Call or Email Your Elected Representatives
Possible Talking Points
- Risk of Flooding your house or neighbors homes
- Habitat Destruction
- Wildlife Impacts
- Waste of Taxpayers $$$
- Lack of Scientific Support
- Will reduce property values
- Request that the County mark the Limit of Disturbance (area where heavy machines will disturb soil) NOW
- Request that the County mark ALL trees to be removed and tag and uniquely ID all trees to be saved NOW
- Have an in person public meeting as soon as trees and work area is marked. Not after this is a done deal.
- What is the status of the sewer main running under the stream ? Will it need repair or replacement soon?
- Did a biologist assess the impact to wildlife caused by this work and the destruction of habitat?
- Feel free to cut and paste or copy from my letter to MDE at the bottom of this page
Calvin Ball, Howard County Executive
Phone: 410-313-2013
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Liz Walsh | County Council - District 1 (includes Dunloggin)
Phone: 410-313-2001
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Opel Jones | County Council - District 2
Christiana Rigby | County Council - District 3
Deb Jung | County Council - District 4
David Yungman | County Council - District 5
Courtney Watson | Maryland State Delegate - District 9B (includes Dunloggin)
Phone: (410) 841-3077, (301) 858-3077
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Jen Terrasa | Maryland State Delegate - District 13
Terri L. Hill | Maryland State Delegate - District 12
Phone: 410-841-3378
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Jessica Feldmark | Maryland State Delegate - District 12
Phone: 410-841-3205
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Katie Fry Hester | Maryland State Senator - District 9 (includes Dunloggin)
Phone: 410-841-3671, 301-858-3671
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Clarence K. Lam | Maryland State Senator - District 12
Phone: 410-841-3653
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
John P. Sarbanes| U.S. Representative, 3rd Congressional District, Maryland
Phone: 202-225-4016
Email: https://sarbanes.house.gov/contact
Email: https://sarbanes.house.gov/contact
My Letter to MDE (5/1/2023)
Dear Mr. Seiger,
I am writing to persuade you to deny the permit to Howard County for their Plumtree Branch stream restoration. According to the "Consensus Recommendations for Improving the Application of the Prevented Sediment Protocol" prepared by the Chesapeake Stormwater Network (revised 2/27/2020), "With a rapidly evolving stream restoration market and thousands of miles of projects planned in the coming years, a group of experts was convened to provide guidance on the Prevented Sediment Protocol to ensure the best possible projects are being selected and implemented." I have seen many stream restoration projects in Howard County, and I have not seen one that does not have significant failures after several years. I believe the main criterion for choosing a stream restoration project in Howard County is that the project does not have any organized community resistance. I believe the Plumtree Branch stream restoration was chosen because a science teacher at Dunloggin Middle School which is adjacent to the project has promoted the restoration. He has given presentations to the PTA, our neighborhood association (The St. Johns Community Association), and at the online presentation of the Howard County Stormwater meeting about the stream restoration. Dunloggin Middle School has a website https://dunlogginmiddleschoolgreenschool.weebly.com/water-conservationpollution-prevention.html There are several references to the stream restoration on the site:
There is a news release from the Howard County Government titled "Dunloggin Middle School stream restoration project to begin"
"The property on which our wetland/stream restoration project is owned by Parks and Recreation. They have allowed us to develop this into a magnificent environmental area for our students and the community to enjoy."
"The ongoing partnership with our local government has been very important to the implementation and continuation of our projects."
"Our wetland construction and stream restoration project also helps to fulfill the 7th grade service learning requirement which is a graduation requirement in the state of Maryland."
When I wrote to the HCPSS superintendent Dr. Martirano about my concerns with stream restorations his deputy Dr. Kendra Johnson replied "While I cannot confirm or deny the advocacy outlined in your email, I can confirm that the stream restoration project described was not written, advanced, or approved by HCPSS. And, the property in question is not owned or leased by HCPSS. Therefore, I am unable to intervene in this matter as we, HCPSS, have no official standing in this matter." If you look at the plans it is quite obvious that several acres of HCPSS property is being used for this project, and much of it is woods that will be destroyed.
