Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of you UMBC's social science community to you.
Maryland is a small state that is full of interesting things. For one thing, as my political science colleague recently reminded me, it's the only state that looks like a gerrymander due to its natural geography with the Chesapeake Bay, the Western panhandle, and Delaware's carved out of the Eastern Shore, making it look a bit as if modern politicians had drawn it just to gain a political advantage. But it is within that wacky geography that we find such incredible biodiversity and impressive natural features. Everything from sandy beach front and mountain lakes to quiet estuaries, where our famous blue crabs scuttle about. And it's all in this really small package. You know, the Appalachian Trail passes by my house in Baltimore, only about an hour away over in Frederick. And if I were to head the other direction from my house, I could be on the other side of the bay in about the same amount of time headed to the coast. Maryland is a remarkable place filled with stunning natural beauty, as much as it houses a densely populated urban corridor. Maryland is also a place that is experiencing climate change in specific ways that speak to its unique geography. The land of pleasant living, or so it's been nicknamed, is also experiencing changes to its climate that render it hotter and more challenging for urban residents, more prone to flooding and the permanent recession of low lying islands and swamp lands, and less comfortable for our 1000s of native plants and animal species. Climate change is upon us. But how can we as residents of Maryland respond?
In today's feature broadcast, I'm proud and excited to bring you a roundtable conversation featuring five prominent voices in this discussion. Last month, the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program convened a special symposium entitled "Maryland's Climate Futures." The symposium focused on policy approaches to the public problem of climate change in Maryland. If you want to learn more about the Sondheim Program, by the way, which offers scholarships to high achieving students with a passion for public service and public affairs, I would recommend you check out episode 38 that we recorded back in March of last year. In that episode of Retrieving the Social Sciences, I speak with Jessica Cook and Dr. Laura Antkowiak about the program and the fantastic ways in which it helps students advance their advocacy and leadership goals. The Sondheim Climate Futures policy event brought together distinguished speakers from academia, government, and nonprofit organizations. Serena Coleman McIlwain, the Secretary of the Environment for the State of Maryland was there. Dr. Meghan Avolio, Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, also joined the panel. Sarah T. Koser, the Restoration Program Manager at the Chesapeake Bay Trust was in attendance in addition to Julieta Rodrigo, an Urban and Community Resilience Manager at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. And last but not least, the panel featured Brady Walker, head of US Government Affairs and Market Strategy at Ørsted, a major Danish energy firms specializing in green energy delivery. Brady is also a UMBC Sondheim Scholars Program alumnus, I hope that you enjoy this special symposium. I learned a lot from my attendance at the event. And I hope that you can be inspired by the passion and care that this panel has put into their work on Maryland's climate.
I just have a couple of questions that we've created for you guys. So the first one being I'm going to direct it we're going to kind of snake around. So I'll start with Dr. Meghan Avolio first. What do you see as the biggest climate related challenge faced by Maryland?
I'm not gonna have a real creative answer to this. I think climate change is a big one. different patterns in precipitation and higher temperatures. And because Maryland is a coastal state, obviously sea level rise. I'm a plant ecologist and my perspective is often thinking about plants. And so when we think about the climate changing, I'm concerned about how plants we will tolerate that and what that how that will impact the services we get from plants. Go ahead.
