June 29, 2023
A note from your Outreach Coordinator, Mairin Corasaniti
To our incredible Arundel Rivers supporters,
Hello! It has been a whirlwind three months since I came on board, and I have been in awe of this incredible and powerful community since. In this time, we’ve had over 300 of you show up and show out to volunteer across our watersheds, donating hundreds and hundreds of hours of your precious time to plant native plants and trees, weed out invasive species, replenish the Glebe Bay reef with oyster spat, and so much more. Thank you for a beautiful, bountiful spring!
As we head into summer (happy belated Solstice!), I wanted to give you all a snapshot of what’s cooking in the Outreach Department, aside from peach pie, which is a summer favorite.
Summer Camps! We’re supporting multiple summer camps across the watershed this summer through partnerships with Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Maryland Business Roundtable for Education, the West River United Methodist Day Camp, Anne Arundel County Recreation and Parks, and more. We’ll be running programming to introduce campers of all ages to their watersheds. Stay tuned for seeds, student stewardship, and more!
Community Festivals! Columbia Beach and Londontown community members, we’ll be seeing you at your community festivals this summer. Have a community event coming up and want us to table? Email me! We love coming out to celebrate the season and our rivers with you.
On the Water! Or, at least, on its shores. We’ve been running our seasonal bacteria monitoring with ease thanks to our crew of stellar samplers and our fantastic partners at Anne Arundel Community College. Want to see results from your local swimming hole? Check out SwimGuide! We’re also kicking off an SAV Watchers program, where paddlers throughout our rivers take data on beds of underwater grasses.
Oysters Abound! We have collected the spat-on-shell from oyster growers throughout our rivers thanks to the Oyster Recovery Partnership Marylanders Grow Oysters program. This spring, thousands of baby oysters joined our reef at Glebe Bay, multiplying its filtering power and creating habitat for countless river critters.
Before I sign off, I want to thank all of you. I have received such a warm welcome here, and I am so thrilled to meet even more of you and connect our full community to our waterways. Your care, hard work, and dedication to clean water bolster this good work and make it possible. Thank you!
Mairin Corasaniti
The Arundel Rivers Outreach program is sponsored by the Beverly and Stephen Marcus Foundation.