On your website you state "As it specifically relates to stream restoration, MDE recommends that the practice should not be implemented without prior consideration to other potential stressors upstream of a given project and after evaluating the individual, ecological benefits and costs of any given project. These considerations are reflected in MDE’s project permitting processes." According to the Upper Little Patuxent River Watershed Management Plan published in September 2009 by Howard County, Maryland on page 38, "Of the pond retrofit and bioretention (filtration) projects listed, project PT1_01, a storage area in the median of MacAlpine Road, received the highest score due to its large amount of proposed treated impervious area and potential benefits. This particular project involves utilizing a long grass swale located between the northbound and southbound lanes of Macalpine Road for quality and quantity controls." The end of this bioretention project that was never done is where the proposed Plumtree Branch stream restoration project begins. Also at the beginning of the proposed stream restoration is an outfall pipe that delivers a significant volume of water from the parking and roof of Dunloggin Middle School (DMS). The area between the school and the outfall has a large area that is not used for an athletic field and would be an ideal location for a retention pond. Adjacent to DMS is Northfield Elementary School (NES), where a stream restoration to an unnamed tributary to the Plumtree Branch was done several years ago, and already has eroded stream banks. Like the current proposed project, the NES project had several stormwater outfalls that serve the parking and roof of NES, yet no retention ponds were installed.
Another significant problem with this proposed Plumtree Branch project is the risk to homeowners directly upstream who already suffer flooding of their homes from the stream. Residents at the southern terminus of Chatham Road have had to park on higher ground and walk to their property during floods. At a community meeting at the site, the project manager for the county, Lindsay DeMarzo, and the director of Stormwater Mark Richmond both professed ignorance of the terminology when I asked them if the hydrology of the stream is subcritical or supercritical. It is my understanding that this stretch of stream is subcritical, and that the flatness of the stream will make the many homes upstream of this project at increased risk for flooding if this project is approved. The representative from Ecotone, the contractor on the project, stood next to the stream and pointed to the flood plain next to Chatham Road and said "if this area floods three times a year now, it may flood ten times a year after the stream restoration." Our neighborhood, Dunloggin, has severe stormwater problems because of inadequate stormwater infrastructure compounded by the settlement of the ground around our older homes that leads to wet basements. The homeowners near the stream have suffered from increasing water levels from upstream development and our historic storms. Due to Howard County's misleading communications, many people assume that Howard County Stormwater Management is here to save the day and alleviate our flooding problems, unaware that stream restorations reduce the capacity of the stream to convey water so that the stream will overflow its banks onto the floodplain. The downstream or southern half of this project was removed from the plans after the county saw how much opposition there was to the restoration. The reason stated by Lindsay Demarzo was that the floodplain maps for that area had been changed so they could not perform the work there. Unfortunately, this is the area that has minimal tree canopy and no homes that have been flooded to my knowledge. This portion of the project has less risk to homes and the environment, yet it was removed. The homes in this area are in Dorsey Hall, a neighborhood in the Dorsey Search Village of the Columbia Association. The homes that are upstream of this project and are at high risk of increased flooding are not part of the Columbia Association.
The Plumtree Branch receives water from I70, US40 and US29. I believe there are many opportunities for stormwater retention ponds upstream from this project. The headwaters of the Plumtree Branch at I 70 have barely any water during dry weather, yet have eroded banks as high as 10 feet. The Southview Road stream restoration, completed several years ago is just upstream on an unnamed east tributary of the Plumtree Branch in the Valleymede neighborhood and already has significant stream bank erosion and it has a fraction of the flow of the proposed restoration. I believe this is evidence of extremely high flows during storms which will provide high volume flows that make the risk of stream restoration failure downstream very high. In the next reach downstream in Valleymede the stream is run through a concrete channel in the median of North Chatham road.
