Politicians, nonprofits and homeowners from around Maryland gathered in Eastport on Thursday for the announcement of 16 recipients of the Chesapeake Bay Trust's 2012 grants to build living shorelines.
According to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, living shorelines are a stabilization technique that uses natural habitat elements like rocks—instead of bulkhead or riprap—to protect shorelines from erosion while also providing critical habitat for fish, crabs and other wildlife.
The trust partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Maryland Department of the Environment to give away more than $800,000—the largest amount awarded to date.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said he brags about the Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts to his colleagues in Congress all the time.
"This is really big news what's being done here. We know how important the Chesapeake Bay is to our state, and how important it is our country. It's a national treasure," Cardin said. "It was Maryland that started [the restoration effort], and then we brought in the other states and the local governments and the private sector and the federal government. And that partnership now is a national model."
The hope is that these 16 new shoreline projects will serve as learning tools for and examples of effective restoration.
"You are truly on the front lines," Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown said. "You are educating the public on the importance of protecting the environment and our shorelines, but also you are putting into practice those techniques."
The 2012 recipient ceremony took place in Eastport where three neighbors got together after learning about living shorelines in part through demonstration projects funded through this collaborative. The Annapolitans worked together to remove bulkheads and build a contiguous living shoreline on their properties, which now serves as an example for current and future grant recipients.
The South River Federation received a $12,880 grant to cover some of the costs for its restoration of 240 feet of shoreline along Church Creek in Annapolis, which was completed earlier this month.
Erik Michelsen, the federation's executive director, said the homeowner on Church Creek decided to move forward with the creation of the living shoreline before the grant had been secured.
"The contractor who was building this project was also building another shoreline in the same vicinity so cost wise it made sense," Michelsen said. "Rather than mobilizing the crew twice, both projects were completed at the same time."
The other living shoreline was privately funded.
The Annapolis Cove Property Owners Association received $40,000 to create a 150-foot living shoreline in its community along Lake Ogleton.
State Sen. John Astle (D-Annapolis) is a Chespeake Bay Trust board member, and he votes on how much money should be allocated to living shoreline projects. He said being able to give out a number of grants to Annapolis and Anne Arundel County meant a lot to him.
"Representing an area that probably has more shoreline on the Chesapeake Bay than just about any other district in the state, I am acutely aware of the issues that we face that impact the bay," Astle said.
He pointed to a shoreline restoration project done behind as an example of how erosion can be stopped and a habitat can be recreated.
"The fact that we can do this in an urban setting—I think is really neat," Astle said.
Since the trust's living shoreline program started seven years ago, there have been 68 projects in local communities that have created 28,000 feet of living shoreline and 18 acres of wetland habitat.
The program has awarded more than $4 million and leveraged $7 million in matching funds from landowners throughout Maryland and Virginia.
Living Shoreline grant recipients include:
MARYLAND
- Annapolis Cove Property Owners Association, Anne Arundel County, $40,000
- Magothy Beach Improvement Association, Anne Arundel County, $100,000
- Severn Riverkeeper Program, Anne Arundel County, $18,784
- Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Anne Arundel County, $41,931
- South River Federation, Anne Arundel County, $12,880
- West/Rhode Riverkeeper, Anne Arundel County, $39,850
- Baltimore County Department of Recreation & Parks, Baltimore County, $13,336
- North East Isles, Cecil County, $100,000
- St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s County, $16,500
- Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Talbot County, $60,000
- The Gunston School, Queen Anne’s County, $100,000
- Chester River Association, Queen Anne’s County, $99,000
VIRGINIA
- City of Norfolk, VA, $134,082
- Friends of Norfolk’s Environment, Norfolk, VA, $5,894
- Northern Virginia Regional Commission, Prince William County, VA, $16,500
- The Landings at Bolling Square Community Association, Norfolk, VA, $11,212
Based on the matching funds numbers mentioned, let's estimate 32 grand per recipient is directly taken from tax dollars. So, let's take from the little people all over the state, by force, and give away $509,000 of their money to a hand-selected group of 16 people who live in Eastport to replace their old seawalls and re-landscape their yards. And as such, it's worth asking who the 16 recipients actually are. Be very interesting to see what their political backgrounds and ties are.
I will also bet the math behind the "mitigation funds" is interesting, and is essentially money from the general fund as well. Last, if the math in this article is correct, 7 percent of the monies in the history of the trust went to little ol' Eastport in this year alone. Given the size of the bay, and the size of Eastport, somehow that seems unlikely to be the most effective use of funds, and seems very likely to be tied in some way to political connections. But who knows, maybe it's pure coincidence.
Thanks, Mike
The impression I get from your comments is that you are saying the Trust's actions are nearly exclusively done with private donations. In contrast, I say there is a LOT of tax money in there. So, what percentage of the trust's spend would you say is truly private donation and what percentage is tax dollars? Just SWAG a number of what you believe, and upon which your comments are based. I think that will add clarity and erase potential misunderstanding. Regards, Mike
The point about "match" though is that these grant dollars are used to leverage their value several times over in truly private dollars for restoration.
