Traffic Snarls

Image by Torley

Annapolis politicians are squaring off over billions of dollars worth of potential gridlock remedies. A new coalition called Fix270NOW came out a few months ago advocating that Maryland pour huge sums into expanding I-270, the main route between Washington, D.C. and Frederick, Maryland. Another group, the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition (MTOC), formed, it appears, in response to Fix270NOW's efforts, is in favor of building new transit lines instead of widening existing roads.

The contest for political backing will take place over several months, well into 2017 as the Maryland Department of Transportation takes their road show to all the counties to talk about the proposed Consolidated Transportation Plan for the upcoming 6 years. The CTP tour schedule shows it reaching Calvert County on October 18th. The CTP includes the BaltimoreLink bus system rather than the Red Line rail system that MTOC is advocating.

All of these ideas are far too ambitious for these times. Not only that, plans that rely heavily on fossil fueled modes of transportation are doomed. Of the three proposals, I agree with MTOC's the most, since it is very much public transit oriented, meaning more energy efficient. Part of MTOC's proposed build out includes a Southern Maryland Rapid Transit line from the DC Metro to Waldorf. It doesn't come close to reaching the part of Southern Maryland where I live, but does address a major traffic bottleneck.

Off Broadway

As a plebe (freshman) at Annapolis, I loved the several opportunities to escape the confines of our pressure cooker environment by taking group trips to watch Broadway plays at the Kennedy Center and the Arena Stage. The half-price tickets were just cheap enough to make it affordable for me, but now, decades later, and living, once again, close to Washington, D.C., I am not able to afford such venues. Back in the '70's, I realized that I was living the dream and that life after the Academy wouldn't afford the same privileges. Being priced out of today's Broadway shows is, therefore, no great surprise.

Photo by Flipsy

Any latent disappointment over the loss of those glory days was erased Saturday night when my wife and I took in our first play performed at the New Direction Community Theater. Lacking only the grandeur and amenities of metropolitan playhouses, but not the acting quality or set realism, this community theater brought me as much of an escape from my work-a-day existence as those that draw audiences by the hundreds. It also costs less than I paid 40 years ago to watch professional acting.

I like the name "New Direction," because it implies to me the change in lifestyle we will all soon experience to some degree, i.e. valuing local community activity more than cosmopolitan pretense. Another difference is that, as part of a small audience, you become a bigger factor in the play's success by your attentiveness, reactions, and applause than when there is a larger audience to carry things along. You also are more likely to get to know the performers and crew, especially if you attend frequently. You will certainly get a seat closer to the action.

Growing Pains

At one of our county's workshops for updating the comprehensive plan, a survey of the audience indicated that growth was perceived as the greatest challenge facing the county. Most, if not all, of those who gave this answer were implying that we should be making extra effort to ensure that the county grows economically. My own view is that economic growth is not in the cards, as our nation is already stagnating and the fuel for its growth (cheap oil) is past peak production. There are other ways in which growth is possible, but if the majority insist on government banging their heads against the glass wall of making America great again, efforts to collectively grow in more sublime ways will be foregone

. 

I was prepared to read a speech detailing my vision for the county's future up to 2040, but it turned out that the workshop was not structured as an open forum. Nonetheless, I emailed a link to the transcript, which follows, to the planning department for consideration.

By sometime in the next decade,
Neither the population or the county government grow. Emphasis has shifted from building a strong local economy to building a resilient one.
The ambitious economic benchmarks in the earlier plan are laid aside in order to accommodate the new realities of zero growth and to recover from the geopolitical and economic trauma of recent decades.
Federal government employment remains strong, but most Federal employees in our county telework more often than they commute.
We selectively abandon maintenance of roads, as ownership and ridership in motorized vehicles dwindles in the post-fossil fuel age. For long distance travel, we begin to use waterborne transport and a railroad built over one side of route 4, with the other side a two-way road for small vehicles and light trucks.
The Cove Point gas plant gets converted into a farm of climate-controlled, giant greenhouses fashioned out of the frames that once supported the dozen or so huge tanks that never found a use as the natural gas fracking boom quickly petered out. The biomass output of these greenhouses dwarfs anything that could be produced from conventional farming and serves as raw material for several indigenous industries, as well as for food. The nutrients for the rapidly growing crops in these greenhouses comes from thermogenic composting of treated sewage at a facility co-located with the Appeal wastewater treatment plant.
From the inception of this updated plan, our efforts turn to transitioning to a prolonged period marked by simpler living. Consumerism is out. Working in step with nature is in. Our most popular pastime shifts from going shopping to staying home making. Entrepreneurs organize ten-acre farms instead of cell phone game companies. Able-bodied citizens engage in physical labor instead of watching television. Local government and developers replace our expanding suburban wastelands with compact, walkable towns. We conduct more plays, concerts, sing-alongs, and puppet shows and put aside national television extravaganzas and world-wide web entertainment. We learn to make things of quality by hand instead of buying car loads of stamped out plastic widgets guaranteed to fall apart by next week.
Environmental restoration, including greenhouse gas reduction, becomes everyone's concern.
We realize that holding back the rising ocean is infeasible. We become proactive in moving away from coastal development in areas at risk from inundation or erosion by the bay and tidal waters. Investment is channeled, instead, to upland areas, while low lying waterfront properties grow flood-mitigating living shorelines that will gradually migrate inland, keeping pace with the rising tides.
Calvert County's landscape is characterized by forests, fields, farms and villages, surrounded by a healthier river and bay.  Habitat destruction by new land development is stymied by government-imposed barriers and enforcement of laws and regulations allowing no net loss of forests.
Cottage industries emerge to serve local needs in ways that are ecologically compatible. Many of these are in the realm of agroforestry, meaning forest garden ecosystems sustainably supply a large portion of all of our products. In addition,

* Agriculture has been transformed from its former industrial mode, though some of the new forest gardens approach farm scale as they grow
* Flowers bloom all over the place
* Fruits and nuts swell on trees everywhere and other foods grow along your path - you even know all their names and how to use them
* Citizens are educated and active stewards of the land and surrounding waters
* Fishing is better
* Previously isolated forest fragments are linked to each other
* Our habitations and surroundings are starting to look, feel, and function more naturally, enabling us to feel healthier, more alive, and more connected than we had for generations

Holding onto the elusive dream of continuous growth hurts our future environment because decision makers give a back seat to changes that don't have the imprimatur of progress. It is difficult for them to accept that diminishing returns are beginning to fall short of increasing costs to upgrade or build traditional infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants or dams, especially if one factors in the historical costs of failure under stress. By holding onto these flawed architectures, they only close off opportunities for better, albeit less sophisticated, solutions such as humanure composting and wild rivers. Such regressive measures are considered defeatist and are rejected out of hand, even if that leads to ruining the environment and the economy.

The spike in sewage overflows caused by Superstorm Sandy may have to be experienced again in Hurricane Matthew, and more storms before someone with enough common sense makes a decision to avoid such spills in the future by recycling this valuable waste without dumping treatment chemicals into our bays and rivers.

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.