The land adjacent to I 70 is still undeveloped. It would be a shame if the opportunity to mitigate the damage done to our homes and our ecosystem by excess stormwater from I 70 was lost. I have been told that the county prefers stream restorations over stormwater management ponds because they receive more stormwater mitigation credit per dollar. Until the credit system is changed to incentivize ponds over stream restorations it is your responsibility to deny permits for high risk, low benefit projects. There are several failed stream restorations within a few miles of this proposed project. The Little Patuxent River is very similar to the Plumtree Branch because the headwaters and upstream reaches come down a steep decline and reach our flat area where the volume and flow caused the recently "restored" stream banks to erode and contribute more sediment to the Bay than if they were never disturbed in the first place. Unfortunately, the Little Patuxent river has another reach that Howard County can't resist "restoring" because there aren't many adjacent homeowners. This reach is parallel to Woodland Road between Old Annapolis Road and Rt. 108. Unfortunately, this reach is downstream from the failed reach so it will have even higher flows because Dorsey Hall has excellent storm sewers and no retention ponds. There are other failed stream restorations nearby that are documented on my website saveplumtreebranch.org.
Last but not least I will argue for the ecosystem. I have a hard time being objective because my daughters, my grandson and I have enjoyed these woods and the Plumtree Branch for thirty years now. The law requires that stream restorations provide "ecological uplift" to the stream. I have seen many stream restorations and the idea that they are healthy or uplifted is ridiculous. The stream that was restored behind NES was a unique shady ecosystem with acres of skunk cabbage. Now it is a sunny, grass filled field with a dead stream filled with water from Rt 29, too warm because of the removal of the tree canopy, and choked with algae. The new highly touted native grasses are already losing the battle to the invasive lesser celandine. The saplings will probably provide shade for my great grandchildren. When I took representatives of the Sierra Club on a tour of the NES restoration, and we walked to the point where it flowed into the proposed Plumtree Branch restoration they were disoriented and could not tell which stream had been restored and which stream "needed" restoration. The fact is that except for some heavily eroded sections at the beginning of the project, most of the banks in the proposed restoration are in better condition than the eroded sections of the failed sections of the Little Patuxent and Font Hill stream restorations. The streambed of the Plumtree Branch will not receive ecological uplift because until the volume of stormwater is reduced by upstream stormwater management ponds the amount of sediment that this reach of the stream receives will continue to degrade its health. The streams in our vicinity all have sandbars of sediment, it doesn't matter whether they have been restored or in their natural state. In addition to the large-scale destruction of mature riparian buffers, the sediment problem makes any claim of ecological uplift pure fiction. In their document EB-44- published June 2020 titled "Watershed Restoration and Stormwater Management", the University of Maryland Extension states "It is important to install stormwater management practices including riparian buffers upland as well, to ensure that these downstream restoration practices have a chance to succeed." The Howard County Government has done exactly the opposite. The Southfield Road stream restoration upstream has removed significant riparian buffers and replaced it with saplings, many of which have died.