My point all along is that it appears that there is a lot of our tax money in this, and I have concerns about how that money is spent. Your responses have been to paint it as if it's all just some private charity, downplaying the tax dollars as if they don't exist or are negligible. Just pulling the "audit" off the trust's web site makes it clear that at least a third if not one half or more of the trust money is tax dollars, collected by force from the citizens. You also said: "The money directly from the Trust is not "tax dollars" per se. This particular program has funding partners: MDE (tidal wetland mitigation money), DNR, and NOAA, as well as some corporate partners, I believe. I do not know what percentage of funding comes from DNR (though I believe it's fairly small), or NOAA, and how much of that might be considered general fund money." Well, sorry, but when an agency of government "gives" money to some other entity, THOSE ARE TAX DOLLARS. They don't get laundered into some form of voluntary charity by having government hand them to someone else. So the "not "tax dollars" per se" comment is pointless. They ARE tax dollars. I find everything you've written to be misleading, either unwittingly or intentionally trying to downplay the reality of whose money it is.
Anna, would you agree that making edits to stories is both misleading and troublesome? If the content of a story changes, or new information is found, the appropriate thing to do is to CLEARLY APPEND UPDATES. NOT to insert updates in the original story, as if it was completely reported from the start. Going back and editing the original story, as if the content had not changed since it was first published, is somewhere between appalling sloppiness and outright journalistic fraud. Two questions: 1. Do you share my assessment of the impropriety of inserting undoicumented edits after the fact? 2. If so, will you work to see that this is stopped at Patch? I have noticed quite a few instances where stories change A LOT with no acknowledgement of the fact that any editing is being done. I look forward to your answers. Regards, Mike
If you agreed that a lot of tax money is spent by the trust, you could have just said so up front, rather than repeatedly implying the opposite. Or you could have acknowledged that in the course of our discussion you have learned that lots of tax dollars are routed into the trust. Instead you continued to paint the false picture that the trust is virtually all private charity until I cited the trust's own financials that support my point. Now that the correctness of my claim is shown by the trust's own financials, you have fallen back on "well, okay, there's a lot of tax money in there, but..." But honestly, given that you repeatedly painted an incorrect picture about the source of the funds, why should any reasonable person not question the correctness of your other statements regarding whether those funds are well spent? Who knows, perhaps the trust does great and efficient work witht the money they get their hands on. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But this discussion makes me more, not less, concerned about where the money goes. P.S. The conflict of interest stuff on page 13 is an absolute joke. (If you don't see why right away and agree, please just ask.) Sincerely, Mike
But I think it is important to print updates, edits, corrections and retractions clearly as just that, rather than quietly slipping in changes to articles. Especially when people are discussing the articles already, with comments (which rightly cannot be edited after-the-fact by the commentor). Quiet, undocumented edits range from being hopelessly confusing and unprofessional to outright Orwellian. Neither is acceptable, so we should all endeavor to stop the practice completely.
One other note/question. Does the trust use any funds to attempt to influence government policy? I ask because I have found that a lot of charities paint a VERY misleading picture about what they do with the monies people donate. People think their voluntarily-surrendered money goes, say, to pay people to do cancer research. But instead the money goes to lobby government to FORCE everyone to surrender money against his will through taxation, to fund government programs and enact new laws. The charities I have seen make it VERY hard to see how much they spend on lobbying, instead of on the nominal purpose that was sold to the donors. So, with that in mind, does this trust attempt to influence government policy and legislation? If so, to what extent to the donors who buy license license plates and "check the box on their tax form" understand this, versus thinking that the money goes to DIRECTLY fund the efforts to repair shoreline, clean up water, etc? Let me be clear, I am not saying this is happening with this trust, I am asking. But I've seen the phenomenon with other charities where it is clearly deceptive and thus, fraud.
"The funds for the Chesapeake Bay Trust come from people who voluntarily choose to get Bay license plates or check the tax check-off on their Maryland tax returns. Funding from the other government partners largely comes from dollars that go into mitigation funds when wetlands are impacted as a result of development." Second, this first comment of yours suggests that I was incorrect in discussing tax dollars funding the trust, and that the trust is funded by private charity, and a bit also from "mitigation funds." However, I was not incorrect. LOTS of tax money is getting into the trust. Pulling straight from the trust's own published "audit." Your words I quoted above are very (incorrectly) dismissive of my point about tax dollars in the trust. As for the 1/3 number, I cited that up front long ago in the thread, as a minimum number. And so what if it were only 1/3, if that's even the case? (Which it isn't.) If it's a small enough amount not to be important or relevant then the trust can do without it. If our tax dollars are enough to be important to the trust, they're bloody well enough to be important to us to ask about how they are spent and get FULL disclosure. In fact, as tax dollars, it is appalling to resist or downplay ANY attempt to investigate their use in whatever level of detail. That's OUR money.
And once again, your attempts to paint the picture of this trust as being "private donations", "grants", and "mitigation funds" rather than taxes are misleading at best, and inherently undermine the credibility of other statements about whether the money is well spent. Had I just slinked quietly off after your first comment or said "oh, I guess I was wrong about the tax dollars as it's all just private donation," does anyone think you'd have come rushing to promote the reality, or just happily let it end with the written perception being that the tax dollars are negligible or nonexistent? I leave that answer to the readers... Please consider that people mighgt be less suspicious if they weren't constantly misled about how much money is confiscated by government.
Nonprofits may be interested in applying for this grant: Grants to Maryland Non-Profits, Faith-Based, and Others for Environmental Education and Restoration Deadline: 01/11/2013 Grants of up to $5,000 to schools, non-profits, faith-based organizations, and government entities that help promote awareness of and participation in the restoration and protection of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers and streams through promoting environmental education programs. LINK: http://www.grantwatch.com/grant/129858/grants+to+maryland+non+profits++faith+based++and+++others+for+environmental+education+and+restoration.html Best of Luck in finding grants, Mike Queener