On a crisp autumn day almost exactly two years ago, we drove down the long, oyster shell driveway that leads to Avalon Farm. Flanked on either side by fields of wheat-colored grass, Jack Greer and I made our way down the gravel road toward an old farmhouse perched on the shore of Kent Narrows.

Michael Pelczar greeted us at the kitchen door, holding it open to usher two Chesapeake Bay retrievers out before welcoming us in. We entered a warm, cheery kitchen and sat down with a cup of coffee.

For Jack, it was a reunion. He’d known Michael for years, but hadn’t seen him for a while. For me, it was an introduction –– a chance to talk with a man so central to the history of Maryland Sea Grant, the University of Maryland, and to the discipline of microbiology (“Microbes to Mute Swans”).

As we talked, I glimpsed a unique lens on the passage of time. Here was a formidable scientist and passionate steward of the Chesapeake Bay who’d watched his beloved estuary change from the same vantage point on Avalon Farm over the course of more than 40 years.

He knew right from the start that it would take the expertise of various disciplines working together to promote conservation and restoration of the Bay. This was prescient –– a way of approaching the study of science that would still be struggling to be fulfilled years later.

My encounter with Michael Pelczar was only a brief morning over a cup of coffee, but it touched me deeply. Here was the very embodiment of a life fulfilled. A rich legacy of a long professional and academic career and an even richer legacy of family. His office was filled with pictures of his six children and dozens of grand- and great-grandchildren. That morning, his daughter Ann was with him at the farm, helping make us feel at home.

Upon publication of the article about Michael Pelczar in Chesapeake Quarterly, we received notes from our readers. One stood out in particular. Norman Hines was an undergraduate student under Dr. Pelczar in 1960-1961. He wrote that he still has Pelczar’s textbook, Microbiology (written in 1958), on the bookshelf in his office. He wanted to know how to contact him. He wanted to let Dr. Pelczar know that he’d left an enduring impression, and maybe even to stop by the farm when next out to visit a cousin on Kent Island.

Michael Pelczar passed away on October 13, 2009, just a few months short of his 94th birthday. His textbook Microbiology has recently been republished in India, with promises of more sales than ever. He had only weeks ago hosted a visit with his Indian colleagues who’d led the effort to bring his book up-to-date.

Michael Pelczar presented me with an autographed copy of Microbiology before I left Avalon Farm that day. When I heard of his passing, I took the book off the shelf and looked again at the quote by microbiologist Louis Pasteur in the Preface.

“Messieurs, c’est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot.”
“The microbes will have the last word.”

That was his favorite quote, he’d explained. I think it resonated so deeply for him because of his sense for the interconnectedness and intricacy of the natural world, with humans only a part of a vast ecosystem.

When we’d finished talking in the kitchen, Michael took us outside to see his elaborate garden. His peppers were ripe and Jack and I both went home with a bag full of miniature purples, yellows and reds.

From there, we wandered down the shore of the Bay. Though leaning heavily on a cane, Michael Pelczar was surefooted and strong. I will treasure the memory of that crisp, autumn morning, of a singular opportunity to meet a man with such conviction of mind and spirit, grounded by his roots on Avalon Farm and his love for the Chesapeake Bay.

This treatment system filters ballast water and then zaps it with UV light to kill remaining organisms. It underwent testing at the Maritime Environmental Resource Center in March 2009.

One thing I’ve learned lately is that ballast water tanks that ships use for stability can cause big headaches.  For one thing, when filled with water they can act like an aquarium for all kinds of critters and carry them across oceans. Those species can set up shop in a whole new spot once they get dumped overboard at the next port of call.  For another thing, swapping ballast water in mid-ocean — the technique required by the U.S. and many other governments as a way to get rid of unwanted hitchhikers — can be dangerous. One freighter literally flipped on its side when a mid-ocean ballast water exchange went wrong.

I wrote about all this in an article for Chesapeake Quarterly last June, where I noted that many were calling for a change in approach to better protect ecosystems from invasive species.  Now the beginnings of change have come.