The woods along the Plumtree Branch are an ecosystem that will be destroyed by a stream restoration. According to the plans by Ecotone, they will clear almost 18 acres, including a 1/2 acre of woods cleared just to make a secondary shortcut path between two staging areas. They will leave some mature trees because Howard County councilwoman Liz Walsh and 40 residents showed up for the meeting at the stream and complained. Unfortunately, I have seen too many mature trees that were "saved" during stream restorations that only die several years later, several in the NES restoration. Our Friend Ben Costello is a Birder who has compiled a list of 84 bird species, 10 confirmed breeders, plus many probable breeders that live in these woods for the Maryland-DC Breeding Bird Atlas 3. Just in the past year there have been sightings of bald eagles, wild turkeys, and coyotes in these woods. The stream corridors are some of the only habitats left in this part of the county for these recovering species. The contractor doing this work will be Ecotone of Forest Hill, Maryland. On their website the CEO Scott McGill described the completion of one of their projects by saying "Within weeks after construction, wildlife began moving back into the area as owls, heron, falcon, ducks, deer, raccoon, foxes, and others became acquainted with their new home." I wonder if Mr. McGill actually saw an Owl sitting on the branch of one of the saplings he planted to replace the mature trees he cut down. The local bat population has declined significantly in the last few years. The removal of so many trees will only make their recovery less likely. The sounds of the owls at night has been a part of Dunloggin for decades. Can you guarantee that they will survive having 18 acres of frogs and toads and mice destroyed? The noise made by the spring peepers in these woods is louder than any group of cicadas I have ever heard. The delusion that everything will go back to normal after construction may help some to sleep at night, but the Chesapeake Bay and our local ecosystem will not benefit from their delusions.
Thank You,
Roger Davis
I am writing to persuade you to deny the permit to Howard County for their Plumtree Branch stream restoration. According to the "Consensus Recommendations for Improving the Application of the Prevented Sediment Protocol" prepared by the Chesapeake Stormwater Network (revised 2/27/2020), "With a rapidly evolving stream restoration market and thousands of miles of projects planned in the coming years, a group of experts was convened to provide guidance on the Prevented Sediment Protocol to ensure the best possible projects are being selected and implemented." I have seen many stream restoration projects in Howard County, and I have not seen one that does not have significant failures after several years. I believe the main criterion for choosing a stream restoration project in Howard County is that the project does not have any organized community resistance. I believe the Plumtree Branch stream restoration was chosen because a science teacher at Dunloggin Middle School which is adjacent to the project has promoted the restoration. He has given presentations to the PTA, our neighborhood association (The St. Johns Community Association), and at the online presentation of the Howard County Stormwater meeting about the stream restoration. Dunloggin Middle School has a website https://dunlogginmiddleschoolgreenschool.weebly.com/water-conservationpollution-prevention.html There are several references to the stream restoration on the site:
There is a news release from the Howard County Government titled "Dunloggin Middle School stream restoration project to begin"
"The property on which our wetland/stream restoration project is owned by Parks and Recreation. They have allowed us to develop this into a magnificent environmental area for our students and the community to enjoy."
"The ongoing partnership with our local government has been very important to the implementation and continuation of our projects."
"Our wetland construction and stream restoration project also helps to fulfill the 7th grade service learning requirement which is a graduation requirement in the state of Maryland."
When I wrote to the HCPSS superintendent Dr. Martirano about my concerns with stream restorations his deputy Dr. Kendra Johnson replied "While I cannot confirm or deny the advocacy outlined in your email, I can confirm that the stream restoration project described was not written, advanced, or approved by HCPSS. And, the property in question is not owned or leased by HCPSS. Therefore, I am unable to intervene in this matter as we, HCPSS, have no official standing in this matter." If you look at the plans it is quite obvious that several acres of HCPSS property is being used for this project, and much of it is woods that will be destroyed.
On your website you state "As it specifically relates to stream restoration, MDE recommends that the practice should not be implemented without prior consideration to other potential stressors upstream of a given project and after evaluating the individual, ecological benefits and costs of any given project. These considerations are reflected in MDE’s project permitting processes." According to the Upper Little Patuxent River Watershed Management Plan published in September 2009 by Howard County, Maryland on page 38, "Of the pond retrofit and bioretention (filtration) projects listed, project PT1_01, a storage area in the median of MacAlpine Road, received the highest score due to its large amount of proposed treated impervious area and potential benefits. This particular project involves utilizing a long grass swale located between the northbound and southbound lanes of Macalpine Road for quality and quantity controls." The end of this bioretention project that was never done is where the proposed Plumtree Branch stream restoration project begins. Also at the beginning of the proposed stream restoration is an outfall pipe that delivers a significant volume of water from the parking and roof of Dunloggin Middle School (DMS). The area between the school and the outfall has a large area that is not used for an athletic field and would be an ideal location for a retention pond. Adjacent to DMS is Northfield Elementary School (NES), where a stream restoration to an unnamed tributary to the Plumtree Branch was done several years ago, and already has eroded stream banks. Like the current proposed project, the NES project had several stormwater outfalls that serve the parking and roof of NES, yet no retention ponds were installed.
