April 15, 2020

State of Our Rivers Report – 2019

The Federation is pleased to present you with our State of Our Rivers Report Card!

Our South, West, and Rhode Riverkeeper, Jesse Iliff, presented the report card virtually. We will be sharing the presentation on our website, Facebook, and Twitter shortly. This year was the first year Arundel Rivers presented all three rivers in the same report.

All the rivers improved, helped by the decreased rainfall in 2019, which meant less stormwater driven pollution to our rivers. Underwater Grasses resurged, which is exciting. Our oysters on our sanctuary reef are working hard, filtering the water and the calcium carbonate in their shells are helping mitigate the damages from acid rain.

The Federation has more investigation ahead of us. Even though the West. and Rhode River have significantly smaller watersheds and higher percentages of forest than the Severn and South Rivers, they have much higher total suspended solids (sediment and algae) flowing down river. The Federation will try to find the sources of these plumes of sediment and algae. Thank you to everyone who volunteered and supported our monitoring program that is the driver for our science-based approach to restoration.

Download Jessie’s full presentation here: