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Cheverly Green Infrastructure Plan
CHEVERLY’S NATURAL CAPITAL
Natural Resources of Cheverly
Natural resources are fundamental components of our environment that are necessary or beneficial to our existence and well-being. Some that are perpetual, such as solar or wind energy, are not in danger of being depleted. However, other renewable resources, such as ecosystems, fresh air and clean water, wildlife and productive soil, are in danger of being used up faster than they can be regenerated, unless carefully stewarded. The central purpose of the Cheverly Green Infrastructure plan is to assure that these resources are sustainable and remain available to future generations.
Soil
Soil is the foundation of all green infrastructure. Soil microorganisms modify chemicals into nutrients plants can use. Soil also retains gases necessary for life and stores carbon, which is a contributor to global warming. Soil holds, filters, purifies and releases water slowly to replenish our aquifers thus reducing flooding and erosion. It also captures waste and toxic substances.
Degradation of productive soils by development is of increasing concern as our population keeps growing and soil is used up faster than it is being replenished. Degradation is caused predominantly by human activities that contaminate soil and disturb soil layers, aeration, hydrology, nutrient content and the ability of the microorganisms to carry on energy and nutrient transfers. Soils in Cheverly are affected primarily by 1) development involving clearcutting, excavation, grading and construction; 2) creation of highly impervious paved or compacted surfaces such as parking lots, driveways and playing fields; 3) erosion caused by stormwater runoff; and 4) chemical pollution and waste from industry, commercial establishments, vehicles and residences. Application of green infrastructure practices would help replenish and protect the soil which nourishes our natural environment.
Recommendations
Minimize topsoil disturbance to protect natural hydrology and aeration, soil micro- organisms, plant roots, and dormant seed banks. Avoid deep land disturbance that can release sulfuric acid that kills vegetation, corrodes pipes and concrete and generates acidic runoff which is extremely damaging to stream waters.
Use permeable surfaces where feasible to allow water absorption, filtering and storage.
Minimize use of machinery or vehicles that compact the soil and reduce its capacity to circulate water, oxygen and nutrients
Maintain vegetated surfaces to preserve the soil ecosystem and reduce excessive heating, evaporation and erosion.
Minimize the use of lawn fertilizers, pesticides, salt or other toxic substances and prevent their leaching into the ground or contaminating streams.
Water
Clean water sustains the natural environment, provides essential services for the community, and supports recreation, and educational and leisure activities. Natural seeps, springs and groundwater provide clean water to area streams. When neglected and abused, water resources become a detriment rather than an asset. The most serious and damaging water pollution and degradation in the region is caused by unchecked stormwater runoff. Implementing and maintaining a green infrastructure plan provides a proactive, cost-effective approach to reduce runoff and to restore area waterways.
The replacement of forests and wetlands with the impervious surfaces of roads, parking lots, and buildings prevents the natural infiltration of rainwater. Past practices to quickly pipe runoff to nearby streams are being replaced by methods that maximize on-site infiltration and retention of water in ways that mimic natural systems and provide ecosystem services in the built environment. According to the Center for Watershed Protection, stream quality declines when impervious surface area in a watershed exceeds 10 percent, with severe degradation anticipated beyond 25 percent impervious cover. A 2009 analysis reported impervious surface area in Cheverly at 23 percent, at the threshold for severe degradation.
Increased stormwater volume and velocity causes erosion and sedimentation that kills aquatic species, increases water
temperature, causes water damage and flooding, and pollutes waterways. Deforestation of stream buffers can also increase runoff up to 40 percent. Lack of trees to shade streams also increases water temperature. Most of our water pollution is caused by stormwater runoff flushing nutrients, chemicals, litter and sediments from industrial and commercial sites, streets, parking lots, driveways and patios, as well as lawns and highly compacted surfaces such as playing fields. Department of the Environment Stream Corridor Assessments of Tributaries 1 and 4 have cited stream bank erosion, stormwater outfalls, and inadequate stream buffer as deficiencies, the latter two especially for Tributary 4.
