Storm Purges

Photo by Magnus Franklin

It's been four years since Superstorm Sandy poured down on the northeastern U.S.  Now, major hurricanes simultaneously threaten to cause disasters in both hemispheres. Despite Matthew's menacing track forecast, there is a good chance it will stay out at sea. Either way, it looks like much of the east coast is in for a deluge. One of the greatest impacts caused by Sandy and many other extreme rain events is one we seem to forget too quickly afterwards - overflowing of sewage treatment plants. The cumulative result,  in connection with Superstorm Sandy, was discharge of some 11 billion gallons of raw sewage to our environment. While 7 million gallons is enough to push me to take desperate measures, billions of gallons may drive me to despair.

Our wastewater treatment infrastructure, like so much else in our country, has not been maintained or renewed enough to keep pace with a growing population. Add to that the stress of climate change, and there is bound to be an increase in failures. Rising sea levels, even from a storm surge, is particularly culpable.

Inundation also affects septic systems by raising the water table well inland from the shore, causing degradation of septic system performance - all the more reason to transition to humanure composting in lieu of sewage and septic solutions. Septic systems, for various reasons, pollute proportionally more than sewage overflow incidents, but for my money, humanure composting is better than either.

How Quickly Things can Change

Photo by G. Crouch

In little time, Matthew went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane. By late next week, peoples' lives on this coast may be dramatically interrupted. When these storms track west of the Chesapeake Bay, the storm surge has been reported as high as 15 feet in one long ago incident. The flood hazard estimates for the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant use a maximum probable surge of 27 feet (the plant survives, but so long Norfolk, Annapolis, and Baltimore).

Storm surge isn't the concern for my home, but a major hurricane hit would possibly take off the roof or knock down walls. We would not be in the house at that point, having evacuated to a shelter or to the hinterlands about a day ahead of the storm. More than likely, we would be dealing with something less than a category 3 hurricane this far up the bay, so my choice would be to ride it out (though, this time, with all of the saturated ground, toppled trees would be a bigger problem than usual).

Time to start going through the hurricane checklist. Hopefully, track forecasts will allow me to put such preparations aside short of having to shift to the evacuation checklist.

Flood Warning

When I attended the Lake Lariat Preservation Committee meeting earlier this month, I was told that I should become a member of the committee in order to have legitimacy in the eyes of the HOA. However, I am not sure that lake preservation is what I want to advocate. What about doing away with the lake and letting Mill Creek be what it was 60 some odd years ago? Would removing the Lake Lariat dam eventually lead to cleaner water flowing into the Chesapeake Bay? This is a question any community with a dam should ask about their own watershed.

Photo by Anders Sandberg

Aside from the water quality question, dams can lead to rampant destruction and loss of life, as South Carolina learned in the wake of floods last year causing 36 dam failures! Not all dam failures cause loss of life, but 81 of 336 dams in Maryland (including Lake Lariat) are high risk hazards by virtue of the potential consequences of a failure. Thirty-six dam failures in one state weighed against 71 dam failures nationwide in the five years prior points to a possible tipping point. If it is, three factors can be blamed for placing many at higher risk of flooding catastrophes: more extreme rainfall, more development, i.e. impervious surface, and aging of dams.

Dams have been built over the last 100 years or so with liberal safety factors for maximum probable precipitation. Aging of those dams beyond their 50 year design life makes them vulnerable to rainfall extremes even under their designed capabilities. Add to that the furious climate-driven increase in rainfall in the Eastern U.S. and you get catastrophes like South Carolina's.

We are in the middle of one of those rain spells here in Maryland. After a 4" rain last week, we have totaled almost 5" in the last two days, with lots more to come in the next few days. Rivers are predicted to flood. Hurricane Matthew may drop more rain here next week. I doubt if our dams would be able to hold it all. If you live downstream of one, don't be like one of the 17 people killed by dam failure in South Carolina last year. Take any flash flood warning very seriously.

Maps for Every Occasion

It wasn't too many years ago that everywhere we went, one of the first things we bought was a street map. Years before I needed those, I was always sending off in the mail for topographic maps, as a good Boy Scout, to plan and carry out hikes wherever I happened to be living. With our lives these days being so digitized, it's a relief that cartographic resources are so freely available to us through personal computers. The kind of maps that I am able to pull up through my county's geographic information system (GIS) portal may be the truest reflection of local geospatial reality in all of cyberspace.

The type of map that has recently been most beneficial to me is a combined street, topographic, and property map. I printed a collage of these showing every house in the area around Lake Lariat at a scale convenient to paste on a foldable piece of cardboard, which I can carry wherever needed. The resultant map allows me to plan my bike rides in search of dog walkers and to track where I have found allies in my quest to improve our poop scooping score.