On August 28^th, 2009, the Coast Guard published proposed rules that include standards for treating — not exchanging — ballast water. This opens the door for installing systems on board ships — things like filters, chemicals, UV rays, etc. — that kill organisms and eliminate the need for exchange.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) created standards for treatment in 2004, and technology companies have been busy developing systems to meet them, often borrowing ideas from the wastewater treatment field. But until now, the U.S. did not recognize treatment as a viable option. Ships were stuck spending time and manpower on exchange.

The Coast Guard’s new rules would change that.

Under the proposed regulations, all new ships built after January 1, 2012, must include treatment systems that meet standards regarding the number of living organisms allowed in discharged ballast water. The standards mirror the ones created by the IMO in 2004. Compliance on existing ships and those built before 2012 depends on their ballast capacity, with all ships using treatment systems by 2016. That’s Phase One.

Phase Two would require ships to comply with a standard that is about 1,000 times stricter, as of 2016.

Mario Tamburri, director of the Maritime Environmental Resource Center (MERC) in Baltimore, Maryland, calls the proposed rulemaking “a reasonable and logical way to go.” He notes that since the IMO’s 2004 convention on ballast water, only six systems have been certified as meeting the IMO — and now the U.S. — standard.

“It’s not real easy to do,” he says. He thinks the stricter Phase Two standard “should be the ultimate goal,” but that it will require innovation — “technologies or treatments that we haven’t even thought of yet.”

For this reason, he’s pleased that the Coast Guard has planned for a review process over the next several years to assess whether reaching such a high standard will be possible.

Tamburri and his team will be on the frontline testing treatment systems through their work at MERC. Before the new Coast Guard regulations, MERC primarily tested systems striving to achieve the IMO standard for use on foreign ships abroad. Now, systems could be installed on U.S. ships. He says that from now on any data collected at their test facility will also address Coast Guard needs.

The proposed regulations are available for public comment until November 27. After that, the Coast Guard and related agencies will work on addressing feedback and making necessary changes.

Tamburri doesn’t anticipate any major objections from either the environmental community or the shipping industry. Both groups are anxious for change. Given this, he’s hopeful the regulations will be finalized by early next year.

“There’s a lot of motivation to move now. To help solve the problem now.”

For all the coastal ecosystems throughout the world facing the effects of invasive species, now sounds like a good time.

To view the proposed rules visit: http://frwebgate4.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/PDFgate.cgi?WAISdocID=68878897988+0+2+0&WAISaction=retrieve

What a difference a few decades can make.

While researching a short piece for Chesapeake Quarterly on the Bay’s once popular beaches, I came across some strange reminders of the past.

There were memories of summers decades ago when rock-and-roll bands played under the stars at Mayo Beach and at other hopping Bayside spots. Listening to aging beach-goers recall those summer nights I could feel the humid dark, see sunburned bodies sway, hear crickets trill beneath crying electric guitars.

When speaking to Daryl Lofgren, I sensed an even longer history. Lofgren is manager of what is now Anne Arundel County’s Mayo Beach Park, and his enthusiasm for the place and its past stirred thoughts of lost, long-ago landscapes of Colonial mills and farms — like the one belonging to Commodore Isaac Mayo, a naval hero of the War of 1812, for whom the Mayo peninsula is named.

I was also reminded of a darker past, one of exclusion and prejudice.

During the era of segregation, African Americans and Jews were not allowed on many Bay beaches and had to look for places of their own, places like Carrs Beach or, for Jewish families out of Washington, the Captain Salem Avery House, now a watermen’s museum.

One longtime Annapolis resident described how a high school friend was turned away from a popular Bay beach for being Jewish. In fact, she wasn’t Jewish, and said so. But that didn’t matter — evidently the ticket takers didn’t believe her. In the end she was turned away simply because she looked Jewish.

That was the harsh reality of the time. You could be turned away if you belonged to the wrong race, the wrong religion. Or even if you looked like you did.