Okay, sure. I was thinking, Oh, we're gonna say the same thing because we all know the challenges of Maryland, right. From my perspective, from Maryland's Department of the Environment, what I see are the biggest challenges there's so many it's hard to, you know, just say what are the biggest but one as you stated climate change Climate change is impacting all of us, our health, our lives. And it's not. Climate change isn't fair either. It's, you know, it's just not it's, it's not created equally. And so the impacts of climate change to disadvantaged communities are different than other neighborhoods. There are not a whole lot of trees and some neighborhoods. So you don't have that. That shade right, that cover that's needed. So you have elderly people who are impacted by heat, heat problems, heat waves, so that's a problem. We also, one of the other problems is, as you all know, with climate change, we have more storms than we've ever had before, we have more flooding. And it's just really creating a problem with for all Marylanders for all homes. And so that's one of the biggest challenges that that I see in my role. Another problem, I'll say, with the environmental justice, which is what I'm talking about the low income and disadvantaged communities, when you have heat waves, some of them do not have air conditioners, they can't afford them. And so it's just a real real issue. The other challenge that we have at the Maryland Department of the Environment is we have some of the most aggressive climate goals in the country. And it cost. So money funding to fund the green transition is really a challenge. We have a climate pollutions reduction plan that we just put out in December, I think it was about Yes, in December, you should read it. It's only 120 pages. And we outlined the investment that's needed. And it's about $1 billion of money that we have to find that is a challenge, because our budget in Maryland doesn't support that fund that $1 billion. So we have to be creative. So that's basically what I see are the biggest challenges. Thanks
Again, for the invitation. really delighted to be here. I, I have a two part answer. And maybe some context. So my company develops and operates renewable commercial scale, renewable energy generation technologies, land based wind, solar battery storage, we have a green fuels business, but by far our largest businesses offshore wind or state is the largest developer and operator of offshore wind projects across the world. And we have the largest portfolio in operation or development in the United States. And so when you think about a state like Maryland, which has ambitious, renewable energy targets, as part of its plan to address climate change, I look at Maryland and say, what's really challenging about a state like Maryland is geography, its physical location, you know, offshore wind, because the population is so dense in this area of the East Coast, is really one of the only viable solutions to deliver renewable energy at scale. And states and corporations. But mostly states will buy energy in, in two ways through a public power purchase agreement, which is essentially direct purchase of power, or through renewable energy credit is essentially just when you can't locate a renewable energy facility, a near load center or like a city, you located somewhere else, feed it into the grid, and by the credits, most plans most people who most entities that are buying renewable energy want to buy the power, they want their cities and communities to be powered by, by green electrons. And so I think, you know, limited coastline limited ability to to bring power lines, large scale, commercial grade utility scale power lines assure in a place like Maryland is a challenge, especially when you have an eight and a half gigawatt target for offshore wind, which is, you know, five or 6 million homes worth of power significant. But you can't talk about challenge without talking about an opportunity. And, and I will say that that goal and the public sector leadership that the state of Maryland has demonstrated over a long period of time close to a decade, Maryland was in fact the first state in the country to establish an offshore wind specific Renewable Energy Target is the reason why the state is so well positioned to tackle that challenge by being a leader in the region. But I think you sort of have to take the good with the bad a little bit from from our perspective of of renewable energy development and actually delivering the solutions that that helps states achieve these these really ambitious goals and targets.
First, I want to thank you for inviting me to campus and in sharing your evening with me, it's really exciting to be with such amazing people. And I love hanging out with students and talking with you all. So I'm really looking forward to sharing some of the roundtables in just a few moments. So the question is talking about climate impacts, and what we're most concerned about with climate change. And so a lot of the previous conversation, I don't want to restate. And so I wanted to add some new context to those concerns. So my answer was extreme weather. That's what I think is the most concerning for the state of Maryland. And it's because of how interconnected everything is. So I want to give a couple of examples. For example, in terms of human health, we have a rise, a projected rise in vector borne diseases. So these are diseases that are spread by vectors, things like mosquitoes, or ticks. And when it's really hot, these vectors travel further, and they live longer. And so we're seeing a rise in diseases that are not native to our area. During the Obama administration, we had an outbreak of the Zika virus, if you might recall, I see some head nods. And so we're really looking at it from a human health perspective. From the Chesapeake Bay perspective, we also look at extreme heat and how that impacts our water. So you think okay, well, the waters getting hotter. But what exactly does that do to all of the critters that live there? Well, one of the things that happens is our most small organisms are impacted, and often create chain reactions along the way. So for example, we have sea grasses, one of the things that happens is that when it gets really hot, the sea grasses struggle, and we're losing sea grasses. Now, critters live inside these grasses. This includes things like blue crabs, which are a cornerstone of our Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. They're one of the most important species within it. So if they don't have habitat, and they're also experiencing impacts from warmer waters, then the whole chain starts to become impacted. And in Maryland, so much of our economy and our way of life rests on the health of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. And so it's really important that we start from the smallest to prevent a lot of those larger chain impacts. And then lastly, when we talk about food, I love to eat. And one of the things that really concerns me is our availability to grow food moving forward. So we do have projections also that food growth is going to become more complicated, it could become more expensive. And when we talk about extreme weather, warmer air holds more moisture, and so it's going to be raining a lot more. And all that rain is impacting us in our cities, but it's also impacting us in our farmlands, it takes away all of the nutrients and our topsoil. And so what we're doing is regenerating the health of the soil so that it maintains more than moisture. But if we lose a lot of top soils, then we get an impacted ability to grow food. That's a lot of what happened in a country called Haiti. They lost a lot of their top soils. And we see those agricultural impacts throughout the whole country. And so to sum up, it's really the interconnected components of society, everything is impacted by something else. If you've ever heard of the butterfly effect, that whenever a butterfly spreads its wings, it can cause a chain reaction on the other side of the world. And so that's often the case with climate change.
