Stormwater Committee Meeting

January 24, 2008

Note: This was a joint meeting of the Stormwater committee, FOSC Outreach

committee and the Water Quality Advisory Group Outreach working group

Attending:

Members of Stormwater and Outreach committees:

• Ed Murtagh (Chair), Jenny Reed, Gina Riazi, Ann Hoffnar, Holly Olson, Brent Bolin, and Cecile O’Conner.

Guests:

• Meo Curtis, MCDEP; Ansu John, MCDEP; Tanya Spano, MWCOG/MCWQAG; Jill Coutts, MCPS/WQAG

Discussion:

Ed gave a brief introduction, explaining that we want to place more emphasis than ever before on outreach this year. We have built a number of demonstration rain gardens and now it is time to use them to promote raingarden building and other LID techniques among residents of the watershed. Ed wants to encourage watershed families to apply for the rainscapes grants, but he is concerned about the success of this program (especially with maintenance.) Community outreach by FoSC to homeowners is needed for rainscapes projects to be successful.

We discussed how to get started. Our guest experts helped frame the discussion. We ourselves need training and the other watershed groups in the area also need training.

We also need to think about our strategy: We could focus on increasing committee participation--adding members with high motivation and time to help. Or our main goal might be to get a certain number of watershed residents to install rainscapes practices such as rain gardens.

We made preliminary plans for a workshop or training session to be held probably the 9th of March. At this training session:

• Presentation: Ansu John would make a presentation to give us the basics. There is a free outreach toolbox available from EPA, for example. There is also a free DVD presentation called “Getting in Step.” Ansu would help us plan our first steps. The experts explained that we need to keep it simple. Only try to promote one or two major ideas this year.

• Break-out Groups: After the presentation each watershed group would pick the one or two ideas they want to promote this year. For example, they could promote gutter disconnects; or concrete vs gardens.... Each group would choose their audience/s (schools; civic associations; churches; minority groups...). They would decide how they are going to get involved with the audience--how to get to know them and know what they want; to find a “hook”. Each group would think about partners, for example, working with the Green Kids program. The groups would make a road map for the year--steps toward the goal.

After this training session, we will be better equipped to invite local advisory groups, civic associations, to join in our efforts.

Minutes prepared by Ed Murtagh and Ann Hoffnar