We face many political and ecological challenges in the Bay region, including rising sea level and the washing away of so much beachfront. But with our losses have come gains, and some changes have been for the better. Though we still have a long way to go, we should be thankful for how far we’ve come.

For more, see A New Day on the Bay.

While probing the topic of invasive species for an article in Chesapeake Quarterly, I was struck by the diversity of people involved in this issue in some way. There are academics, biologists, engineers, and natural resource managers — people who grapple with invasive species day in and day out. Then there are those for whom invasive species become just one small part of their job. People like Jerome Brown and his inspection team from the U.S. Coast Guard, or Captain Escoto from the freighter, Tamoyo Maiden. And Kathy Metcalf from the shipping industry.

Whenever you speak with so many different people, you hear interesting stories — stories that can appear out of context, stories you want to pass on. Kathy Metcalf has one of those stories.

There’s not much decoration on the walls of Kathy Metcalf’s office at the Chamber of Shipping of America. To get to work, she takes the Amtrak train to Washington, D.C.’s Union Station from her home in Pennsylvania. Because of the long commute, she simply hasn’t bothered to schlep many personal belongings down in her years of working in Washington. Not even her college diploma – which becomes part of the story.

Metcalf graduated from high school in Dover, Delaware in 1972. The daughter of an Air Force officer, she dreamed of attending a United States Military Academy, particularly West Point. “I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world,” she says. A top student, she received nominations from her state senator, Pete du Pont, and applied for admittance to West Point as well as the Air Force and Naval Academies.

But there was one thing wrong with her application. She was not a “he.” The military academies all rejected Metcalf, sending her letters explaining that they could not accept her because she was female.

Though disappointed, Metcalf moved on and enrolled at the University of Delaware. In the fall of her sophomore year she was hanging out in her dorm room when someone came in and told her she had a call on the hall telephone. The caller’s identity shocked her.

It was Joe Biden, the newly minted senator from Delaware.

Biden had been reviewing his predecessor’s files. He said, “I understand you’re interested in going to one of the federal academies,” Metcalf recalls. “And I just wanted you to know that the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy is opening its doors to women next year.”

Getting past the fact that a U.S. Senator was calling her in her dorm was hard enough, Metcalf remembers. Realizing that this could be her opportunity to attend a military academy was even harder. It wasn’t West Point. But it was as close to her dream as she could get at the time. She told the Senator that she was definitely interested. Visiting the campus in Kings Point, NY, with her father helped seal the deal. She fell in love with the place.

When the Merchant Marine Academy formally accepted Metcalf, she became the first woman appointed to a federal academy “by about 2 hours and 13 minutes.” But who’s counting? The Academy called Senator Biden first. He held a press conference in his office in Wilmington, complete with television crews. Metcalf, who was a bit embarrassed by the hoopla, puts the experience in perspective. “I’m not anything special. It’s a good example that it’s better to be lucky than smart any day.”

Metcalf started the Academy with 16 other women; 8 of them graduated. After graduation, she launched into a career in the shipping business and ultimately earned her law degree and began working in Washington, D.C. on issues facing the shipping industry. Issues like combating invasive species.

Years after Senator Biden helped her earn an appointment to the Merchant Marine Academy, Metcalf re-introduced herself to him on one of her Amtrak train rides into D.C. Biden was a regular on the route from Wilmington to Washington, and Metcalf would see him occasionally. She told him the story of how he had shaped her life, and he said he remembered her.

But Metcalf hasn’t seen Biden on the train recently. She thinks she knows why.

“I hear he moved,” she deadpans.

Joking aside, she says she was excited for him to get the opportunity to be vice president. She knows a few things herself about seizing opportunities.

H.G. Well’s quote that “history is a race between education and catastrophe” resonates clearly in the Chesapeake Bay. Natural history and observational science have formed the cornerstone of our understanding how the Bay has changed over time –– tracking periods of abundance and decline, holding clues to the future. But moving forward, the question still remains as to whether an understanding of history will prevent us from repeating past mistakes.

