Severn River Association

We just don’t stop! Last evening our Restoration Manager attended a #park #equity project meeting held by City of Annapolis, MD and EcoCollab. Thank you Eric Leshinsky for including us in this process as an advocate for a cleaner and healthier College Creek. Kudos to St Anne’s Cemetery for continuing to work with the City to find ways to benefit everyone in the community.

The Severn River Action Plan is here! https://lnkd.in/eMJSvWza The Severn River Action Plan is a long-term planning strategy for the Severn River #watershed to better understand and track the status of subwatersheds and project implementation along the river. Additionally, this strategy builds #capacity in the Severn River watershed to implement future on-the-ground water quality and habitat #restoration activities. This plan will replace the last two #planning documents developed for the Severn: The 2002 Severn River Watershed Management Master Plan Current Conditions Report and the 2006 Final Report completed for Anne Arundel County (AACO). While these plans outline problems on a broad scale, they lack specificity on the best locations for installing #restoration practices, as well as benefits, costs, and a path forward to implementation. Due to the large size of the river, the Severn River Action Plan set out to rank each subwatershed in terms of restoration need, and provided a detailed plan for the top priority: Weems Creek. The long-term strategy is to update or develop action plans for each subwatershed in order of their prioritization rank while concurrently designing, permitting, and constructing the projects identified in these plans. Each subwatershed action plan may take five to ten years to implement most of the projects, assuming that sufficient and timely funding is secured. Factors that may impact the timing include delays in #funding, #permitting, and/or negotiations with #landowners to implement these projects on their #property.  Ultimately, implementing the projects identified is the key to realizing a thriving Severn River with improved water quality and resiliency.  Now our Severn River Action Plan is complete. The next steps are to develop additional subwatershed action plans, in order of priority, and to design, permit, and build the restoration projects that are identified in each subwatershed action plan. Thank you to Center for Watershed Protection for technical assistance, to our Steering Committee which included Anne Arundel County Department of Public Works Bureau of Watershed Restoration and Protection, City of Annapolis, MD, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Department of the Environment, Resilience Authority of Anne Arundel County and City of Annapolis, Severn Riverkeeper, SPA CREEK CONSERVANCY, and Anne Arundel Watershed Stewards Academy. We also thank National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for funding this project! #ConnectRestoreProtect #WatershedRestoration #WaterQuality #SevernRiverActionPlan #watershedplanning #restorationplanning #stormwatermanagement #watershedassessment #urbanenvironment #resiliency Erik Michelsen Sally Albright Katherine Mullen Betsey McKeown Jacqueline Guild, Alexandria Wilkins Lisa Fraley-McNeal Amanda Pollack, PE Chris Swann Claudia H. Donegan Jesse Iliff Jeffrey Popp, CBLP Noelle Chao Suzanne Etgen Jasmine Wilding P.E.

Just some recent photos. No soapbox for now. Enjoy. #ConnectRestoreProtect #WatershedRestoration #oysterrestoration #waterqualitymonitoring #GeorgetownEastConstruction #GiantBayRidgeRdAnnapolis #LakeMarion #ProvidenceCoveDesign #SevernRiverActionPlan #BMPdesign #BMPconstruction #LivingShorelines #Oysters #RestorationPlanning #StormwaterManagement Chesapeake Bay Trust Chesapeake Bay Program National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Maryland Department of Natural Resources Maryland Department of the Environment US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) BayLand Consultants & Designers, Inc. Environmental Quality Resources, LLC Center for Watershed Protection Hanover Land Services, Inc.

On Wednesday our Restoration Manager Ben Fertig attended fantastic presentations and panel discussions at the Restore America's Estuaries Summit. It was a great opportunity to catch up with #scientists, #funders, #contractors, #vendors, #students and talk and learn about #nutrientandsediment load reductions from #septic and #sewer upgrades, progress towards #TMDL and #MS4 requirements, and to brainstorm new ideas for projects!

On Tuesday morning we held a pre-#construction meeting for our project in the Georgetown East #townhouse #community in Annapolis, MD to create three bioretention cells to reduce #flooding and #runoff #pollution associated with #stormwater. Construction will start in earnest in March 2025 so that we don’t need to stabilize it during the winter when there will be little growth of ground cover vegetation. We are looking forward to a community volunteer planting event in May once construction is complete! Thank you again to our design engineer BayLand Consultants & Designers, Inc. , our construction contractor Environmental Quality Resources, LLC, our funders Chesapeake Bay Trust and Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the City of Annapolis, MD and of course our community liaisons Jon Chapman, Robin Schmidt and Jenny Smeltzer! #GeorgetownEast #AnnapolisMD #stormwatermanagement #environmentalrestoration

This Monday the Oyster Recovery Partnership delivered the second of two rounds of #oysters for SRA’s Marylanders Grow Oysters #oysterrestoration program, the largest of its kind in the state, with over 300 households participating throughout the Severn River. Thank you again to ORP and Maryland Department of Natural Resources, our Creek Captain #volunteers, all our growers, and to Ted Delaplaine, Donna Corddry, Dan Bornstein, Amanda Atwell, and Billy Moulden for your help offloading and hauling oyster bags! #restoration #filterfeeders #shorelines #oysters #oysterrestoration #communityengagement #waterquality #waterfront #teamworkmakesthedreamwork #MarylandersGrowOysters #OysterRestoration #SevernRiver #CleanWater #OysterReef #CommunityAction #CreekCaptains #OysterRecovery #HealthyEcosystems #NitrogenRemoval #EnvironmentalRestoration #ThankYou H. Ward Slacum

