It was a hazy morning in Alexandria, VA when Dr. Bill Dennison revealed the 2022 Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card at the Washington Sailing Marina. The Bay received an overall grade of C, which Anna Calderón breaks down here. After all the hands were shaken and the photos taken, the report card team and Global Sustainability Scholars set up our tents to get feedback from community members on the report card methods.

The goal of our listening sessions is to learn about how the community relates to the Bay and one of its tributaries, the Potomac River. We collect information on where people live, work, and play; what they value about the Potomac River; what threats they see to the Potomac; their vision for a sustainable Potomac and how to get there; and who they work with and want to work with on issues related to the Potomac. In addition to this information, we also ask for feedback on the indicators we use in the report card and relationships we use in our models. All of this information helps us to improve the report card for next year: which indicators are relevant to community members, which areas are most important to people, and what recommendations to make for the future.

One of the most surprising and encouraging parts of the day was how many people talked about the Potomac’s improvement. People who have lived in the area for a long time noted that the health of the Potomac has gotten markedly better in the last couple of decades. Despite this improvement, people noted that it is still not advised to swim in the Potomac.

Being at a sailing marina, many people we spoke to expressed a decidedly nautical point of view. One concern that was brought up was the navigability of the Potomac for boats. Events like storms can sweep debris and sediment into the river, creating collision hazards and also making the water shallower to the point where boats can’t float on top without scraping the bottom. The phenomenon of water becoming shallower is known as “shoaling,” and it is increasingly becoming a problem in waterways around DC (Lazo, 2018). Shoaling can be combated by dredging, the process of sucking up sediment from the bottom and moving it somewhere else. Unfortunately, dredging can have negative environmental impacts, such as damaging marine habitats, destroying fish eggs and larvae, and releasing toxins from the sediment into the water (Todd et al., 2015).

One of our listening session participants brought up that these issues are made more complicated by the patchwork of state and federal agencies with control over some part of the Potomac. The state of Maryland owns the bed of the Potomac up to its shore in Virginia, but Virginia can still use the river and even build structures that divert water from it (Clemons, 2003). On the water, the US Army Corps of Engineers removes debris to protect navigation (US Army Corps of Engineers, 2015) and conducts and regulates dredging (US Army Corps of Engineers, 2021). This seems to fit with the mosaic-ness of the Washington, D.C. area, where every step could take you from federal property, to state land, to the strange combination of city and state that makes up the District’s authority, and back again.

These complexities are one of the reasons why input from a diverse public is needed for an undertaking like a socio-environmental report card. Everyone has a unique perspective and niche to share, which helps us to assess where we’re at and chart where we need to go.

Thank you to the Washington Sailing Marina for hosting our listening session and to everyone who came out to the report card launch and listening session.

References:

Clemons, J. (2003). Supreme Court Rules for Virginia in Potomac Conflict. https://nsglc.olemiss.edu/SandBar/SandBar2/2.4supreme.htm

Lazo, L. (2018, April 22). New ‘danger’ markers on a Virginia waterway threaten livelihoods and ignite calls for dredging funds. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/new-danger-markers-on-a-virginia-waterway-threaten-livelihoods-and-ignite-calls-for-dredging-funds/2018/04/21/41a4a652-4196-11e8-bba2-0976a82b05a2_story.html

Todd, V. L. G., Todd, I. B., Gardiner, J. C., Morrin, E. C. N., MacPherson, N. A., DiMarzio, N. A., & Thomsen, F. (2015). A review of impacts of marine dredging activities on marine mammals. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 72(2), 328–340. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsu187

US Army Corps of Engineers. (2015). Potomac and Anacostia Rivers Collection & Removal of Drift. https://www.nab.usace.army.mil/portals/63/docs/FactSheets/FY15_Factsheets/MD-VA-PotomacAnacostiaDrift-OM.pdf

US Army Corps of Engineers. (2021, October 1). DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY PROGRAMMATIC GENERAL PERMIT STATE OF MARYLAND MDSPGP-6. https://mde.maryland.gov/programs/Water/WetlandsandWaterways/Documents/WQC/ATT1_MDSPGP-6_Permit_Proposed.pdf