My foldable map also helped me to locate and size up a particular private property that is a prospect for limiting runoff into the lake through work that I hope to do as part of my Watershed Stewards Academy capstone project. After contacting the owner, I found out that the area where I hope to work is also part of an easement, which my street/topo/property map does not show. There may be other links or layers available that could have shown me this, but I suspect that there are still significant datasets that are not yet loaded into the county's GIS.

In planning this capstone project, another GIS, the Web Soil Survey, will be helpful in knowing how to treat the soil for all the plants we will be putting in, though soil tests will be performed to corroborate and refine that information.

Once the project is complete, we can apply yet another map-based tool, the Stormwater Management and Restoration Tracker (SMART), to claim credit for how much this project will help the watershed. Anybody can use SMART to claim credit for particular stormwater practices that have been installed on their property. In my case, that includes four rain barrels, a rain garden, and conservation landscaping. A good way for a watershed steward to get to know how in-tune people are to stormwater management is to do a local survey in order to populate SMART for those households. This would also be a way for organizations such as the Lake Lariat Preservation Committee to track and map work done in the lake watershed to improve water quality and reduce runoff and to reach out to constituents in order to raise issues related to lake preservation.

Recruiting a Coalition of the Willing

Every person I speak with about the need to clean up dog mess is a likely convert. That is, according to an EPA survey, 56% of dog walkers are likely not to be intransigent poop polluters. However, it may take the threat of fines, or at least awareness of the law, to bring all of the 56% around. In the two encounters I've had with my excursions around Lake Lariat this week, the responses were not supportive. I heard versions of, "I don't leave it where it would offend anyone" and, "Other people are worse offenders than me." This doesn't mean that these two fellows won't eventually come around.

Getting dog walkers equipped needs to be the first step in changing their habits. I'm going to request a grant for buying portable poop bag dispensers that people can carry on their dog leashes. These could be handed out to walkers, giving them one less excuse. Other than that, a plastic grocery bag would be helpful to hold full poop bags until they can find a trash receptacle. I've gotten into the practice of tying this outer bag onto the loop of the leash. It doesn't smell and if a breach were to occur, it would be clear of my clothing. Some poop bag dispensers come with a point of attachment for dangling filled bags. These serve the same purpose as tying it to the leash and would be a way to encourage new converts to show off their compliance.

Taking it to the Street

It dawned on me today that to get dog waste picked up around Lake Lariat, it just takes about 13 of me walking my dog with roughly equidistant spacing all around the lake critical area. The best way to evoke behavioral change is with living examples. If I can get full coverage by at least one regular dog-walker throughout the critical area, then the visible example of them picking up after their pets will spread to others in their neighborhoods until it becomes the norm.

No need to spend time preparing signs, announcements, or information booths. The way to directly deal with this is to find people in the act of walking their dogs in their various haunts around the lake and simply walk with them and tell them what I'm trying to accomplish, look for signs of conviction, and obtain commitment. I want to be prepared to offer ideas and tools, if needed, for helping them to make cleaning up after their dog a part of their daily walks.

It will probably take more than 12 others to get full coverage, since I usually walk my dog daily about 0.75 miles and others may not be so regular or wide-ranging, but my initial goal is one in each sector. It looks like I'm in for some walking adventures in the coming months, gaining adherents and monitoring progress.

The Goal: One Dozen Poop Conscious Dog Walkers (Photo by Michael Coghlan)

You Too Can Be A Poop Scooping Pro

My newspaper-lined poop pickup bag method is working fine, but I will admit that, though it works great on a pile of dog biscuits, a fresh specimen of the real McCoy will often deter the most enthusiastic of composters. A day of drying can bring the less manageable nuggets to a condition firm enough to retrieve. Sometimes, when walking Gretchen, I will take a temporary pass on her pungent product and find a firmer one left from another canine in the recent past. It is easy to find these replacements because there are some well known dog latrines on all of our frequent walking routes. In other cases, Gretchen locates them for me.

Leaving my dog's feces on public property, e.g. the right-of-way, is an illegal act punishable by a fine, according to the county animal control regulations, so I would not do this in the public eye. However, if I make a practice of always removing at least one neglected stool from the roadside, I feel like a good citizen. Fines for leaving dog crap lying around in public seem severe, but you could be fined even more (or imprisoned!) for allowing it to accumulate in your yard. I don't know whether these laws have ever been enforced here, but maybe they should.  According to Mr. Dog Poop, the problem warrants even stricter law enforcement.

In order to ensure that I am prepared for my dog walk sanitation responsibilities, I have a kit that should be standard issue for every dog owner. It is easy to assemble, but an enterprising business person could possibly get them out in retail stores, also. The centerpiece is a fanny pack. In it are all of the items that my cleanup method requires. After each walk, I replenish it with the consumable items such as newspaper or bags, as needed. It beats stuffing my pockets with this and that each time I take Gretchen out. With this kit, it's just a quick grab and go.

My dog poop clean up kit includes poop bags, torn newspaper pages, grocery bags, and hand cleaner. A small garden spade or toy plastic beach shovel is also recommended for the impossible grabs.