State of the Nation’s River
RIVER HEALTH INDICATOR
LAND
Everything that happens on the land surrounding the river affects what happens in the river itself. River-friendly land management is key to the future health of the Potomac River and its inhabitants. Forested areas promote the healthiest water quality in the region; destroying our forests weakens the land’s ability to protect the Potomac from pollution like nutrients, sediment, and pesticides.
Through a variety of local, state, and federal funding programs and partnerships, opportunities to implement land protection measures abound. While a significant portion of the land in the Potomac watershed is considered protected, reckless development is paving over our river friendly forests and rural areas. Man-made surfaces such as roads, housing, and parking lots are increasing, while forests and farms are disappearing. These man-made surfaces contribute to polluted runoff, when rain and snowmelt carry toxins, pet waste, trash, and other types of pollution into our local creeks and streams.
And, while urban-suburban land use improvements, river friendly development and redevelopment, and green infrastructure can help, these efforts alone cannot sufficiently address the larger threat of reckless sprawl and unchecked growth. In rural areas, rural land use improvements combined with long-term, comprehensive planning can help communities direct growth where existing infrastructure exists, thereby protecting critical natural and cultural resources from rural sprawl development. Ensuring the Potomac is buffered by protected lands will help maintain water quality throughout the region and support clean drinking water for the 5 million people who depend on the Potomac.
Our current land use patterns can impact our quality of life, too. Reckless sprawl in urban areas contributes to long commutes, poor air quality, less leisure time, and a host of other issues. As farms and forests are transitioned to suburban and urban areas, these challenges are spreading. Communities are increasingly finding linkages between development patterns and public health issues. This remains an area for further inquiry as the Potomac region continues adding population.
Urban-Suburban Land Use Improvements
Previous Grade: B-
The health of the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay rests on the ability of our counties, cities, and towns to responsibly protect local waters and embrace river friendly development. Stripped of most natural land cover, urban and suburban areas are a substantial source of polluted runoff to local rivers. Population growth, and the infrastructure required to support sprawling growth patterns, can increase water pollution as development replaces forests with parking lots, buildings, and roads.
Best management practices (BMPs) in these areas include planting trees, restoring streams, and installing green infrastructure. Progress in the implementation of BMPs in urban and suburban areas varies widely across the Potomac region. In 2015, DC (91 percent) was closest to meeting its 2025 federal BMP implementation goals while Maryland (18 percent) and Virginia (55 percent) have room for improvement.
The grade for urban and suburban land use reflects the states’ reported progress towards meeting the 2025 federal pollution reduction goals through BMP implementation. The combined average of Maryland, Virginia, and DC, is 54.4 percent (C+).
The Potomac received a “B-” for urban-suburban land use improvements in 2016.
Rural Land Use Improvements
Previous Grade: B
The agricultural sector remains the largest nutrient pollution source to the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay. Fortunately, the use of BMPs in rural areas and on farmlands is slowly reducing the amount of nutrient pollutants entering the Potomac, but more work is needed.
Rural BMPs include practices like nutrient management, planting trees and cover crops, and restoring streams. Cost-share funding for rural BMPs is extremely important; any change to cost-share programs could impact implementation rates. In addition, in Virginia and Maryland, expansions in the agricultural sector, particularly poultry production, could derail pollution reduction trends.
In 2015, Maryland (95 percent) and West Virginia (72 percent) made strides towards meeting their 2025 federal BMP implementation goals, while Virginia’s (56 percent) pace of implementation decreased slightly.
The grade for rural land use reflects the states’ progress (combined average of 74.5 percent (B+)) towards meeting the 2025 federal pollution reduction goals through BMP implementation.
The Potomac received a “B” for rural land use improvements in 2016.
Protected Lands
Previous Grade: A
Land conservation programs are important to protect habitat and water quality. Protecting land in its natural condition is a long-term investment in the health of the Potomac; land can be protected through conservation easements, development rights transfers, or the creation of parks or wildlife refuges. Land protection offers huge returns on investment, too; the Trust for Public Land found that for every dollar invested in land conservation, $4 are returned in natural goods and services.
The amount of protected land in the Potomac basin grew by 7 percent in 2016. Over 2 million acres of total land area are considered protected from development, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program Protected Lands Database.
The EPA established a Bay-wide land conservation goal of 20 percent of the total watershed. By scaling this goal to the Potomac watershed geographic area, the Potomac receives a score of 100 percent (A) for land protection, because 22 percent of the watershed is currently in protected status.
