Watershed Health

Monocacy watershed has been issued a TMDL’s for phosphorus, total coliform, and sediment. I have been using the lower Monocacy numbers for comparison for health as they incorporate the loading from upstream sources. While the state of Maryland indicates that they are making progress to meet the TMDL goals, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation rates the watershed as being in poor to fair condition. With the reaches to the northwest of the watershed being classified as fair and the rest of the watershed showing impacted streams and a poor rating for watershed health. (http://www.cbf.org/news-media/multimedia/fieldscope). 

 TMDL goals for the Monocacy:

Total Phosphorus: 843,903 lbs per yer

Fecal Coliform:       1,524,812 Billion MPN  per year

Sediment :                90,158 ton/year

A watershed specific TMDL for Nitrogen has not been set, but the watershed does contribute to the Chesapeake Bay’s Watershed TMDL. 

In assessing the health of the watershed there is a good amount of data and information on the Maryland portions of the watershed, which represents a majority of the land within the watershed, but there we still need to consider the effects of water quality and quantity that is contributed to the system from headwaters for the watershed from Rock Creek and Marsh Creek in Pennsylvania. While Marsh Creek list not listed as an impaired water, Rock Creek is for Nutrients stemming from Agricultural practices and a WWTP by the Pennsylvania Department of the Environment (PADEP, 2015) (www.depgis.state.pa.us)

I propose promoting the use of natural filtering systems like buffer strips and infiltration trenches to treat stormwater run off before it reaches the streams to help reduce the nutrient and sediment loading in the watershed.  This would provide a relatively inexpensive longterm solution to watershed health with the added benefits of green spaces throughout the watershed providing other eco-services beyond filtration.

These measures should be deployed both in urban and rural settings and could be paid  for through public private partnerships or through a pollution trading bank as offered by the state of Maryland.  Basically the premise is that point source polluters can buy pollution credits by installing green infrastructure else ware in the watershed to effectively remove a higher amount of contaminants at a lower cost by using low tech measures vs using high tech measures to reduce discharges at the point source.

This looks at the watershed as a single organism and helps prioritize contaminant removal within the water shed to where it is most effective.  Both the states of Maryland and  Pennsylvania have funding programs to promote the use of BMPS for nutrient removal which I will get a bit more into next.

I have updated my presentation up to the contamination portion of the discussion and will be working on how to address it using BMPS and public private partnerships or trading.

 Example of a Buffer strip sourced from : http://www.helmsdalecompany.co.uk/fishing_report/kfm/get.php?id=390

References

Pennsylvania BMP fund : http://www.nonpointsourcepa.org/funding-sources/agriculture

Maryland Pollutant trading : http://www.mdnutrienttrading.com/