Lower Beaverdam Creek, which flows along the south side of Route 50 and receives most of Cheverly’s stormwater, has been channeled and reshaped to accommodate three rail lines, a major highway, power substations, and extensive commercial and industrial development. Clearly Cheverly cannot clean up the stream on its own, but can be a catalyst and partner for long-term commitments to restore the health of this and other area streams.
Recommendations
Improve water quality of Lower Beaverdam Creek and other local water bodies through storm water management, land protection, and reduction of fertilizers and pesticides
Reduce town-wide impervious surface area by a minimum of 5 percent from the current 23% by 2020.
Adopt on-site retention as the optimal community approach to storm water management.
Implement a storm water management program to reduce volume, velocity, and temperature of runoff.
Protect streamside lands and headwater areas of streams to mimic natural flows and reduce flooding and erosion.
Provide incentives to land owners for increasing stream buffers.
Pursue green streets practices such as curb cutouts, permeable sidewalks and driveways and bioretention.
Increase awareness and stewardship of local streams as valued environments and community amenities through improved access and signage.
Divert downspouts; install rain barrels; install rain gardens; consider vegetated rooftops.
Establish rain gardens on public lands (see map for examples).
Consider daylighting stretches of currently piped streams; remove concrete linings from streams.
Continue Town Park restoration as a stormwater infiltration demonstration project and to reduce soil erosion.
Reduce trash and sediment input to streams; implement street cleaning practices.
Plant trees to shade and cool stream water.
Initiate study of alternative stormwater management in Tributary 4 and other streams.
Assess the extent, characteristics, and health, of our three wetland areas.
Complete assessment of stream biological health and corridor characteristics.
Monitor and report siltation from construction sites.
Advocate for county and state clean water services, programs and incentives. Examples: Audits of residential property runoff and how to reduce it; tax incentives for rain gardens.
Advocate for Lower Beaverdam Creek and other streams to be included as signature natural features at redevelopment projects such as the New Carrollton Metro.
Vegetation
The vegetation of our natural areas provides us with many free ecoservices. Trees and other plants help retain and filter stormwater, reducing flooding and soil erosion. They also remove polluting gases and particulates to purify the air and provide shade to ameliorate heat island effects. Tree leaves moderate the impact of heavy downpours that can erode soil, and root systems hold water, decreasing runoff volume and velocity. Our woods produce oxygen and sequester carbon to reduce climate warming and moderate temperature and humidity to help maintain a stable climate. Forested areas retain phosphorus and other nutrients required by plant life.The organic plant layer in soil breaks down waste materials, recycles nutrients and forms new soil.
How Do I...?
Cheverly’s tree and shrub diversity remains good, but there has been a decline in other native plants as well as animals dependent on them. Due to habitat destruction or disturbance many plants are now extinct or seriously endangered. Invasive plant species have taken over much of the area formerly supporting native vegetation, forming thick mats of monoculture instead of the previous critical diversity. Pollution has weakened many of our forest trees, making them vulnerable to storms, insects and disease. Street trees also suffer from disturbed or compacted soil, pollution, physical damage, drought, and many other ills and as a result live only one-tenth as long as trees growing under natural conditions. The more mature the tree, the more services it can
Plant Life in Cheverly
deliver. Exotic ornamental trees and shrubs contribute little or nothing to the functioning of our native ecosystems.Nevertheless all Cheverly’s natural areas still have remnants of previous wildflower and other plant populations and their seed banks also retain the potential to repopulate much of the former vegetation. These areas in combination possess sufficient diversity that with care will regenerate most of the plant populations native to this region. They also help preserve biodiversity by providing wildlife habitat.
A directive calling for Urban Tree Canopy goals to be established in Bay communities was issued by the Chesapeake Executive Council in 2003. Since then the Bay program has been working with communities to establish goals to maintain or increase their “urban forests” to reduce polluted stormwater runoff. Bowie, Greenbelt, and Hyattsville are among the nearby Maryland municipalities to have conducted detailed tree canopy assessments and adopt Urban Tree Canopy goals. The Chesapeake Bay Trust Community Greening grants support communities to conduct assessments to establish UTC goals and for efforts to plant and maintain trees to meet goals once established.