I appreciate what everyone has already said, I'm also a wetland scientist. So I'm coming from it from an ecological and a plant viewpoint, but also working at the Chesapeake Bay Trust, providing grants and hearing what these folks need. I also want to say that we were lucky enough at the trust to get a Sondheim scholar a couple of years ago, and I'm so grateful to be here with you all. And I can't wait to hear we all say during our individual discussions. So I also love being around students as well. But I've put my climate challenges for Maryland, three buckets, which have already been noted. But I'll expand upon them a little bit. Number one flooding, right we have increased rain events that are increased in duration. So take for example, 2000 year flood events that happened in Ellicott City within less than five years of each other. So increased flooding, causing increasing frequency and increased duration. So stronger storms are happening more frequently. And so our intensity, duration and frequency curves are off right. So we really need to create more research to determine Well, where are we at? And how do we how are we able to like treat and infiltrate all of this extra water? due to the flooding, and I'll echo what Serena has noted about the most vulnerable communities being affected by these flooding areas. Number two, sea level rise, erosion of our beaches, erosion of our soils, and of course, loss of wetlands, loss of wetlands, I've put in a huge bucket. I know that Dr. Avolio that also is a plant ecologist. And so what I'm thinking when I think of sea level rise is as the water goes up, you know, we are flooding communities like oysters and low Marsh, we're flooding. Hi marsh as well, high Marsh is moving to low Marsh, and how will these migration corridors happen? Right, if we have expansive areas where we have like carved out and set aside, then that migration can happen with sea level rise. But many places we have hardened and volcanic shorelines in which there is no opportunity for migration. So the the low Marsh, the high Marsh, the oysters, the submerged, aquatic vegetation could be lost. And that is that I think has a huge impact. And then as Serena has already noted, increased temperatures, right? increased temperatures, more frequent, and extreme events, such as higher temperatures in the summer times. And those also are affecting the most vulnerable folks, folks with that are old and young with asthma. And I don't know how many of y'all have friends that are have sinus infections now, but increase pollen counts as well. So I think that climate change is really affecting our most vulnerable disadvantaged communities in Maryland.
What are your organization's primary goals in meeting these climate challenges in the coming years?
