Stormwater Committee Meeting

January 5, 2009

Members Attending:

Ed Murtagh (Chair)

Ann Hoffnar

Diane Cameron (by phone)

Wendy Bell

Kit Gage

Jenny Reed

Kathy Michels

Holly Olson

Catherine Tunis (also head of TP Committee on the Environment)

Julie Donkin

Guests Attending:

Larry Silverman, MCWQAG

Barbara Beelar

Steve Donkin

Milford Sprecher, TP Committee on the Environment

John Snitzer, Snitzer Landscaping

Grant from the Takoma Foundation

The evening was spent primarily on the $1500 grant we applied for and received from the Takoma Foundation. A copy of the grant is attached. The purpose is for Friends of Sligo Creek to describe rain gardens and other watershed friendly landscaping practices to the community, their basic parameters, their utility and their implementation through community meetings and press. We will increase the consideration of their use, evaluate available locations and help implement their installation in the Sligo Creek watershed. One of the features of the grant is a link with Casa de Maryland to provide training in raingarden work for some of their workers, giving them a chance to learn new skills. We also want to work with Casa to increase our ability to work with the Spanish speaking community.

Brainstorming Implementation of the Grant

We talked about ways to move forward on implementation.

• Larry suggested we develop a master marketing plan. We need to have a consistent message (including how beautiful these gardens can be)

• Hold an introductory public meeting at the Community Center.

• This community meeting could be taped to run on the Takoma Park TV channel.

• Hold neighborhood meetings in 5 or 6 neighborhoods--one should be in a Spanish speaking community.

• Perhaps a petition could be circulated at the neighborhood meetings and given to the City Council asking for the city’s support of this effort.

• Barbara Beelar is bi-lingual and offered her yard as well as help with a brochure.

• Diane already has a brochure in draft form and offered to circulate it to us.

• We need teams to follow up with each neighborhood meeting to help the neighborhood get started and stick with it.

• We could plan another rain garden tour.

• Talk to Home Depot to encourage them to market rain garden plants and materials.

• We could do a lecture at Behnke’s

Community Green Teams

To see improvements in Sligo’s water quality, we will need to transform hundreds of yards per year for many years. To increase the rate in which sustainable practices are installed, we would like to form several Community Green Teams. These people would take an area and semi-autonomously see to the raingardens and other watershed friendly landscaping practices in the area. We would like to find perhaps 5 such areas for our initial effort. Potentially, we have Holly’s neighborhood (Forest Estates), where work has begun; Ed’s neighborhood (Sligo Headwaters), also begun; the Takoma Park area, where the Grant is to be implemented; the North Hills of Sligo Creek (Heather Phipp’s neighborhood) and the Woodmoor area (within the Northwest Branch.) There is a second grant proposal to CBT that would greatly help with this effort, but we have not heard back yet regarding it.

A Takoma Park Green Team was formed: Kit Gage, Jenny Reed, Barbara Beelar and Catherine Tunis.

March Program Meeting

Ed has talked to Valerie Ervin, MC Council Member, and new appointee to Chesapeake Bay Trust Board, about speaking at our March program meeting about her views about the Chesapeake bay and Sligo Creek and time for us to provide our views on what needs to be done. He will work with Mike Smith to set it up and Ann will tell the Board

minutes by Ed Murtagh and Ann Hoffnar