Recommendations
Establish a town-wide tree canopy goal of 40%; 50% for residential property and 25% for industrial and institutional property, supported by goal-specific management plans
Establish a dedicated program for the continuing replacement of downed or hazardous public and private trees as a tree canopy insurance policy. A qualified arborist can advise which trees can be saved.
Join the Baltimore Washington Partners for Forest Stewardship to collaborate on common goals with this growing network of forest managers, and encourage other forest owners in and adjacent to the town to join.
Participate in the State of Maryland Chesapeake Bay Urban Tree Canopy goal effort
Implement a Bay-friendly native vegetation (tree, shrubs and other plants) restoration and management program including elimination and replacement of invasive species. Mow high, leave grass clippings on your lawn, reduce areas devoted to lawn. Lawn care activities (fertilizing, mowing, leaf blowing) create four times the amount of greenhouse gases than are taken out by the grass.
Give preference to native trees and plants and avoid highly invasive species.
Plant largest canopy trees appropriate to specific sites.
Foster street and park tree health and longevity through best management practices, for example, standards formulated by the International Society of Arborists.
Explore a program to cost share services of a consulting arborist to provide residents with reduced cost tree health advice, for example, a few days each fall and spring.
Provide incentives to promote native plants in backyard habitats.
Remove invasive plants.
Engage residents, organizations and businesses in environmentally-oriented activities and events designed to build awareness and support for natural lands while improving ecosystem function.
Work with Pepco to manage Parkway extension - Wayne Street right-of-way as a planned native grass meadow.
Complete an assessment of vegetative health, soil conditions, water and air quality.
Conduct a detailed urban tree canopy assessment.
Conduct an inventory and assessment of street trees and trees in parks and designated hubs.
Conduct an inventory and assessment of trees on private property.
Maintain natural resource database to inform and guide optimal resource management.
Animal Life
How Do I...?
The five network areas with natural vegetation have varying amounts of wildlife proportional to their size, shape, food and water resources. These fragments do not provide the area or interior depth to adequately support species requiring deep woods. We have lost many species of even common animals. Such losses are indicators of major disruptions in the local food chains. Habitat preservation is the key recommendation for preserving animal life. Keeping our natural areas natural and unpolluted will also keep them populated by wildlife. Wildlife corridors enable animals to move freely among the hubs to provide their services, such as seed dispersal, more equitably among them and reduce over-exploitation of any one area. Avoiding indiscriminate use of pesticides protects insectivorous animals such as shrews and moles. Because healthy ecosystems require all their constituent parts to function effectively we need to restore their components, both plant and animal.
Recommendations
Implement a wildlife protection plan tied to species, especially seasonal needs (e.g. bird nesting time, fawning season). Habitat preservation is the key to preserving animal life.
Encourage bird feeding in wintertime; provide water, especially during hot dry periods. Add brush piles and plant shrubs for cover and food. Recommend bat houses and bird nest boxes and feeders.
Plant native plant species that will attract butterflies and other pollinators into your yards and gardens.
The importance of animal life is often neglected in assessments of what should be conserved. Both plant and animal kingdoms provide us the basic ecoservices we need, and the interdependence of plants and animals make their and our continued existence possible. Without animals there would be no waste removal, decomposition, detoxification, pest control, nutrient recycling, nitrogen fixation, or production of organic fertilizer. All the vital natural chemical transfers such as carbon, nitrogen, sulphur or phosphorus cycles, include stages mediated by members of the animal kingdom. The presence of microbial life in natural soils permits nutrient and other chemical transfers to occur and the mobility of animal life enables pollination of plants and seed dispersal on a greater scale and over wider areas than can be done by other means. Larger browsing animals such as deer maintain a balance among vegetative species by not allowing any one species to become overly dominant. Both mammalian and avian predators control rodent populations that could otherwise reproduce explosively and cause harm to property and spread disease. Birds maintain control of insects that harm our gardens or carry West Nile fever or Lyme disease.
Animal Life in Cheverly
“If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
-- Aldo Leopold, American scientist, ecologist, forester, environmentalist and author of A Sand County Almanac
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