Right, so we do have a Climate Action Plan, and we have had one for quite some time. But in meeting these challenges, what we do is we divide them up into individual buckets, as we have already noted, and we have individual grant programs, so that we can help communities we empower communities, we provide grant funds to committees to address these issues. And we do this by leveraging our funds and creating partnerships. The Chesapeake Bay Trust, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation runs a joint oyster restoration grant program. So we provide money to folks that want to create their own oysters or grow their own oysters. And so that can help with outreach and engagement that can help improve the natural communities with serinus. Group at Maryland Department of Environment, we have the tree Solutions Act. Now, 5 million trees being planted in the state of Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay Trust is managing the urban tree portion of that 500,000 trees in historically underserved and redlined communities, we all need more trees to address the temperature issue. I mean, you can just see walking in a park versus a sidewalk. It's like a 10 degree difference. And so we're trying to reach those underserved and redlined communities and try to green up their spaces and get ready, we know that there's increased flooding. So we're also running grant programs to address flooding, and storm water mitigation as well. So we provide funds grant funds for communities to say we have a flooding problem, we'd like to treat and infiltrate with a rain garden or a bioretention. And so they put those particular practices in the grounds with our funding, but they really feel like they own those projects, because they've done community outreach and community engagement, and they've owned those projects. For sea level rise. One of the big things we're doing right now is we're working with the Environmental Protection Agency on a strategic plan for the title wetlands of the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed, we realized that we are not meeting our goals for the Chesapeake Bay watershed plan of 2025, we are so far behind and creating wetlands, we had a goal in 2025, we realized we are no longer going to meet that goal. And so we're writing a plan. And a big part is restoration enhancement migration quarters as well. So whenever we see a need, and we have funding that we can leverage our partners that we can match with, we provide the funds to the community so that they can run their own projects.
So we just talked about extreme weather, right, that the weather patterns that we're seeing, they're going to become much more severe in all directions. So we can see more droughts, we can see more floods, often in very close proximity to each other. So I want to give a couple examples of work that we're doing to address this. And one is our oysters. They're one of the most important species in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. And they're really great at doing one particular job. They filter the water and one oyster can filter up bathtubs worth of water in one day. And so if we put more oysters back in the water, we can have hope for a cleaner ecosystem. So we've been working on that. We have put so far 6 billion oysters back in the water and with a goal of 10 billion by 2025. But aside from filtering water, they also do something really cool. Who knows how oysters live communities, right? So they have hard shells, and when they get together, they form sort of like little cities underwater. We call them oyster reefs, similar to what a coral reef system would look like. These oyster reefs are actually really great at storm protection. So we just talked about extreme weather causing more moisture, more moisture causes more intense storms. When we have things like severe rain or even hurricanes, they get up this way, these oyster reefs can act as a protective barrier, particularly for our low lying communities. And so it's really great to protect this little critter, because it has so many benefits to our entire ecosystem. A second thing that we're doing is related to our agriculture. So when it rains, a lot of the things that we put on our farmlands goes into the water and eventually makes its way into the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Now, who knows what we put on our farm lands? We have pesticides being put on our farm lands, and we have fertilizers. Now fertilizers, what do they do? Right, they help plants grow. But what happens when they get into the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, we eventually get algal blooms. So fertilizers are really great at helping plants grow. But when we have too many of them going off the farmlands and into the water, they help the plants in the Chesapeake Bay grow. And they they're growing beyond their normal growth. And so we are getting these situations called algal blooms, and even dead zones, if you've heard of that, basically, when you have so many plants growing, they suffocate everything else, they take up all the oxygen and things around that start to decay. So one of the things that we can do is we can work with farmers to reduce pesticide use, as well as fertilizer use. And you can do that using really old methods like rotational grazing, growing a variety of different crops, even using silvopasture, which is when you use animals to regenerate the soil and help things keep moving. So one of the projects that CBF is doing is working with farmers. But those are two examples for now, oysters and farmers.