#Oysters are here!! (At least the first of two delivery days.) #ThankYou to Oyster Recovery Partnership, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and all our Creek Captains and to Ted Delaplaine and Reuben Loewen and to ALL our oyster growers! Our next set of deliveries is scheduled for Oct 7. Today starts Severn River Association’s Maryland Grow Oysters program, where individuals grow oysters for nine months at their docks and piers and then bring them to our #oysterrestoration reef in the Severn River! SRA has the largest MGO program in Maryland, with over 300 households participating, which puts about half a million oysters in the water for restoration every year. Oysters are amazing filter feeders that eat algae and ultimately remove huge quantities of nitrogen #pollution from the water. The more the better! #oysters #oysterrestoration #communityengagement #waterquality #waterfront #teamworkmakesthedreamwork #MarylandersGrowOysters #OysterRestoration #SevernRiver #CleanWater #OysterReef #CommunityAction #CreekCaptains #OysterRecovery #HealthyEcosystems #FilterFeeders #NitrogenRemoval #WaterQuality #EnvironmentalRestoration #ThankYou H. Ward Slacum

This National #EstuaryWeek SRA wants to recognize all the people that make our #restoration program possible - everyone including #donors, #grantfunders, #contractors, #partners, #collaborators, #volunteers, #students, #boardmembers, #communities, and yes, our #staff! SRA is people-powered and people-centric. Day in and day out, we never forget our #corevalues: 1) community-centered, 2) data-driven, 3) collaborative, and 4) passionate. And you can't have any of those without people. So today, in honor of our beloved Severn River Estuary, we celebrate YOU. #EnvironmentalStewardship #EnvironmentalAwareness #EnviromentalEducation #CommunityEngagement #Sustainability #EcologicalResilience #WatershedRestoration #EnvironmentalRestoration

Today for National #EstuaryWeek, we want to highlight two of our Phragmites removal projects and thank all our awesome #volunteers that make these possible! Both the Arlington Echo/Bear Branch project and the Linstead project have been big successes and majorly volunteer/community driven! At Bear Branch, removal of the #invasivespecies Phragmites monoculture has resulted in a diverse community of over 50 #wetland species, including wild rice! A big #thankyou to Lynne and Craig Rockenbauch, Bob vom Saal, Dennis Whigham, Joyce Rosencranz, Stevie Wilding, Andie Youngk, Duane Wilding, Tanya Marushak, Jamil Mott, and more! At Linstead, big #kudos to Mike Hilliard, Erin Velasco, Eric Toumayan, Carolyn Burchfield, Carolyn Samuel Taylor, Joanna Goger, and everyone for leading the charge to get three sections of shoreline tarped this summer, thanks to a Community Engagement and Restoration Mini-Grant from Chesapeake Bay Trust. Phragmites spreads rapidly, outcompeting native plants, reducing #biodiversity, and altering #water flow. Its dense growth not only provides extremely minimal #habitat for #wildlife but can also increase #firerisk due to the accumulation of dry, dead stems. SRA is committed to #environmentalrestoration of the Severn River's wetlands. Where and when realistic and there is commitment to long-term #maintenance (just like any other landscaping project), we remove this invasive species and replace it with native vegetation that promotes ecosystem balance. We use a novel tarping method that gardeners will recognize as "solarization". The method was developed by Dennis Whigham at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Essentially, plant material above ground is cut down and then an agricultural black tarp is installed on top of the dense mat of rhizomes (roots that grow sideways, more or less) for at least two years. This deprives the Phragmites of vital sunlight and it essentially starves since it cannot photosynthesize. #Nativespecies emerge from the natural seed bank and are augmented by plantings. Ultimately, this effort will improve #waterquality, support #nativewildlife, and enhance the #resilience of these vital areas. Thank you to our dedicated partners, volunteers, and the local community for supporting this crucial work. Together, we can continue to protect and preserve the natural beauty and function of our wetlands. #EcosystemRestoration #WetlandConservation #InvasiveSpecies #CommunityAction #PhragmitesRemoval #Biodiversity #nativeplants Photo credits: Dennis Whigham, Lynne Rockenbaugh, and Ben Fertig.

Happy National Estuaries Week! Doubly exciting for SRA because the Severn River is an estuary nested in an estuary (the Chesapeake Bay)! Estuaries are the lifeblood of coastal #ecosystems, where fresh and saltwater meet, creating some of the most biologically productive environments on Earth. These vibrant areas provide critical habitat for #fish, #birds, and #wildlife, protect #shorelines from #storms, and filter pollutants, all while supporting local economies through #fisheries and #recreation. As we celebrate National Estuaries Week, I’m so excited by the #environmentalrestoration work that’s happening around the Severn River, including #livingshorelines, #oysterrestoration, and #communitypartnerships aimed at improving #waterquality and fostering #climateresilience. We all play a role in protecting these vital ecosystems—whether through hands-on restoration, policy advocacy, or community education. Let’s continue to champion estuaries and ensure they remain healthy and thriving for future generations. How are you contributing to estuary health? Share your stories! #NationalEstuariesWeek #CoastalResilience #ChesapeakeBay #Restoration #EnvironmentalStewardship #CommunityEngagement