Are you sick of hearing about Baltimore Green Week yet? You better now be because you have some serious blogging coming your way about all things water-related: rain and runoff, sewage and streams. Let's get down to the murky business of what happens between a raincloud and a river.
Monday was my day-long BWG marathon, with two back to back "City Day Tours" collectively called "Energy and Stormwater Solutions." Oh man, were we all over town! We learned about energy saving technologies the city is implementing, such as those at the Back River Treatment Plant. There, they use the residual methane gas to power the treatment plant, and even put energy back on the grid in the summer! It's a little horrifying to me that we are producing that much grossness, but.... at least they're making good use of it. It was really neat to see how the whole plant runs, with myriad
steps to ensure that water being released back in to our rivers and bay are free of nutrients (that lead to algae blooms, and ultimately fish kills). Of course, we got to see the enormous golden digesters which have become infamous icons of Dundalk, as well as tour the engine rooms that make sure things keep flowing forward. One thing which was really disheartening was hearing about how our old sewage system is rife with cracking pipes, which inevitably lead to the cross-contamination between rain run off and sewage. With our bay already in dire straights, thinking about a constant leakage of sewage into ground water and run off drains is really....awful.
Our next stop was brand new, soon-to-be-opened LEED silver Homeless Services Center on Fallsway. It is just beautiful! With 275 beds, a green roof, reused materials, and a million other fancy energy efficiency features, this facility is truly inspiring on a lot of levels. What better way to help someone get back on their feet than giving them an address to temporarily call home with quality facilities, inspiring design, solid social services on hand, beautiful outdoor space and respect? As a society, this is what we should be striving to offer all our citizens. Way to go, Baltimore!
After some free lunch donated by Chipotle, we were off again to see various rain gardens and run-off control designs. Long story short, the more you can slow down rain run-offer and get it out of the storm drains and back in to the soil, the better we all are. Soil and plants naturally filter and clean the water they absorb, so that
by the time it gets back in to our waterways it is a lot more environmentally sound than if it just shoots in to a storm drain and out to the bay.
Additionally, projects to restore the health of our streams have aided in improving the health of our waterways, such as the restoration we visited in Mt. Washington's Western Run. Blue Water Baltimore and the Department of Public Works have been doing 
great work creating bio-retention systems, tree boxes, community-lead storm drain initiatives and helping residents create low-cost rain gardens, such as the one pictured here (in Roland Park) which also had a rain barrel.
Start thinking about options and ideas you have for decreasing your impact on our waterways. Beyond using less water in your day to day life, could you install a rain barrel? Create a rain garden? Make a green roof? Replace pavement and cement with permeable surfaces to enable rain to seep rather than drain? Can you inspire others to do the same and more?
Oh man, I could go in to so much more detail, but I just wanted to give you all an overview of what we learned, what we saw, and what we can do to help! What questions do you have? What ideas have you implemented?
love k
I am lucky enough to live on a street lined by old cherry blossom trees - the city doesn't plant these anymore, since apparently they grow too laterally and get in the way of trucks and street cleaners. In fact, I've stopped city crews from hacking down branches on more than one occasion (one was especially awkward since I heard them starting up their wood chipper and had to leap out of bed and throw on whatever clothes were on hand and bolt out the door, hair everywhere, to literally beg them to go away. It worked) I also have scrubbed off their white spray painted marks meant to indicate future chopping, and bound a broken branch assaulted by a street cleaner truck passing by until it healed itself...Hey, whatever it takes. What the city and its wood chipping employees don't understand is that I value what the trees offer way more than the street cleaner's ability to hiss down my gutter. I can sweep up street trash, but I can't replace the immense pleasure each and every twig of that tree brings me. 
