Volunteer
Citizen Water Quality Monitoring. Residents in the watershed know that declining water quality means our waters are not always safe to swim, the fish are contaminated, and pollution occurs under color of lawful permits issued by the authorities. Boaters and waterfront landowners, in particular, pay attention to water conditions and polluting problems near their own homes, docks, and marinas. But while most users of the river have a good local sense of how conditions in the river appear at any given time, they often have no relative sense of how local conditions relate to the overall health and vitality of the river system. Grassroots monitoring of local surface water offers a great opportunity for citizens to become empowered, to add objectivity to their own efforts at advocacy, and to promote better stewardship and the sense that the condition of the entire river is just as important as the segment in their own backyard. Working with several funders, in 2005 the Patuxent Riverkeeper started to develop a citizen water quality monitoring data collection system that is published on the World Wide Web. The software allows registered users to obtain training and basic equipment to do their own sampling. They are also able to log onto the public web site and upload their findings so that others can compare, learn, and share. The system is designed to accept monitoring results that citizens can reasonably be expected to test for with minimal training and inexpensive equipment. A partnership with The University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Lab and the Morgan State Estuarine Research Center has supplied extensive technical and science-based guidance in the creation of this unique citizen empowerment tool.
Patuxent Roughnecks
Patuxent Roughnecks are a group of hearty outdoorspeople who clear 
snags from the upper sections of the river to keep a water trail open for paddlers. Spawning fish also benefit from a free flowing river. A Roughnecks trip begins with mapping, hiking, surveying, and planning. Blockages are surveyed and photographed, and a list of tools, resources, and minimum staffing is compiled. Safety considerations are reviewed. On the scheduled day, the group heads up the river. Boats are used to ferry supplies, tools and other needed equipment. Using boats allows the crew to sample the navigability of the river firsthand and determine the paddlability of the routes. At low water, the boats may need to be carried. Along the way, small-scale briars and branches that might impair sight lines, smack paddlers in the face, or create a nuisance are removed. Brush is trimmed back to make the paddle route more user-friendly. Larger blockages take a lot of planning and rigging. Massive logs are sometimes unpredictable when stress is released. Therefore we use safety chains, ropes and come-alongs to anchor major logs to solid points on the banks. Crew safety is paramount–no project begins without adequate equipment, people trained to handle the equipment, and everybody on-site familiar with the overall plan. Those working in the channel wear life vests and people working in exposed areas or deeper water are assigned spotters to keep an eye on them. The final clearing of a snag often leaves the main parts of a blockage in the water, but provides a wide enough gap to allow paddlers to get by safely. In addition to keeping the water trail open, the Roughnecks’ work has meant that the Riverkeeper has developed greatly improved GIS mapping for the entire watershed. And in order to find snags, we coordinate with landowners along the river, leading to perhaps the most comprehensive and systematic engagement of river front landowners in the history of the river’s habitation.
Annual Patuxent Cleanup
Riverkeepers work on watershed problems, not just symptoms. But dumped trash, while a sympton, is one of the more unsightly and obvious signs of the decay of our waterways, especially in heavily used public access areas. Therefore the Patuxent Riverkeeper coordinates the only river-wide annual cleanup event each April. The Riverkeeper is joined by scores of other partners to provide supplies, site supervision, and promotional and other resources, in an effort to make each year’s cleanup bigger than the last. Our motto is: To clean up a river, somebody has to get dirty!
We also tally the yield of each cleanup in order to get a statistical record of annual growth of volunteerism and increases in the amount/tonnage of trash collected. Additionally, we help local groups recruit volunteers and advertise their own cleanups on our web site. The effort to remove more tonnage and engage more volunteers each year keeps the cleanup growing annually in scope and effectiveness.
Riparian Tree Planting
Trees and other vegetation are vital to stabilizing the soils, filtering and 