Another significant problem with this proposed Plumtree Branch project is the risk to homeowners directly upstream who already suffer flooding of their homes from the stream. Residents at the southern terminus of Chatham Road have had to park on higher ground and walk to their property during floods. At a community meeting at the site, the project manager for the county, Lindsay DeMarzo, and the director of Stormwater Mark Richmond both professed ignorance of the terminology when I asked them if the hydrology of the stream is subcritical or supercritical. It is my understanding that this stretch of stream is subcritical, and that the flatness of the stream will make the many homes upstream of this project at increased risk for flooding if this project is approved. The representative from Ecotone, the contractor on the project, stood next to the stream and pointed to the flood plain next to Chatham Road and said "if this area floods three times a year now, it may flood ten times a year after the stream restoration." Our neighborhood, Dunloggin, has severe stormwater problems because of inadequate stormwater infrastructure compounded by the settlement of the ground around our older homes that leads to wet basements. The homeowners near the stream have suffered from increasing water levels from upstream development and our historic storms. Due to Howard County's misleading communications, many people assume that Howard County Stormwater Management is here to save the day and alleviate our flooding problems, unaware that stream restorations reduce the capacity of the stream to convey water so that the stream will overflow its banks onto the floodplain. The downstream or southern half of this project was removed from the plans after the county saw how much opposition there was to the restoration. The reason stated by Lindsay Demarzo was that the floodplain maps for that area had been changed so they could not perform the work there. Unfortunately, this is the area that has minimal tree canopy and no homes that have been flooded to my knowledge. This portion of the project has less risk to homes and the environment, yet it was removed. The homes in this area are in Dorsey Hall, a neighborhood in the Dorsey Search Village of the Columbia Association. The homes that are upstream of this project and are at high risk of increased flooding are not part of the Columbia Association.
The Plumtree Branch receives water from I70, US40 and US29. I believe there are many opportunities for stormwater retention ponds upstream from this project. The headwaters of the Plumtree Branch at I 70 have barely any water during dry weather, yet have eroded banks as high as 10 feet. The Southview Road stream restoration, completed several years ago is just upstream on an unnamed east tributary of the Plumtree Branch in the Valleymede neighborhood and already has significant stream bank erosion and it has a fraction of the flow of the proposed restoration. I believe this is evidence of extremely high flows during storms which will provide high volume flows that make the risk of stream restoration failure downstream very high. In the next reach downstream in Valleymede the stream is run through a concrete channel in the median of North Chatham road.
The land adjacent to I 70 is still undeveloped. It would be a shame if the opportunity to mitigate the damage done to our homes and our ecosystem by excess stormwater from I 70 was lost. I have been told that the county prefers stream restorations over stormwater management ponds because they receive more stormwater mitigation credit per dollar. Until the credit system is changed to incentivize ponds over stream restorations it is your responsibility to deny permits for high risk, low benefit projects. There are several failed stream restorations within a few miles of this proposed project. The Little Patuxent River is very similar to the Plumtree Branch because the headwaters and upstream reaches come down a steep decline and reach our flat area where the volume and flow caused the recently "restored" stream banks to erode and contribute more sediment to the Bay than if they were never disturbed in the first place. Unfortunately, the Little Patuxent river has another reach that Howard County can't resist "restoring" because there aren't many adjacent homeowners. This reach is parallel to Woodland Road between Old Annapolis Road and Rt. 108. Unfortunately, this reach is downstream from the failed reach so it will have even higher flows because Dorsey Hall has excellent storm sewers and no retention ponds. There are other failed stream restorations nearby that are documented on my website saveplumtreebranch.org.