So, you know, working to address the climate crisis is really at the core of everything, or set does. You know, I mentioned earlier that we're a developer and operator of an all renewable generation portfolio, or set actually built the world's first offshore wind farm a little over 30 years ago, in the early 90s. When it did that it went by another name, it was called danish oil and natural gas. And it was one of the largest fossil fuel generation companies in Europe. And about 15 years ago, the company's leadership made the decision to divest all of that fossil fuel generation and move to an all renewable portfolio. And from that came what is today known as Ørsted, which is a company with a vision for a world that runs entirely on green energy. And so what that means is not only are we only going to build renewable energy, but we're going to do it in a way that leaves the world a better place than we found it. So we are working across our supply chain to decarbonize the production of the components that go into the creation of an offshore wind farm that includes everything from the concrete and the foundation's to the materials that that make up the blades, and then the cells and the steel that goes into the tower and foundation production. And you can do those things and bring in suppliers, when you when you are as large as Ørsted is globally, these industries don't exist here yet in the US, which is actually one of the really exciting things about bringing this this industry online, kind of across the industry here in the US is that there's a lot of opportunity for new manufacturing and, and new construction and new workforce development. So you know, I think from the very practical standpoint of of actually bringing an offshore wind farm online, you know, climate goals and climate solutions are really at the core of, of that work. But we also have a goal to to make all of our projects have a positive biodiversity impacts by 2030. So, land based resources as well as offshore wind when you think about everything that goes into constructing an offshore wind farm structure in the water offshore and underwater cable route. And a landfall that in some cases, not just with Ørsted, but with other developers as well. Is is is connecting to the grid at perhaps a legacy coal fired power plant that needs considerable remediation outside of the infrastructure that needs to be built to to accommodate the power that regenerating so all of that is something that we take into consideration when we build an offshore wind farm when we build a land based solar field or land based wind farm, all the solutions are different and, and, and get to different localized challenges. But the company is committed to, to preserving a sustainable environment while we bring this new industry online at the same time.
I talked about the challenges. So the question is what are we doing to what are some of our goals to address those challenges that we talked that I talked about that we all are talking about? So if you recall, I said that one of the biggest challenges is climate change. And so what so what you have when you're thinking of public policy, you have to think about what is the actual problem? That climate change, that's a symptom? So what is the problem? The problem is greenhouse gases that are emitting right, we have just so much greenhouse gas emissions, and we're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, right, that's really what we're trying to do, the planet is warming, right, we're trying to keep it at a certain degree Celsius. As you all know, 1.5, that's the Paris Agreement, if you ever heard of that, and it doesn't even look like we're going to meet that. So that's the problem. So in my agency, the policy issues that we're focusing on is what's creating that problem the most, it's transportation, and buildings, that's where you're getting the greenhouse gas emissions, right. And so that's the policy focus area for us, transportation is 40%. of greenhouse gas, the building sector is 16%. So if we can tackle those two areas, then we are doing well, in terms of trying to solve the problem. So that's where the policies were pushing. We want to electrify transportation, we want to electrify buildings. So we have a lot of policies, a lot of goals in place, so that we can address them. We're trying to move towards EVs, electric vehicles, and electric buses, and trucks and everything else and buildings. And so that's where we're focusing our attention. And that's where the goals are. For our agency. We also have another goal, too, I talked about it a little bit trees, we want to plant more trees, not that many, just 5 million. And we want to do that within a certain time period. So that's really important for storm mitigation, and all the other things I mentioned earlier, when I spoke.
So the Secretary spoke about environmental justice, and that there's an unequal pattern of tree vegetation throughout cities. Part of the work that I see myself in is trying to document and understand what's actually out on the landscape. I have a small group of lab I don't I'm not a big organization and a lot of money. But what I want to do is understand what really exists across the landscape. So a lot of the data that we have, and we understand are from satellites. From above, we don't have lots of information on what types of species and plants are across Baltimore. And so I see Aiden in the room. And one of the projects we do is trying to go to different neighborhoods with different patterns of disinvestment and understand what plants are found on the landscape. And what we know what the spaces are, we can understand a better idea of how these plants will persist and what they have their benefits and services. So one thing we found was that there's more invasive plant species in lower income neighborhoods, and then a really wealthy neighborhood where they have lots more planted plants. And so this is fairly obvious, but having documentation of it is helpful. Another thing that my lab has worked on, is looking at tree diversity. And we found that not surprisingly, but depressingly there is lower tree diversity in formerly redlined neighborhoods. Why does tree diversity matter? Well, it