Long-term data streams abound in the Bay region. Fisheries harvest data tell the tale of declining oyster populations, of the crash and recovery of the striped bass. Some of these go back more than 100 years. Mud samples taken from the bottom of the Bay show how the abundance and diversity of bottom-dwelling creatures has changed over time, a data set that extends back some 25 years. Field sampling annual aircraft surveys of phytoplankton and aerial surveys of underwater grasses paint a long term picture of the Bay’s change in state –– declines in underwater grasses followed by recurrent population explosions of algae.

There are comparatively fewer long-term natural history data sets, rich information records that document the ebb and flow of populations of organisms over time. But like Ohio University biologist Willem Roosenburg, featured in the latest Chesapeake Quarterly, several other natural historians have helped contribute a long-term record of life and change in the Bay. Vernon Stotts, with the Maryland Wildlife Administration, studied the change in waterfowl populations for more than two decades. He was among the first to note the decline of underwater grasses in the early 1970s, when he realized that many birds had begun feeding off plants in farm fields instead of in the water. Dave Cargo, who worked at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, created a long-term record of sea nettle abundance through a daily census off the lab’s dock on the Patuxent River. Beginning in 1960, this data collection continued after Cargo’s death and now holds more than 40 years of information on population abundance, data that has provided clues to changing predator-prey relationships in the Bay.

Long-term data records of water quality, climate, river flow, and temperature also provide key information on how the Bay has changed over time. Since the creation of the E.P.A. Chesapeake Bay Program in 1984, detailed monitoring efforts have kept track of estuarine variables for water quality, such as turbidity, algal species, oxygen, anoxia, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Watershed variables, such as nutrient and sediment loading, land use, and impervious surface cover provide the raw material for making the link between human activities on land and in the water and changes in the estuary.

But will what we know about the Chesapeake’s past, guide the Chesapeake’s future? The Bay seems well poised to learn from the lessons of history, but sometimes it is hard for scientists to slow down frenetic pace of research to look back to the past for clues to the future. One of the primary recommendations from a conference on Thresholds in the Recovery of Eutrophic Coastal Ecosystems, held in 2007 and jointly sponsored by Maryland Sea Grant and the Chesapeake Bay Program Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, was to tap into the wealth of historical data that already exists to predict how the Bay will respond to restoration efforts in the future. This means rigorously studying and synthesizing the past, while simultaneously monitoring the environmental conditions of the present. Standing on the shoulders of the vigilant natural historians and field scientists who have kept a close eye on the Bay for all of these years, maybe the time has come to take a closer look across systems, to seek signs of concurrent trends from different organisms, different time series. Only by understanding where the Bay has been, will we be able to shape where it is going.

The opening session sounded like a meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Through headsets, we listened to the simultaneous translation of the opening address in English, Chinese, and Japanese. Such a convergence of nationalities –– eminent scientists from around the world, distinguished leaders in environmental affairs –– bespoke the grave significance of the problems at hand.

At the 2008 Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas meeting (EMECS-8) in Shanghai, China last week, scientists from around the globe came to report on the state of their coastal waters and to discuss national and regional attempts to correct problems of pollution, nutrient overload, and rapid development that put intense pressure on rivers and inland seas.

The messages we heard were sobering. What we face in our Chesapeake Bay is happening across the globe – from China to Japan to Iran to Europe to India to Bangladesh. Our struggles with restoration, with the implementation of ecosystem-based approaches to management, with the coordination between local and regional governance resound from country-to-country. Signs of damaged ecosystems also appear everywhere. Jellyfish have grown abundant, where fisheries have declined – such as in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. And some coastal waters such as Tokyo Bay and Hong Kong Harbor may have already passed the point of no return, according to one study of ports and harbors in the Asian South Pacific.

Climate change will only make matters worse, scientists say. And if we don’t plan for the effects of rising temperatures and rising sea levels as we continue to develop the coastal zone, global water resources and human health could be severely compromised.

