Because the Potomac is a rather large watershed, It was suggested by Dr. Egenrieder that I find a way to refine my scope with in the watershed in order to bring it into a study that is a bit more manageable as the size of the watershed and the amount of information available to study it is quite vast.

In the past I have had the opportunity to work both with production water and waste water operations and with storm water management  in the State of Maryland.  Using that experience I developed a premise that down stream Wastewater operators and other point polluters might be able to be more effective at removing pollutants from the watershed by implementing storm water buffer strips and infiltration trenchs in agricultural and urban areas upstream in the water shed than trying to meet more stringent requirements at the pipe.

Nitrogen is one chemical that would be a good indicator for this type of exchange.  There are high levels of deposition in both agricultural and urban regions where storm water enters the water system untreated.  Meanwhile large scale point polluters are paying large sums of money to remove nitrogen from their waste streams that becomes less cost effective as they reach the limits of technologies.  I once heard DC waters CEO give a talk  in which he indicated that the cost of removing nitrogen from his wastewater down to 10 part per million (ppm) was economical and required a low tech solution but to get from 10 ppm down to  1ppm was costly and less effective, and that the money could be better used someplace else to remove a higher proportion of nutrients from the system. 

So I would like to build upon that and look at one of the more impacted branches of the watershed, and see if  I can correlate the effectiveness of nutrient removal of storm water management features as  a preferred alternative to trying to meet lower levels at a point source is feasible.

Here a couple of recent reports of Public-Private partnerships within the Chesapeake bay water shed that similar approach:

Friedrich, K, (2016)DC Storm water credit could be a role model for other cities , GreenBiz.com, Accessed from

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/dc-stormwater-credit-could-be-role-model-other-cities?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=newsletter-type-greenbuzz-daily&utm_content=2016-08-30&utm_campaign=newsletter-type-greenbuzz-daily-105793&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTjJWbE5qTmlNVEl4WVRNNSIsInQiOiJSV1MwQml1T2FTMTdXNjdlXC82RHVJWXFxZ01ndnlsRnJPek0xN1hxbnlHbU9odjhZYko4ZGp2NmNpVllRNzBNbVNib2c5VGxiamFaQzJvcmhMbnhaaGEwaE9OOGxzQ2g4UHpFaWgyRW4rQlE9In0%3D

Water Environment Federation, (2014), Corvias Announces Public-Private Partnership Agreement with Prince George’s County, November 20, 2014, Accessed from:  http://stormwater.wef.org/2014/11/corvias-announces-public-private-partnership-agreement-prince-georges-county/