matters because we have all these stories through time of something comes in and wipes out all, all individuals have one species, right. And so to have a really resilient urban forest that will persist through time, we want to have lots of high diversity, we won't have lost different types of tree species. What we found is that in formerly redlined neighborhoods, a lot of one species is being planted red maple, and that's because the tree does great and really harsh environments. And so the city of Baltimore is investing in formerly redlined neighborhoods are putting a lot of trees in but they're only planting one species because that's a species that performs the best. What this could potentially do in the future is that something comes out and threatens right maple, we might now have a new pattern of not having trees in those areas. Another thing that might work does the seeking of red maples is we're planting all these trees. We have we're planting 5 million trees. It's so exciting. But a lot of these trees are cultivars. They are propagated for certain traits, like you know, Autumn glory, right? These red maples have these beautiful, unreal red colors right in the fall. Well, where did these trees come from? And what are the consequences of just planting one cultivars? So I've talked about diversity at the species level we can also have diversity within a species right. And what we're potentially doing is just planting big monocultures, which means that that would make the urban forest even more vulnerable to potential future conditions. So that's a another project that we're doing to try and understand what's happening within genetic diversity and how different cultivars fare across the urban landscape. A final product I want to talk about as part of the Baltimore social environmental collaborative, it's a big deal, a grant that's been led by the giant tech out of my department, .... at Johns Hopkins. And this is to it's a huge project using like lots of modelers and people to study soils and water to a big thing. And the ultimate goal is to create a model, a mathematical model of Baltimore going forward. And so what we're doing is we're observing what is occurring across the landscape now, but then we could put in future scenarios, like as a secretary said, the weather it's gonna get hotter, well, we could then put these elevated temperatures into the model and understand what's going to happen across the landscape. And the part that I'm doing the small my small cog, and it's very big contraption is to look at what trees are doing. And so we're studying a variety of different species across a range of environmental conditions in Baltimore. And really, I'm trying to understand, like when you go to the doctor, and you get a checkup, right, like they take your heartbeat, they make you breathe all this stuff. I'm basically doing similar measurements with trees, how much are they photosynthesizing? How much water are they transpiring? And how are they doing?
So this question is, what is your organization doing right now to advance the goals you've identified, especially in light of the outsized impacts of climate change on historically marginalized populations?
And one of the ways we're advancing the goals is, as I stated, environmental justice is so important. So I've made that as Secretary number one priority in my agency, and I hired already the first assistant secretary for environmental justice ever in Maryland's Department of the Environment, and she happened to be right back there, joining in with us and Nika Addison. The other priority that we have, the way we're advancing it is, we need the funding. If you recall, I spoke about investing. So we're doing everything we can, as you said, to make sure we have additional funding, we're really making sure we're getting as much federal funding and grants and loans and whatever it takes, so that we can get this investment needed. So we can advance the climate goals. That's really, really important. The last piece partnering with private partnerships, we have to partner with industry, we have to partner with investors, the more money the public policy issue, the more money you invest, the more you get, the federal government invested, I don't know, let's say, I think it was maybe $200 million that ended up making, we put that on the table from the federal government that made about a billion, so you got to put money to make money. So that's one thing that we're focusing on.
Yeah, maybe just quickly, to just build on that, you know, we don't get an opportunity in this country to stand up a brand new industry all that often. And offshore, when really is a new industry, it's going to cause our ports to look much different. It will cause our Decennial manufacturing areas to look much different than they do today will cause our electrical grid infrastructure to look much different than it does. But if we don't do that, in a way that also causes the communities outside of the gates of all those facilities to look different. And we get to a place where we're all of a sudden delivering clean, renewable power at scale. But we haven't really made all of the opportunity that comes along with it available in an equitable and sustainable and accessible way, it will not have been a success. So investing along in workforce development programs and, and partnerships in communities so that that happens, and so that everyone who wants one has an opportunity to participate in the industry. And there are myriad ways to do that, in an industry like offshore wind is critically important, just as important if not more than investing in the, in the infrastructure and in the turbines and in the vessels themselves. And so that's something that states, Maryland included, have prioritized, rightfully so in their procurements for offshore wind, and something that Orsted and many other developers are investing in, not just on the east coast, but across the country. And so I just Just to mention that's, that's a that's just a critical priority when you sort of step back from an industry perspective and think about what will happen to this country, all to the good over the next couple of decades as this industry really gets. We get started.
