Choose Clean Water
Protecting the streams and rivers that flow through our national parks and our communities to the Chesapeake Bay
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NPCA’s recent report, Climate Change and National Park Wildlife: A Survival Guide for a Warming World,, highlights the impacts of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay’s iconic native oyster, and recommends actions to promote resiliency in the face of climate change effects in the region’s streams, rivers, and the Bay itself.
NPCA’s 2008 report, Dark Horizons, maps existing and proposed coal-fired power plants upwind of Shenandoah National Park, . Shenandoah’s airshed significantly overlaps with the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Since publication of the report, the “Greene Energy Resource Recovery” facility in southwestern Pennsylvania has put its plans on hold indefinitely as a result of permit challenges led by NPCA and other groups.
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What do Shenandoah National Park in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains, Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania’s south-central Piedmont, and C & O Canal National Historical Park along the Potomac River in Maryland and D.C. all have in common?
The streams and rivers associated with these and dozens of other national parks between New York and Virginia, and between Delaware and West Virginia, flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Needless, costly pollution from land development and air pollution from nearby sources and outside the region degrade water quality in local streams and in the Chesapeake Bay.
The national parks, their visitors, and local communities benefit when they enjoy clean, clear air, and when their streams and rivers have high-quality waters supporting abundant native plant and animal communities – and so does the embattled Chesapeake Bay. Similarly, as the overall health of the Bay improves, parks and communities upstream will benefit in ways large and small.
Because of the many connections among the region’s national parks and the Chesapeake Bay’s health, NPCA helps lead the new “Choose Clean Water” coalition, advocating for federal policies to protect and restore local water quality at dozens of national parks in the region and in the Chesapeake Bay. More than 100 local and national nonprofit organizations have joined forces for clean water in our communities, our parks, and for the region’s iconic Chesapeake Bay, and are working together to advance federal policies and programs that will reap benefits from Shenandoah’s streams to the Susquehanna River to the Bay itself.
You can learn more about this new coalition, and how you can be part of this remarkable coalition effort at www.choosecleanwater.org. Please consider joining other park lovers at the coalition’s first annual meeting, to be held in Washington, D.C., January 10 – 12, 2010.
