight rain barrels, and utilized several microbioretention buffers. The project is now an award-winning case study for successful municipal stormwater management.

“Humans are not separate from the environment,” says Tucker. “We have to think about what compromises we want to make. Do we use road salt more sparingly? Where can we consume less? Also, we need to make noise about this in our communities. If you identify a problem, elevate it to a conservation organization or local officials. I find that people do want a good environment and want to protect it.”

THE LATINO POPULATION in Baltimore doubled between 2010 and 2020 to over 40,000 people. A Pew Research study recently noted that climate change is a pressing concern for the majority of U.S. Latinos and that many see the effects of it in their communities. Yet there appears to be a gap between awareness and activism. If Defensores de la Cuenca, or Defenders of the Watershed in English, has its way, that’s going to change.

Latinos often come from cultures where reuse is part of everyday life, as is a close connection with nature, making it a community ripe to pick up the mantle of environmental leadership. But according to Abel Olivo, pictured above, Defensores co-founder and executive director, “The communities that are most impacted are not at the table, and there’s a reason for that. It’s historical exclusion, but also the structures and systems have been set up to make this work inaccessible.”

Olivo explains that even well-intentioned programs rarely take into account what matters in Spanish-speaking communities. Defensores programs are always free, fun, family-friendly, in Spanish, and take place at times that aren’t during work and church hours. “We’re asking these participants for their most precious commodity—their time,” says Olivo. “Time is food on the table, it’s rent, it’s a car payment; all that has real impact to community members on the margin.”

Over a year ago, Defensores began its Baltimore-based community-centered outreach, like water-quality investigations, picnics, and hiking excursions, but the end game is to bring the Latino community into Defensores’ paid programs to engage them in the economic engine of environmentalism. In July, in partnership with Patterson Park Audubon Center, Defensores will launch its La Academia de Defensores paid adult training program. Through in-person and virtual workshops, up to 15 participants earn a living wage while learning about watershed-related issues. At the conclusion, they implement a capstone project relevant to their community.

“In terms of climate change and resiliency, we need to better equip this community to be a part of the workforce, to be part of the conversation,” says Olivo. “If we continue to sideline or ignore the Latino and Spanish-speaking community, if we continue to ignore their need to access green space, to improve air and water quality, it will result in a sicker populace.”