Overall, land protection efforts in the Potomac, from federal to local programs, are to be celebrated, but efforts must continue to ensure conservation lands support healthy habitats and water quality. In many cases, conservation easements or transferred development rights prevent urban or suburban development, but don’t require land owners to implement river-friendly rural land practices or BMPs. And, rural sprawl threatens to dismantle healthy forests areas into fragmented lots, at risk of disease and invasive species with diminished wildlife habitat value. This is why the implementation of BMPs on protected land is critical to maintaining its quality.
The Potomac received an “A” for protected lands in 2016.
Current Land Use
Previous Grade: C+
Communities across the Potomac region continue to welcome waves of new people and businesses. Population growth brings many positive changes to our region, including more jobs, higher home values, and a more robust local tax base. But, if poorly planned (or completely unplanned), this growth could destroy the health of our lands, waterways, and drinking water sources, and our quality of life. Increased development pressure can fuel destructive sprawl and lead to harmful land use practices.
Two metrics are typically used to asses land use in this report: current impervious surface area and projected development.* Impervious surfaces such as roads, parking lots, buildings, and lawn turf prevent polluted runoff from infiltrating into the ground, resulting in streambank erosion and excess sedimentation in local streams and rivers. Usually, watersheds with less impervious cover (under 10 percent of the total area) tend to experience better water quality than watersheds with higher percentages of impervious cover, though other factors can impact overall water quality.
Smart planning strategies foster river friendly growth and ensure responsible protection for forests, farmland, and waterways. We know our region is growing; projected development growth allows us to anticipate and plan for smart development strategies. Communities can avoid sprawl by planning for mixed use development and employing cost-effective nature-based solutions during and after construction.
The Potomac received a “C+” for current land use in 2016.
*The 2016 report card used data from the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to identify land cover types in the Potomac basin. At the time, 2011 data was the most recent data available. Historically, this data is updated once every five years and data for 2016 was not yet released at the time of publication. The Chesapeake Conservancy produced an updated land cover dataset for the Chesapeake Bay using 2015 high resolution satellite imagery, however, due to differences in methodology and land classification schemes, this data cannot be compared with the 2011 NLCD data. Therefore, it is not possible to determine land use trends between 2011 and 2015 using these two datasets.
Resources and Methodology
The Potomac is home to a diverse array of land use types, ranging from dense forests and suburban communities to urbanized cities and tidal wetlands. A variety of data sources assess the overall health of these areas.
As part of the regional Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan, jurisdictions and the EPA established pollution reduction goals to restore local rivers and the Bay back to full health. Embracing a quantitative approach, each state in the Bay region created Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) and set target goals to achieve significant pollution reductions by 2025. Each WIP outlines BMPs and other projects and programs the jurisdiction will undertake to meet pollution reductions. In addition, a midpoint assessment for the entire cleanup plan and CBP’s new Phase 6 model are both due for release in 2018. The midpoint assessment will offer insight into how the jurisdictions are meeting (or not meeting) their pollution reduction goals in various sectors. Based on the midpoint assessment, each jurisdiction will create new, Phase III WIPs, to outline action plans to meet goals between 2018 and 2025. WIP development is a complex process, with each jurisdiction evaluating past plans, current successes and failures, public comment, and EPA guidance. The Phase III WIP process is unfolding at the time of this report; strong, enforceable, and measurable Phase III WIPs will ensure Bay jurisdictions meet their 2025 goals.
The Urban-Suburban and Rural Land Use Improvements (also known as Best Management Practices, BMPs), are directly related to existing state WIPs. It’s important to note that the numbers for these BMPs represent entire statewide geographies and data include areas outside of the Potomac watershed. Potomac Conservancy includes BMPs relevant to ongoing programs in the Potomac watershed, such as urban stream restoration, urban tree planting, conservation plans, forest buffers, and rural stream restoration. These do not represent the entire catalogue of BMPs recognized by the CBP.
Not all BMPs are created equal; urban and rural BMPs vary by amount and type of pollutants reduced. While monitoring BMP implementation rates is a technique used in this report, future reports could include additional information on the type, quantity, and quality of BMPs used in the Potomac watershed.
The Chesapeake Bay Program, through a partnership with the Chesapeake Conservancy, is using one-meter resolution land cover data to find new ways of intentionally targeting restoration projects throughout the Bay watershed. While these new data provide exciting opportunities to enhance restoration strategies throughout the region, the data from different parts of the Potomac watershed are not comparable, due to changes in land cover classifications.
Data for the Land indicator are provided by the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program.
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