Outdoors Maryland

OK guys I've just seen that little corner son and then his he still has a chance again. And the others don't look at the camera. Show him it's Tell me should not be quiet now I just want to which is just just describe the Patuxent Water Keeper Association for me the Patuxent River Keeper is a and Watershed advocacy organization. We are custodians and stewards of a particular waterway in our case the longest intrastate waterway in the state of Maryland. And like all water keepers we're advocacy organizations too but we do a variety of things to restore and maintain and to keep an eye on our waterway. And what are the goals the goals are to protect and maintain water quality to advocate for better laws and better enforcement of existing laws to protect the waterway from pollution and various impairments but also to build a community of people who care about the waterway who help maintain the tradition of stewardship and to future generations. Me and describe some of the activities it would like to see exposed. I've been back in the office since the start there.

Well there's a continuum of things that the volunteers and the water keepers do in their organizations among them as we do trash pick ups and clean ups. We plant trees in the near areas to the river to slow down runoff and to filter water when it returns to the waterway. We do water testing that helps empower citizens give them skills that they can use locally to locally to their own waterway to help them understand what's going on with the water quality. There are maintenance jobs and tasks that need to be done. Like many water keepers we maintain a fleet of different boats and ways to patrol our waterways in our case we use kayaks and motor boats to different types of motor boats. So volunteers help us maintain the equipment they maintain the safety equipment that goes along with those boats we run tours and so we also have people who are involved in doing the logistics and behind the scenes work to make sure that our kayaking tours are safe. We have people who do office work such as maintaining websites typing documents answering calls helping us investigate complaints and the list goes on of the types of things that volunteers and

others do in connection with our organizations. And describe the letters that I will be getting when you're actually on the water. Describe what that would be seeing. Well among the things that we do for example is we help clear snags from the waterway that block fish passage of the Patuxent of spawning grounds for a variety of fin fish and there are manmade obstructions that sometimes prevent them from getting up river and down river during their spawning. So our true crews actually go out and they patrol the waterway they look for they take note of areas that have snags. They photograph them. They use mapping and satellite tools in order to identify the location of them. Then they'll strategically work out ways to remove those flags which are going to start over again. So our teams will actually go out and investigate where the snags are to be found and they'll come up with ways to remove them safely. They'll catalog them. We maintain a database of snags. We have a separate team that actually goes out and removes

those snags and they work in the waterway. They wear life vests and safety equipment. We have people who are known as riggers whose job it is to keep the people who work in the channel safe. They also attach lines to obstructions that might be dangerous that might break free while we're working in the water. And we want to make sure that people don't get injured. In addition to rigorous We have cutters. These are people who actually work in the channel with cutting tools of various kinds. Usually we work with the hand songs and non mechanized equipment because they're easier to control and easier to make sure that nobody gets hurt. We also have cleanups ongoing. And so you'll see people actually patrolling and looking for. On one hand things they can pick up with their hands can use and things of that nature. But in cases where things are too large like a washing machines in auto parts you'd be amazed the kind of stuff people find in the waterways. I mean shopping carts and tires I think are among the leading items that we find in some cases they'll actually take note of those things again they'll use GISS satellite tools so that we can find that location again. You know our waterways are malleable they

shift and change and so sometimes you find something and then you lose it again because you can't find the place where you found it. And so that mapping can component is very very important in the work that we do. You'll see people in our tree nursery we maintain over a thousand trees annually. Right now our tree nursery is at a low ebb but we're about to have an influx of new trees. So we're cleaning out last year's trees will plant the ones that can be salvaged will prune them and trim them and prepare them with potting soil to go out into the field. And we make these trees available freely to people who want to plant them in the watershed. You might see some people doing some office work. We have a number of full time volunteers people who are retired or have the means to come in and spend almost all of the time because the work is empowering to people enjoy doing it and it's fun to do and they feel like they've really accomplished something. So you'll see people working on websites and like I said working on some of the documents first and foremost though water keepers are advocates. So a lot of the work we're doing is hands on trying to solve the problems of the waterway. I say problems because that's different from symptoms picking up trash is a symptom. Going after

polluters. That's a problem. And so there's an important difference between the two. I mean can you give me I think you said at the very beginning but you just give me like an End statement of why this is important to be a lot of people who want to keep or is important because you are really restoring control of our waterways to the people and the waterways are important infrastructure for our communities. We think of waterways as a unifying element a thread that people can find that is a point of agreement something we all have in common is something we all rely on. Water is meaningful to people people sense of water. I find grounds them in a particular way. People have powerful feelings about their water way but they're also tied to it biologically without clean water without that gold standard of clean water. We wouldn't have robust communities healthy communities. OK good. You. Go out. You will get your sources to be over. That's how you say sound fresh. I don't see

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