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In 1987, the Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management (DEPRM) joined Save Our Streams, Baltimore City and Maryland's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to kick off the Gwynns Falls Restoration campaign. The efforts of these three groups combined with the hundreds of local volunteers and businesses jump started the program to help over 200 Gwynns Falls watershed communities tackle the water pollution problems facing this vast urban stream system. The combined resources of city, county and state governments provided assistance to watershed communities from Reisterstown to the Inner Harbor that were looking for solutions to help restore this vast urban stream system. In 1989, Save Our Streams and the Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management became partners in Citizens for Stream Restoration. This partnership expanded the original Gwynns Falls Restoration Campaign to include Baltimore County in its entirety. The goal of this countywide campaign was to build and foster an educated and active citizen constituency for the County's 1500 miles of streams. In its first three years, the Campaign involved thousands of citizens in projects designed to protect and restore neighborhood streams. Citizens throughout the County started to adopt their neighborhood streams!!! In following years, staff and volunteers have broadened their focus and started to work with a variety of groups. We have worked in partnership with community associations, schools, scouts, and church groups to promote citizen involvement and education for the County's precious waterways. This venture of spreading out was a success across Baltimore County. Through community partnerships, many local streams were adopted, including the Gwynns Falls, Dead Run, Jones Falls, Gunpowder River, Redhouse Run, Bird River and Herring Run. The focus now includes providing educational materials, moving into new communities and watersheds, and expanding the strong base forged over the past years. The campaign recruited new stream adopters across the County. In addition, a special emphasis has been placed on educating citizens on the subject of sediment and erosion that was affecting a large proportion of local waterways. Save Our Streams' staff would like to thank the hundreds of Baltimore County volunteers who have participated in various activities throughout the past years. Their hard work and determination removed tons of trash and debris form local waterways, planted thousands of trees, monitored biology and habitat at hundreds of stations with Project Heartbeat, painted hundreds of storm drains and surveyed miles of county streams and watersheds to locate potential pollution sources. We hope all who participated enjoyed the experience and will come out again. Save Our Streams is happy to announce we have added twenty new sites for Project Heartbeat stream monitoring, organizing workshops to train volunteers to plan and perform restoration activities and continuing support of adoption activities throughout the county. Anyone interested in helping to plan and/or participating in upcoming County activities should contact Brett Johnson at |
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