Last but not least I will argue for the ecosystem. I have a hard time being objective because my daughters, my grandson and I have enjoyed these woods and the Plumtree Branch for thirty years now. The law requires that stream restorations provide "ecological uplift" to the stream. I have seen many stream restorations and the idea that they are healthy or uplifted is ridiculous. The stream that was restored behind NES was a unique shady ecosystem with acres of skunk cabbage. Now it is a sunny, grass filled field with a dead stream filled with water from Rt 29, too warm because of the removal of the tree canopy, and choked with algae. The new highly touted native grasses are already losing the battle to the invasive lesser celandine. The saplings will probably provide shade for my great grandchildren. When I took representatives of the Sierra Club on a tour of the NES restoration, and we walked to the point where it flowed into the proposed Plumtree Branch restoration they were disoriented and could not tell which stream had been restored and which stream "needed" restoration. The fact is that except for some heavily eroded sections at the beginning of the project, most of the banks in the proposed restoration are in better condition than the eroded sections of the failed sections of the Little Patuxent and Font Hill stream restorations. The streambed of the Plumtree Branch will not receive ecological uplift because until the volume of stormwater is reduced by upstream stormwater management ponds the amount of sediment that this reach of the stream receives will continue to degrade its health. The streams in our vicinity all have sandbars of sediment, it doesn't matter whether they have been restored or in their natural state. In addition to the large-scale destruction of mature riparian buffers, the sediment problem makes any claim of ecological uplift pure fiction. In their document EB-44- published June 2020 titled "Watershed Restoration and Stormwater Management", the University of Maryland Extension states "It is important to install stormwater management practices including riparian buffers upland as well, to ensure that these downstream restoration practices have a chance to succeed." The Howard County Government has done exactly the opposite. The Southfield Road stream restoration upstream has removed significant riparian buffers and replaced it with saplings, many of which have died.
The woods along the Plumtree Branch are an ecosystem that will be destroyed by a stream restoration. According to the plans by Ecotone, they will clear almost 18 acres, including a 1/2 acre of woods cleared just to make a secondary shortcut path between two staging areas. They will leave some mature trees because Howard County councilwoman Liz Walsh and 40 residents showed up for the meeting at the stream and complained. Unfortunately, I have seen too many mature trees that were "saved" during stream restorations that only die several years later, several in the NES restoration. Our Friend Ben Costello is a Birder who has compiled a list of 84 bird species, 10 confirmed breeders, plus many probable breeders that live in these woods for the Maryland-DC Breeding Bird Atlas 3. Just in the past year there have been sightings of bald eagles, wild turkeys, and coyotes in these woods. The stream corridors are some of the only habitats left in this part of the county for these recovering species. The contractor doing this work will be Ecotone of Forest Hill, Maryland. On their website the CEO Scott McGill described the completion of one of their projects by saying "Within weeks after construction, wildlife began moving back into the area as owls, heron, falcon, ducks, deer, raccoon, foxes, and others became acquainted with their new home." I wonder if Mr. McGill actually saw an Owl sitting on the branch of one of the saplings he planted to replace the mature trees he cut down. The local bat population has declined significantly in the last few years. The removal of so many trees will only make their recovery less likely. The sounds of the owls at night has been a part of Dunloggin for decades. Can you guarantee that they will survive having 18 acres of frogs and toads and mice destroyed? The noise made by the spring peepers in these woods is louder than any group of cicadas I have ever heard. The delusion that everything will go back to normal after construction may help some to sleep at night, but the Chesapeake Bay and our local ecosystem will not benefit from their delusions.
Thank You,
Roger Davis