2012 20 Minute Cleanup Results

Well Howard County, you’ve amazed me again.  The 2012 20 Minute Cleanup had over 2300 par­tic­i­pants!  They are over-used these days, but I think that deserves some extra excla­ma­tion points.  All I can say is wow.  And thank you.

Thank you for not being the only crazy one out there pick­ing up other people’s lit­ter.  Thank you for get­ting out­side and tak­ing action.  Thank you for par­tic­i­pat­ing, moti­vat­ing oth­ers, and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.  Thank you for re-energizing us gov­ern­ment work­ers, who some­times see the less happy side of our won­der­ful residents.

The 20 Minute Cleanup is a very sim­ple idea, which we bor­rowed from a project in Toronto called the 20 Minute Makeover.  That sounded con­fus­ing to me, hope I’m not the only one.  The Howard County project is very low cost – the County doesn’t pro­vide any mate­ri­als or extra trash or recy­cling pick­ups.  We pro­mote it elec­tron­i­cally and haven’t printed fliers since the first one in 2010.  I think the idea is start­ing to get some real trac­tion as I’ve seen more peo­ple know about it, and more groups, par­tic­u­larly schools, embrace it as an easy and effec­tive project.

Thank you all for mak­ing Howard County cleaner and greener.  By work­ing together, we made our neigh­bor­hoods more beau­ti­ful and less trash will end up in our streams, rivers and the Bay.

Here is the list of the 2012 par­tic­i­pants.  Thanks for all the pic­tures of your cleanups.  They are up on our Flikr page.  Great job everybody!

Busi­nesses:

Allen & Shar­iff Engi­neer­ing
First Fin­ish, Inc.
Straughan Envi­ron­men­tal, Inc
Versar

Indi­vid­u­als and Families:

Bar­bara Gra­ham
Bussey Fam­ily
Carol and Steve Yanek
Ellen and Jim Bil­leter
Gauert Fam­ily
Guarin Fam­ily
Kathie and Ralph Lil­lie
Loraine Fam­ily
Lyons Fam­ily
Mark and Shel­ley Sweeney
McCready Fam­ily
Rager Fam­ily
Rie Fam­ily
Ron LeClare
Smith Fam­ily
Strick­land Family

Neigh­bor­hoods:

Ash­leigh Knoll Res­i­dent
Brant­wood Neigh­bor­hood
Governor’s Grant Neigh­bors
Lin­wood Neigh­bor­hood, Elli­cott City
Spring Breeze Com­mu­nity Asso­ci­a­tion
Team Landing

Youth Groups:

Cub Scout Pack 793
Cub Scout Pack 794 Den 1
Cub Scout Pack 794, Den 6
Daisy Troop 1928
Girl Scout Troop 311
SAC Galaxy United soc­cer team
SAC Red Bulls soc­cer team

Schools:

Atholton Ele­men­tary School
Clarksville Mid­dle School
Dun­log­gin Mid­dle School
Lau­rel Woods Ele­men­tary School
North­field Ele­men­tary School
Point­ers  Run Ele­men­tary School
Rock­burn Ele­men­tary School
Stevens For­est Ele­men­tary School
Vet­er­ans Ele­men­tary School
Waverly Ele­men­tary School

Howard County Government:

Bureau of Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices
D.I.L.P. Inspec­tions and Enforce­ment Divi­sion
DCA Cen­tral Fleet
Depart­ment of Plan­ning and Zon­ing
Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works, Director’s Office
Dorsey Build­ing — South Team
Elkridge Senior Cen­ter
Fire and Res­cue Engine 22 and Para­medic 26
Fire Sta­tion 1
Fire Sta­tion 10
Fire Sta­tion 11
Fire Sta­tion 3B
Fire Sta­tion 5
Fire Sta­tion 6B
Fire Sta­tion 9
Fire Sta­tion 8B and EMS 2B
Grass­roots Cri­sis Inter­ven­tion Cen­ter
Howard County employ­ees, Elli­cott City cam­pus
Howard County Police Depart­ment
Mead­ow­brook Ath­letic Com­plex & Park
Office of Con­sumer Affairs
Office of Human Resources
Office of Human Rights
The Green Ladies of DTCS

I’m sure there are more of you out there, so if you would like to be included in the list and totals, please send an email to 20minutecleanup@howardcountymd.gov .

