Outcome 4 Case Study
"Sustainable, healthy ecosystems with multiple community benefits."
In the early 1980s, government agencies and environmental activists became very concerned
about the pollutant levels in the Chesapeake Bay Basin. Because the pollution originated from non-point source
pollution as much as from large corporate or municipal polluters, clean up efforts became extremely complex involving
a broad base of people. Successful clean up required voluntary cooperation rather than simply stricter regulations.
Government agency representatives and activists had to convince multiple community stakeholders to adopt measures
to improve water quality in the bay and its feeder rivers.
Bernie Fowler, a Maryland state senator from Broomes Island, became involved in encouraging people to help prevent
erosion. He spoke frequently about the environmental health of the Patuxent River, which ran past Broomes Island
into the Bay. He wanted to teach people in the area the importance of adopting erosion control measures at home
and to convince them to urge their municipalities to spend resources on better rainwater runoff collection and
sewage treatment facilities.
Initially, he found it difficult to illustrate the reality and severity of the problem to citizens. When speaking
about the issue he tried to illustrate the deteriorating state of the river by recalling his experience as a young
man in the 1940s. "Why, I can remember being able to walk out into the bay until I was up to my chest in water
and still see my feet," he would say. Older folks in Broomes Island confirmed his recollections as they sat
around the coffee shop with Senator Fowler talking about community issues and history.
Tom Wisner, a sixth-grade science teacher at the St. Mary's County Elementary School, first suggested a real live
tennis shoe test to Senator Fowler. "That story you tell about wading into the water is such a good story.
It really resonates with people. Why don't you do it again? Why don't you wade into the water now until your feet
disappear? It would be a great way to illustrate how polluted the river has gotten. If you did it yearly, you could
show how much progress is being made in cleaning up the river."
On the second Sunday in June 1988, Wisner and his colleague Betty Brady joined Senator Fowler in putting on white
tennis shoes and wading into the Patuxent River. They invited the media and local activists, but school children
composed most of the audience. That year their shoes disappeared into the muck when the water was about 10 inches
deep. When the event made the local paper more townspeople began to reflect on the critical state of the river.
The occasion sparked an opportunity to share local memories of the river and to talk about the state of the Chesapeake
Bay Watershed in terms much more meaningful to the local community than toxicity or particulate matter readings.
Since then, every year on the second Sunday in June, with great pomp and ceremony, now former-Senator Fowler laces
up his white tennis shoes and wades in to the Patuxent River. He invites local activists, the media, and others
to bring their picnic baskets and to join in a barbecue. While he could only see his shoes through eight inches
of river water in 1989, in 1990 he waded into water 16 inches deep before the white tennis shoes disappeared. Most
years Senator Fowler has made it farther into the bay, although some years excessive rainfall or storm events have
obscured progress. The test is done as accurately and honestly as possible. The progress is, in fact, incremental.
As Senator Fowler puts it, "it took us 50 years to make the river so murky, so it will take time to clean
it up again." The annual "wade-in" is a big event, an event now promoted by the Maryland State Office
of Planning. Even today, the indicator resonates with people throughout the bay area. By 1998, three other communities
in the Chesapeake Bay Basin were holding their own wade-ins.
Senator Fowler and friends have chosen an indicator that is locally meaningful. Most people in the Chesapeake Bay
Basin watershed could find an older family member or friend who would confirm that the water was less murky in
the past. It took Fowler and other activists to help people in the area to make the connection between the turbidity
of the rivers and the sewage, dumping, erosion and runoff. Because this is an indicator that is responsive, in
most years, to local action over a year's time, Fowler could relate the increasing visibility to actions taken
to clean up the Patuxent River (and the bay more generally).
Agency representatives and scientists still come to do the more sophisticated ecological assessments of the bay.
Those assessments take much longer to carry out and are more difficult for lay people to comprehend. Yet the scientific
measurements are important for describing the ecological health of the bay to the scientific community. One level
of monitoring does not preclude the other. Some indicators of a sustainable, healthy ecosystem should meet the
standards of the scientific community of scholars, their expertise is essential to planning and understanding.
However, we also need to develop indicators that will help to encourage public participation.
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