ANTIETAM CURRENTS

"TEAM MUD BUSTERS"

Anyone driving past a construction site can easily see bare soil piled up in huge mounds. All too often the developers responsible for this mistreatment of the earth do not bother to seed these areas, leaving the soil to blow away in the wind or erode from rain and melting ice and snow. This sediment-filled rain water from construction sites is damaging local waterways such as the Antietam and Conococheague Creeks.

Construction disrupts the natural features of the landscape, too often leaving soil unprotected from rainfall and melting ice and show. As a result, muddy, polluted water gushes across cleared land and into the water table, water which we all drink, and into local streams, creeks, and rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay. The runoff itself, and the pollution it carries from development sites, kills aquatic life, transports chemical pollutants, blocks sunlight essential to fish habitat, and muddies our drinking water supplies. Each element, singly or as a whole, contributes to damaging the Antietam Creek, the Conococheague Creek, as well as every other body of water involved.

When forest covered the watershed, the thick, woodland soils caught rainwater, filtered it and released it slowly into the nearby streams and rivers. The soil was also caught in the grass and root systems and did not erode into the waterways. Forest no longer covers the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. That wooded watershed, once called the “great green filter,” is far smaller today than just a few years ago. There is a daily battle to preserve any or all of it right here in Franklin County.

Construction of homes, roads, shopping malls, industrial parks, concrete walkways, and parking lots produces hard surfaces where water runs off rapidly, too often with nothing to catch this rush of dirty water as it gushes into the nearest wetlands, streams or rivers.

Citizens concerned about damage being inflicted on our waterways have several options to provide help, and these will take only a few minutes of your time.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) has established a Team Mud Busters Program to encourage citizens to monitor neighborhood construction sites and photograph pollution and erosion problems they see. Keep an eye on construction sites. Take photographs of the muddy runoff and where controls are nonexistent or appear to be failing to keep muddy runoff out of storm drains, off roadways and out of streams.

The AWA Board of Directors has endorsed local participation in the CBF Team Mud Busters Program, and the AWA is offering to be a conduit to responsible local agencies. You are invited to contact the AWA at 717-762-9417; E-mail address at info@antietamws.org. You could also contact an elected official in your borough, township, or municipality; send photographs to the address listed above and to the CBF at www.cbf.org and click on Team Mud Busters; call CBF, Mr. Bruce Gilmore, 410-558-2346/410-268-8816.

CBF will report significant violations to the proper authorities and will focus attention on areas where regulations are inadequate or where better enforcement is needed.

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed extends all the way from Cooperstown, New York, to Norfolk, Virginia, and includes Franklin County. How people develop this watershed has everything to do with the health of water tables that provide our drinking water, with the health of local streams, rivers, and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay. We have one planet on which to live, and we must protect this planet. It is simply the right thing for each of us to do. Each of us is responsible for our corner of the earth and its environment.

The Antietam Watershed Association will next meet on January 17, 2007, at 7 p.m. in the Washington Township Meeting Room on Welty Road. For more information call 717-762-9417 or visit our website at www.antietamws.org. Our New Brochure “Who Protects the Antietam Creek? You Can Help” is now available.