All right, another case study for you all. At the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. We Definitely prioritize environmental justice. And you know, we've been changing our staff to reflect that. And so one of the things that I really like about working at CBF is that we're not all scientists. And though we each have a role in the movement, I'm a political scientist, you know, I don't have a science background in biology. And yet, there's still a role for me within the organization. I work with attorneys, actual, like biologists and water quality scientists and restoration scientists. I work with professionals in communications, and educators. And the diversity of the staff is really what informs our projects and our approaches to that. And so one of the projects that we've been working on is in a community called Turner Station. So Turner Station is in an area of Baltimore County called Dundalk. Have any of you been for know where Dundalk is? So for those of you who don't, don't talk is very near where the Key Bridge used to be prior to the terrible disaster a few weeks ago. And so this is an area that is historically black. And it has historically been underserved. And so here we have two layers of history to address and reconcile with. And so we've been working on two particular issues in the nearby area. One of them is called Bear Creek. So this is a little creek that sits right next to the homes in Dundalk and in Turner Station. And it's a Superfund site. Superfund site is a place that has been heavily heavily polluted. This has toxic chemicals that are known as carcinogens. And so the EPA has said that they wanted to clean it up. And that's a great thing. However, the cleanup process is really, really expedited. They're planning to do a cleanup in about two years where normally the process takes about 10. So as far as CBS role is, is to keep an eye on those projected plants and make sure that what they are cleaning up doesn't impact these low lying communities, particularly when it rains. So our scientists are looking at the plants and working with terastation Conservation teams and other residents to keep a close eye on plans like that. And other infrastructure around the neighborhood because of the amount of rain and flooding that that occurs in the community even when it doesn't rain. The second thing is, for the last 50 years or so residents have been experiencing flooding issues. They're frustrated and upset, understandably so. And so we were awarded a grant in collaboration with Baltimore County Government, and the turn station conservation team in Baltimore, Good Neighbor space and a lot of collaborative partners. And what we're doing is we're taking an inventory of all of the places where flooding occurs. So this is done through surveying residents. So far, I think we have almost 200. And we're going to take all of that along with our engineers and make models for what kind of infrastructure is needed, where that we can hopefully apply for funding and implement those solutions on a on a quick timeline. So this is a very collaborative effort. This is done hand in hand with neighbors. And it's really important that they continue to be a driving force in all this planning in the process.
All right, I'll just quickly state that. The Chesapeake Bay Trust, as you know, by now is a grant making organization. So we provide grants to empower communities to do their own work. And so we award projects based on applications and DNI has been important to the trust since 2008. We've had a diversity and inclusion plan since 2008. So it's always been part of what we have done for quite some time. Some of the things that we've noted that we had noticed about 10 years ago, as some of these groups have really great ideas, but they don't have the capacity to complete the project. They just need a little bit of help. So we've created capacity building initiatives are where we actually have grants that we give out to organizations that really don't have the capacity and have great ideas. And there's a need in there maybe underserved or under engaged community, because that is what we strive to do is reach under under engaged underserved communities, especially first time applicants as well. And so we have a capacity building initiative. And we also created kind of a mentor mentee relationship, and we call it community based organization and a capacity building organization. So we kind of groups, an organization that has done this really well with a new community group and kind of they teach and learn from each other. So capacity building is hugely important to try to reach those under engaged in underserved groups.
Thanks so much for listening to today's broadcast. You know, I'm going to be taking a much closer look at the trees in my neighborhood after hearing our speakers remarks. And I'm also going to be paying much closer attention to the policy debates about our climate future happening in Annapolis. Even if you've listened to this discussion, and you aren't a Marylander I hope that the discussion inspired you to think deeply about climate issues in your own backyards. And then as always, you remember to keep questioning.
Retrieving the Social Sciences is a production of the UMBC Center for Social Science Scholarship. Our director is Dr. Christine Mallinson, our Associate Director is Dr. Felipe Filemeno, and our undergraduate production assistant is Jean Kim. Our theme music was composed and recorded by D'Juan Moreland. Find out more about CS3 at socialscience.umbc.edu and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, where you can find full video recordings of recent CS3 sponsored events. Until next time, keep questioning.