Ironically, even as we clean up the water, the legacy of contaminated sediments will live on, according to another study.  Salt marshes, which are so important for trapping sediment and reducing the impact of development-induced erosion, offer conditions that may encourage the accumulation of methyl mercury in the food chain. Methyl mercury, a toxic compound that originates with coal-fired emissions from power plants, is metabolized by sulfur-oxidizing bacteria that are prolific in salt marshes, providing an entry point into an aquatic food web that culminates with our food fish resources.

Unfortunately, walking the streets of Shanghai did little to dispel the messages I was hearing inside the conference venue –– a sense of mounting global environmental doom.  Here, in a city of 18 million people and growing, the environment seems stretched to a breaking point. Air pollution, poor water quality, lack of green space, mind-boggling traffic, and an infrastructure bursting at the seams. This city, so proud of its recent economic surge, appears balanced at a precipice. If growth continues at the current rate, it seems impossible that the environment will be able sustain the resource needs of its burgeoning population.  Sobering indeed.

Though global environmental problems loom large, the EMECS conference was not without a silver lining. The note of optimism comes from the common chord on how restoring the environment should be approached.  The idea of treating the whole system, not just constituent parts, resounded widely. The term “ecosystem-based management,” new not so long ago, had clearly become well entrenched in the dialogue of scientists and managers throughout the world. The dedication of conference organizers and participants, including the articulate and passionate student delegation, offered a beacon of hope. With political will and motivated leaders, the path to ecosystem recovery does lie within our grasp

The Chesapeake region will host the next EMECS conference in 2011, planned for Baltimore, Maryland. When this globally diverse group of talented researchers and managers next meets, I hope that we will hear reports of notable strides toward a more sustainable future for our coastal zones.

Why in the world is the Bay getting so cloudy?  That’s the question that’s puzzled so many of us.  Sure there is construction in the watershed and agriculture and stormwater runoff, and yet the cloudiness appears to be worse than one would expect, even with all that runoff. 

And especially strange, this haziness has been getting worse and worse every year, in a one-way slide.  This is disturbing, since even nutrients and dead zones are largely tied to changing conditions.  Wet years versus dry years.  More wind or less wind.  Hotter or cooler.  The Bay’s cloudiness, what scientists call turbidity, has been getting worse every year no matter what the weather.

That is downright weird.  And worrisome.

 When asked about what’s going on, most researchers would answer, “We just don’t know.”   Some even said, “It’s a mystery.”  Scientists don’t often use words like “mystery.”  This seemed out of the ordinary. 

Two scientists who have delved into this puzzle are Larry Sanford and Charles (Chuck) Gallegos.  Sanford (at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science) is an expert in sediment.  Gallegos (at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center) is an expert in algae.  They think the turbidity question has remained a mystery largely because it falls between the cracks of different disciplines.  Between those who study sediment and those who study algae.  Between the inorganic and the organic.

 What is occurring in the Bay, if these two researchers are right, cannot be explained in terms of sediment alone or algae alone.  Instead, there appears to be an interaction in the Bay’s waters that results from an overload of both nutrients and certain kinds of sediment.  The organic matter fueled by nutrients and the fine sediment that now floats in the Bay are apparently sticking together in ways that cause a cumulative build-up, a worsening cloudiness.

The resulting haze reaches its peak during the summer, much like the haze of those hot humid days in the city.  Smog in the air.  Turbidity in the water. 

For more on the story see “Shadow on the Chesapeake.”  

Visitors to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor were in for a surprise earlier this week. Hundreds of blue crabs lined the shallow water between the Maryland Science Center and the Rusty Scupper restaurant, about a 150-yard distance.

Though an iconic image throughout the Harbor, blue crabs are usually more likely to be seen on a dinner plate at Phillips Restaurant than in the murky waters of the Patapsco River.

The sheer number of crabs – I estimated over 350 – led me to suspect something was up.  Could it be a jubilee – an event where crabs gather near the surface and on shore to escape oxygen-deprived water?

