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As recently as 2005, Maryland fisheries biologists declared Mattawoman to be “the best, most productive tributary to the [Chesapeake] Bay.” [3]  But by 2010, these scientists discovered that the fish community in the estuary were seriously declining. They concluded that “Planned levels of development in Mattawoman Creek’s watershed…should be reconsidered in light of the extent of declines detected in the fish community.” [4] 

In 2012, a major Task Force of federal, state, and academic experts concluded that:

“The future of the Mattawoman Watershed is at a turning point. As presently planned, the Development District will irreversibly alter the ability of Charles County citizens and tourists to have access to clean water, high quality fisheries, and a great outdoor experience, unless specific steps are taken to bring regulation and land-use policies in line with the stated county vision of protecting the Mattawoman.”[5]

Because Mattawoman’s outstanding values are faltering as its forests fall to sprawl development, it epitomizes the issues that connect land use to water quality.  You could say that charismatic Mattawoman Creek is the poster child for the fastest growing pollution sector in the Chesapeake Bay, namely stormwater runoff from an increasingly urbanized landscape. [6]

Land-use controls whether our streams run clean or dirty. Some of the reasons are illustrated by the contrast between Figures 1 and 2.  Figure 1 shows why forest is the best land use for protecting water quality. As we like to say, “fish love forests.”  Figure 2 shows why urbanization is the worst land-use for healthy waters because it disrupts the beneficial functions of forest. 


Fig. 1 (click image for larger view)

A forest meters, cools, filters, and purifies stormwater, making it the best land use for protecting water quality.  Forests also purify the air, reduce local temperatures, sequester carbon dioxide (a global warming gas), and provide habitat for plants and animals.

Forests are also scenic, and provide habitat for wildlife and recreational opportunities for people.

Fig. 2 (click image for larger view)

Urbanization disrupts many forest functions.  In particular, surfaces impervious to rainwater like roofs, roads, and parking lots increase the overall volume of stormwater running into streams. What’s more, impervious surface heats the stormwater, adds pollutants, and channels the stormwater in erosive flows into streams. Erosion creates sediment suffocating to living resources.  Because rainwater isn’t sponged into the soil, the water table diminishes, and streams tend to dry up between storms.

Mattawoman’s problems trace in large part to 1990, when a new wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was opened at the base of its watershed.   The plant opened the watershed to development because sewage flows downhill. The plant represents a great irony of the Clean Water Act, which promoted federal funds for the project (state and county monies were also involved) to replace ineffectual sewage settling ponds further upstream. While the damage from growth inducing impacts of the plant were recognized in a 1990 Memorandum of Understanding between federal, state, and county agencies, the intent to of the MOU to protect Mattawoman has been summarily ignored.

Because land use is determined by local county governments, it was not difficult for powerful financial interests to influence the planning process and instigate the huge “development district” in the 1990 Comprehensive Plan.  The “comp plan” is the legal blueprint for directing how and where growth occurs.  It has widespread ramifications on all aspects of quality of life, including traffic congestion, school crowding, tax rates, recreational opportunities, and air and water quality. The Charles County comp plan can also influence future regional growth, as it was devised as part of scheme to bring the outer beltway around Washington across a bridge at Chicamuxen, just south of Mattawoman’s mouth with the Potomac River.

Ever since the 1990 comp plan, Mattawoman has been suffering as forests are converted to subdivisions and other development. The degradation reached a crises level in the mid 2000’s when the number of fish species and the fish abundance began plummeting in the estuary. [4]

Many of the issues facing Mattawoman and discussed under our issues tab are symptoms of a Comprehensive Plan poorly conceived to protect one the Chesapeake Bay’s finest tributaries. Fortunately, Maryland requires counties to update their land-use plan every six years.  The 2012 update was investigated throughout 2011 in a process that extensively queried the public for their preference among several land-use scenarios. The result was a compromise plan that, while less protective than the most popular scenario--Scenario 1--nonetheless contained a number of smart-growth elements, including protection of the remaining Mattawoman stream valley, elimination of the development district in favor of more concentrated growth in the urban core, and rightsizing the town of Bryans Road, which located in an especially sensitive region of Mattawoman’s watershed. [7, 8]

Unfortunately, in 2012, the body responsible for revising the plan, an appointed Planning Commission, has chosen by a slim majority to ignore the compromise scenario and to reject new studies. Instead, four members of the commission have chosen to embrace a plan based on the "BGI Tiers Map" put forward by a group called BGI, which is led by land speculators and developers.  As a result, as of spring 2013, a Comprehensive Plan is being proposed that is even worse than the 1990, 1997, and 2006 plans that are causing Mattawoman’s health to decline.

Please learn more about the connections between land use and water quality, living resources, recreational opportunities, and the quality of life. Then speak out to our elected officials, which in Charles County are the County Commissioners, in favor of protecting our aquatic resources. 

 

References

[1] Check out this web site for extensive information linking the health of fish communities to land use: http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/fhep/index.asp

[2] Fact Sheet: land conservation=fish conservation

[3]  What could happen to tidal fish habitat and fisheries in Mattawoman? Lessons learned in Severn River and other developed Bay tributaries, Uphoff, J., Powerpoint presentation to Charles County Commissioners, June 20, 2005. 

[4] 2009 Fisheries and Habitat Interactions Project: Development of Habitat-basedReference Points for Chesapeake Bay Fishes of Special Concern: Impervious Surface as a Test Case, J. Uphoff, M. McGinty, R. Lukacovic, J. Mowrer, B. Pyle, and M. Topolski., Federal aid report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Fisheries Service, DNR report F-61-R-5 (2010).

[5] The Case for Protection of the Watershed Resources of Mattawoman Creek:  Recommendations and Management Initiatives to Protect the Mattawoman Ecosystem, The Interagency Mattawoman Ecosystem Management Task Force. Prepared for: Charles County Department of Planning and Growth Management to support the County Comprehensive Plan update. December 2011. Final report March 2012.

http://dnr2.maryland.gov/fisheries/Documents/Mattawoman_Ecosystem_Final_Report_March_2012.pdf

[6] The intergovernmental Chesapeake Bay Program finds: “To date, it is estimated that the pollution increases associated with land development (e.g converting farms and forests to urban/suburban developments) have surpassed the gains achieved from improved landscape design and stormwater management practices…The rapid rate of population growth and related residential and commercial development has made this pollution sector the only one in the Bay watershed to still be growing, and thus “progress” is negative.” www.chesapeakebay.net/documents/cbp_15548.pdf

[7] Mattawoman Creek Watershed Management Plan, Appendix B, Subwatershed 781, Army Corps of Engineers (2003).

[8] Bryans Road is located in a Stronghold Watershed. Stronghold watersheds are those “most important for the protection of Maryland’s aquatic biodiversity,” according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. See http://www.streamhealth.maryland.gov/stronghold.asp.