Four streams picked for Stream Team clean up

Of the nine potential streams in the city, these four were chosen based on locality to the most volunteers so they could work on a project close to home.

Senior City Planner Elizabeth Chaisson said at least three to five people will be needed to clean each segment of the stream, with approximately 25 to 30 needed for the entire stretch of Millstream Branch.

Several residents in attendance at a volunteers meeting last month represented local Boy Scout or Girl Scout troops looking for service projects for their scouts.

Diane Traweek, leader of Girl Scout troop 992, was chosen as the leader of the Millstream Branch clean up team and said she would be bringing a group of at least 25 people to volunteer for the project.

‘‘I was going to do a Patuxent River clean up but then this local opportunity presented itself,” Traweek said.

At least three of the streams chosen are tributaries of the Patuxent River said Patuxent Riverkeeper Fred Tutman. All streams in the county are ‘‘in the red zone” Tutman said, describing the poor rating streams have received from the county’s Department of the Environment.

‘‘The streams are degraded for their water quality and the bank conditions are eroded,” Tutman said. ‘‘These are all human habitation things we have control over... Sometimes people treat streams like sewers.”

Survey maps from Chaisson outline items of concern in the selected streams, including pipes discharging foul smelling and discolored water, truckloads of yard waste and several waterway blockages. During the April clean up, volunteers will be asked to document any additional environmental concerns they find in the streams.

Tutman said the Riverkeeper Commission’s own group of stream cleaners, the Roughnecks, are planning a fish blockage removal in Green Branch. Beneath a bridge passing over the stream is a high concrete ledge that prevents fish from spawning upstream. Later this year, Tutman said the Roughnecks and Army Corps of Engineers plan to cut out the blockage, allowing for fish passage.

‘‘What the city is doing is laudable,” Tutman said. ‘‘Damaged streams and disrupted ecologies are kind of out of sight, out of mind.”

E-mail Andrea Noble at anoble@gazette.net.