Mike Naylor, a biologist at Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), doesn’t think so. After looking at the pictures he noted that had it been a jubilee, he would have expected to see crabs breaking the surface. Instead, these crabs seemed perfectly content to stay in the water. Naylor also noted that some of the crabs were exhibiting normal mating behavior, which may be unlikely if they were stressed.

Click to play video of blue crabs in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Photo and video by Kyle Smits

When I went back to the spot the following evening, the number of crabs had dropped significantly - probably less than 50 remained.

So what caused this unusual crab gathering? No one seems to know for sure. Dissolved oxygen readings taken about 36 hours after the event were within the normal range. But levels can change quickly. I’ll be sure to post again if I get an answer as to what brought the crabs together in such large numbers.

Whatever the reason, it was a great view of nature in my urban neighborhood. And it seemed to remind those walking by that the ecosystem of the Inner Harbor is more than just its seafood restaurants and T-shirt shops.

Information on blue crabs:

http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/issues/chesapeake/blue_crabs/

Chesapeake Quarterly, Counting Crabs in Winter, Volume 5 Number 4

This past winter I spoke with Baltimore chef Spike Gjerde about fish from far away for the article “A Good Catch: Serving Up Sustainable Seafood.” Gjerde serves wild Alaska salmon at Woodberry Kitchen, even though the restaurant’s motto is “celebrating the traditions and ingredients of the Chesapeake region.” Gjerde’s committed to serving local and sustainable cuisine. Though it’s hardly local, he offers Alaska salmon because he believes it’s from one of the best-managed fisheries in the world. It’s a balancing act, he says. For him, the sustainability of the fish makes up for it being from a waterbody 3,500 miles away.

Now — several months later, with gas prices soaring and talk of carbon footprints buzzing — I’m wondering, does it really?

What happens when that fish takes flight? That’s a lot of jet fuel between Bristol Bay and Baltimore.

Should Alaska salmon — or any other “sustainable” fish from distant waters for that matter — really be considered sustainable seafood in Maryland? Sure the fishery may be well managed and abundant, but does the trans-continental journey the fish takes to become our dinner jive with what it means to be sustainable?

This question has plagued the organic movement as well. Organic tomatoes from Chile and apples from New Zealand may be grown in an environmentally friendly way, but some argue that once they’re shipped to far-flung locales, greenhouse gas emissions offset their environmental benefit.

The oft-heard mantra to “eat local” is a response to this quandary. With the increasing number of neighborhood farmer’s markets and co-ops, although you may have to search, you can usually substitute local organic produce for distant fare without sacrificing look or taste.

Seafood poses more of a challenge. No matter how hard you look, you won’t find a local version of wild–caught Alaska salmon at a Maryland fish counter.

If you’re shopping at a big-name supermarket you might not find any local fish at all. As Jack Greer reported in Bringing It All Back Home, large-scale retailers deal in huge volumes of fish from across the globe rather than small volumes caught close by. I’m more likely to see seafood from China than from the Chesapeake at my grocery store.

But we may be entering a new era — one where customers care about the carbon footprint of their food and where even those who don’t care are forced to make changes as retailers raise prices to offset the cost of transporting these worldly fish. Seeking local regional specialties like croaker, striped bass, spot, bluefish, and weakfish could provide an alternative to cutting seafood out of the budget.

This is where eco-conscious consumers ask: But are these local fish sustainable?

Seafood guides distributed by organizations like Seafood Watch and Blue Ocean Institute may help with the answer. These organizations list fish to avoid and those to enjoy based on analyses of things like abundance and management structure. Though the guides are met with skepticism from some fisheries experts who see them as incomplete, these icons of the sustainable seafood movement provide a useful primer for the average citizen trying to do the right thing at a restaurant or seafood counter.