See you again next year,

Elissa Rei­neck
Office of Envi­ron­men­tal Sustainability

Could you imag­ine if the water sup­plied to your house, or the waste­water leav­ing your house was treated, trans­mit­ted and avail­able for unlim­ited use with­out a charge?  Like­wise, think about the elec­tric­ity that pow­ers all those appli­ances and gad­gets through­out your home.  What if it was pro­vided at no cost?  Fat chance you say — and you are right.   We have long rec­og­nized that the infra­struc­ture vital to our way of life can­not be effec­tive, reli­able, and … free.  We accept that there is a con­stant need for main­te­nance, repair, new equip­ment, expanded ser­vice, envi­ron­men­tal con­trols, and some admin­is­tra­tion to keep con­nec­tions, accounts and ser­vice needs under con­trol.  We under­stand that for every cubic foot of water used or waste­water dis­charged, and every kWH of elec­tric­ity con­sumed that we must pay a user fee to cover the cost of ser­vice pro­vided by these infra­struc­ture utilities.

There is an addi­tional infra­struc­ture sys­tem wind­ing through­out our com­mu­nity pro­vid­ing yet another vital ser­vice toward our safety and envi­ron­ment pro­tec­tion.   I call it the for­got­ten util­ity.    This infra­struc­ture fre­quently sits with lit­tle to do, but when called into action at a moment’s notice it is expected to func­tion flaw­lessly, deal­ing with the unpre­dictabil­ity of Mother Nature.    I am refer­ring to the stormwa­ter infra­struc­ture of Howard County – the for­got­ten utility.

Stormwa­ter infra­struc­ture is a key aspect of our com­mu­nity design and has been built into con­struc­tion projects for many years.  Ini­tially the designs focused on get­ting water off the roads. More recently, the designs have expanded  to a sys­tem that moves water off all imper­vi­ous areas in a man­ner that also pro­tects our water­ways from ero­sion and pol­lu­tion.   This is a tall order for a com­mu­nity with almost 19,000 acres of imper­vi­ous sur­faces includ­ing rooftops, park­ing lots, dri­ve­ways and side­walks.    To put it in per­spec­tive, our stormwa­ter infra­struc­ture includes over 4,800 facil­i­ties (ponds, sep­a­ra­tors, bio-swales, rain gar­dens) all of which must be inspected by the county along with the main­te­nance of about  1,600 facil­i­ties (the remain­der are under pri­vate main­te­nance agree­ments) .  There are 23,000 inlets and no doubt a sim­i­lar num­ber of out­falls to be main­tained.  There are over 700 miles of stormwa­ter con­veyance pipe in the ground in addi­tion to road­side ditches that con­vey stormwa­ter along the 1,000 miles of road­way in the County.

All together our stormwa­ter infra­struc­ture rep­re­sents an invest­ment of over $660 mil­lion.   This infra­struc­ture needs rou­tine main­te­nance to ensure proper func­tion­ing of the var­i­ous facil­i­ties. Fur­ther, since we now know that urban stormwa­ter runoff is respon­si­ble for over 20% of the pol­lu­tion to the Chesa­peake Bay, this infra­struc­ture and its main­te­nance become vital in our col­lec­tive efforts to save the Bay.

