2. RECOGNITION OF 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE 1984 RESERVOIR WATERSHED MANAGEMENT AGREEMENT

The region’s cooperative Reservoir Watershed Management Program had its roots in a less-inclusive agreement that was signed in the late 1970s. The program took its present form in June 1984, when the six major local governments in the Baltimore region, the predecessor of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, and two State agencies (MDA and MDE) signed a new, more ambitious pact at Loch Raven Reservoir. The program has been in operation ever since, with funding for BMC’s role as convener and program coordinator coming from an annual assessment of the six local jurisdictions. We believe that this was the first intra-state voluntary pact in Maryland that was intended to coordinate the actions of several local governments and several key State agencies in a major, shared watershed (in this case, two watersheds). Brief remarks.

The current Reservoir Watershed Management Agreement was signed in November 2005 (again at Loch Raven). The new Agreement was accompanied by a new Action Strategy for the Reservoir Watersheds, which extended many "commitments" from prior years, but also contained several dozen new commitments.

The Agreement requires the Reservoir Technical Group (RTG) and the Reservoir Watershed Protection Committee (WPC) to prepare biennial progress reports that summarize trends and recent changes in reservoir water quality, discuss emerging water quality issues of concern, and describe progress made in carrying out the "commitments" contained in the Action Strategy.

Starting in the spring of 2008, the members of the RTG began to gather data and detailed narrative information pertaining to all of the commitments contained in the 2005 Action Strategy. The intent was to describe what specific actions had been taken since early 2006 by any of the program participants to fulfill the individual commitments. Working cooperatively, the RTG members went through a number of revisions, culminating in the March 2009 final draft version of the 2006-2007 Biennial Progress Report.

The draft report was distributed to RTG members in late March 2009 and was mailed to the WPC members on May 12th. The 2005 Agreement requires that all major reports developed by the RTG must be submitted to the WPC and to the BMC Management Committee for their review prior to public distribution.

On June 2nd, the draft 2006-07 Biennial Progress Report will be reviewed by the RTG and the WPC. The WPC will be asked to vote to approve the March 2009 draft version for publication as the final version, and to authorize its distribution to local agencies, the concerned public, and the news media.

Mr. William Stack of the Baltimore City Department of Public Works has been involved with the current Reservoir Program since its inception in 1984. Drawing upon the City’s own water-quality data and a current draft report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) evaluating those data sets, he plans to discuss the following topics:

For many years, Mr. Donald Outen of the Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management has been studying past and recent trends in Baltimore County zoning, land use/development, and land cover, with special emphasis on the reservoir watersheds. He briefly will present the major land-use trends that have occurred in the watersheds since the 1950s.

His remarks will explain the County’s early (1960s) county-wide land-use policies that were intended to confine new urban growth to certain prescribed areas. The resulting restrictions on urban/suburban development in Baltimore County’s portions of the reservoir watersheds have served and continue to serve to protect the reservoirs from undesirable nonpoint source pollution loadings.