In addition to a national guide, the Seafood Watch Program distributes regional guides — Maryland is considered part of the southeast. The regional guide lists striped bass and Atlantic croaker as a best choice, green on its stoplight scale. Bluefish isn’t listed on the southeast guide, though it places in the yellow column (good alternative) on the northeast guide. Seafood Watch doesn’t critique spot or weakfish. Blue Ocean Institute concurs regarding striped bass and bluefish. It doesn’t rate spot or croaker, but it does list weakfish as green.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s website bridges some of the gaps of the seafood guides. While the Commission doesn’t publish accessible pocket guides with color-coded ratings, they do provide background information on the status of 22 managed fisheries on the Atlantic seaboard. Those looking for in-depth details will find management plans, stock assessment reports, press releases, and meeting minutes. The site could prove a useful resource to concerned consumers, though it may take some effort to sift through the information.

A little extra effort seems to be the price for finding that sweet spot where local and sustainable seafood overlap. It’s right here in our blue backyard. We just have to look a bit harder.

When I called Charlene Pinkney back to double check some facts for A Tree Grows on Bruce Street in the latest issue of Chesapeake Quarterly — Renewing an Urban Watershed, I asked about her garden. It was early spring when I’d first visited — trees had just started to blossom. With all of May’s rain behind us, everything must have really taken off by now.

It has. And her lawn mower is still broken, which has made caring for the lush grass a challenging proposition. Her grass had gotten so tall recently that fearing a citation from the city, she got out there with a pair of hedge clippers and started whacking it by hand. But her real struggle has been with the rats, she told me. They’ve become bold, brazen. She says they’ve built a network of tunnels through her yard. She’s considering trying to fill the tunnel openings with shards of glass, of which there’s no scarcity on littered Bruce Street.

Meanwhile, she’s going door-to-door on her troubled block to get signatures to petition the city to come out and place traps. She needs to engage the whole block in the eradication effort. What Pinkney is facing in her garden is the stuff bad dreams are made of.

West Baltimore has serious problems. Drugs, crime, homelessness, unemployment, and poverty. I deliberately waited until I finished writing this story to get Season 1 of The Wire, the gritty HBO police drama set on these streets, from Netflix. I’d learned that most of the series had been filmed on street corners and alleys I would now recognize. But I didn’t want the dramatized streets to cloud my impressions of the efforts in the 72-block radius defined as Watershed 263.

What struck me is that this pilot project in Watershed 263 is the real deal. The pipes beneath these city streets carry some of dirtiest water in the Chesapeake watershed and life aboveground faces some of the toughest odds. Improving water quality through community greening practices seems a nearly Sisyphean charge. Against this backdrop of big problems in Baltimore, each hard-won vacant lot turned rain garden requires tremendous effort, community input, and funding. And, according to plan, it will take 107 such projects to see a measurable impact on stormwater from only 25 percent of the watershed.

Watershed 263 evokes a parallel for me to the BALTIMORE BELIEVE campaign. The campaign was an attempt by then mayor Martin O’Malley to “light a fuse of popular will” to change the mindset of the city with regard to the drugs. The idea is that if everyone does at least one thing to fight drugs, acting alone or together, then the community can prevail.

I lived in Baltimore in 2002 when the BELIEVE campaign was beginning to gain traction. I remember puzzling at the stark black signs with the white letters that read simply, “BELIEVE.” No context. No explanation. I didn’t know what I was supposed to believe in. At first I was vaguely annoyed. I didn’t get it.

That feeling didn’t last long. Those signs got under my skin. I’m not sure that I ever embraced the message specific to the drug problem in Baltimore. But I would drive down the streets and register a prickle of hope, like what you’d experience walking out of a feel-good movie.

The same goes for Watershed 263. The odds still seem stacked against success. Juxtaposed with personal safety, unemployment, and drugs, the effect of urban stormwater on the Chesapeake Bay ranks low on the list of concerns of most watershed residents. But for some, growing green space in neighborhoods and improving the quality of outdoor life is rising to the top. The people I met value their gardens and embrace the idea that turning empty lots into safe green havens can benefit their health and improve the quality of their daily lives.

BELIEVE in green. The people of Watershed 263 do. And just maybe, if everyone does at least one thing to green his/her local community, healthier waters downstream will prevail.