So the "emergency" stormwater regs went through. Ugh. So much for fighting the Holmes Bill.
Here's the news wrap up:
WYPR in Baltimore gave this summary
The Baltimore Sun
A few friends who follow my blog via Facebook have asked why someone that gardens cares so passionately about stormwater.
I'd answer this way: for years and years people like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the state of Maryland and the EPA have been asking us to please garden responsibly. I fully embraced the notion of conservation gardening from the start. We should all try to go organic, plant trees, remove invasives exotics, plant native plants and reduce our yard's run-off.
But why, I wonder, are we constantly holding homeowners to this high standard but letting developers get away with continued pollution?
There is nothing more frustrating than spending your own, cold, hard, cash AND TIME to implement things like raingardens and rainbarrels in your own yard only to walk down the street and see that some major new building is do far more harm in run-off than your little garden could possibly counterbalance.
It is like pushing a rock up hill. Repeatedly.
And it is unfair, I think, to ask homeowners and farmers to bear the brunt of these burdens while developers get away with doing far, far less. Especially since development in the state of Maryland has sprawled out across our watershed exponentially for decades.
I watch the creeks near my urban home get blasted after each storm and see how that can set off a chain of pollution events and ruin the potential recovery of that the Bay. I can't help that collectively we are doing too little, too late for the Chesapeake.
That's why.
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