Unfor­tu­nately, as the for­got­ten util­ity, there is no ded­i­cated source of funds to per­form rou­tine inspec­tion and main­te­nance, no less to ini­ti­ate any sys­tem upgrades to bet­ter man­age runoff and thereby min­i­mize the neg­a­tive impact of stormwa­ter on our creeks, rivers and the Bay.  With­out a ded­i­cated util­ity, the stormwa­ter infra­struc­ture must com­pete for finan­cial need with all other gen­eral gov­ern­ment pro­grams.  We are not alone in this dilemma.  In Mary­land, only Mont­gomery County and a few cities have a stormwa­ter util­ity fee set up to man­age stormwa­ter infrastructure.

But it looks like stormwa­ter man­age­ment is about get some recog­ni­tion.  Late last year, Howard County began work­ing with a con­sul­tant to explore the fea­si­bil­ity of a stormwa­ter util­ity.   Just as a water util­ity billing on the vol­ume of water sup­plied, or a power util­ity billing based on the amount of elec­tric­ity used, a stormwa­ter util­ity would bill based on the amount of imper­vi­ous area on a par­cel — since it is this imper­vi­ous ground cover that causes runoff.   Also, like the other util­i­ties that reward con­ser­va­tion with reduced charges, a stormwa­ter util­ity may pro­vide fee relief if areas of imper­vi­ous cover are reduced and/or addi­tional runoff con­trols are added.  At the end of the state leg­isla­tive ses­sion, a bill was passed requir­ing 10 Mary­land coun­ties, Howard included, to estab­lish a stormwa­ter reme­di­a­tion fee.    Our study puts us ahead of the curve on this man­date.  We will be ready when the com­pli­ance date comes around in July 2013.

So funds are com­ing that will help min­i­mize flood­ing due to clogs, bro­ken pipes, or dredg­ing needs; and to guar­an­tee the con­struc­tion of new sys­tems to improve water qual­ity in our streams and the Bay. The for­got­ten util­ity is about join the ranks of other self-supporting infra­struc­ture util­i­ties.  I say it is about time.

Ah, Spring.  After this weird win­ter, who knows how early every­thing is going to start grow­ing and bloom­ing.  I’m itch­ing to start divid­ing some peren­ni­als, mov­ing stuff around and adding new plants.  It’s all good.  Except for my lawn – which I hate.   So this year I’m going to really put some effort into it – research, sci­ence, new ideas.  Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Soil Test – This is the first step.  Of course, this makes sense.  You wouldn’t start tak­ing med­i­cine with­out get­ting tests done by a doc­tor.  Well, maybe you would, but it’s a really bad idea.

So, soil test  - The Colum­bia Asso­ci­a­tion (CA) is offer­ing FREE soil test­ing.  Why are they doing this?  Because it turns out that most of us are using too much prod­uct – wast­ing time, money and adding unwanted nutri­ents to our local waters.  Here are 2 doc­u­ments about it: soil test­ing and instruc­tions for tak­ing a soil sam­ple.

Back to the soil test – basi­cally, you take some soil from your lawn, put it in a plas­tic bag, bring it to your vil­lage cen­ter, then it is sent to a lab for test­ing.  CA is hold­ing short work­shops to inter­pret the results so that home­own­ers can deter­mine what their lawns need.

If you are out­side of CA, there are lots of soil test­ing options.  Click HERE for some great info from the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Exten­sion web­site.  This site includes lists of labs, FAQs, and there is a video on how to take a good soil sam­ple.  Soil tests run about $10 — $20.

If you have a lawn ser­vice, ask them to do a soil test and show you the results.  Why should you pay to put stuff down that you don’t need?  Actu­ally, since 1998, com­pa­nies are required to do a soil test for you and keep track of the amount of fer­til­izer used.  I just read that in this fact sheet.

Pre-emergent – If you are going to spend time and money to put chem­i­cals on your lawn later to try and kill weeds, I guess it makes more sense to pre­vent them.  Here is some info about pre-emergents

Many gar­den­ers advise using a pre-emergent when the Forsythia’s bloom (yellow-blooming shrubs you see all over the place in early Spring).  So, that is basi­cally now.

My neigh­bor swears by corn gluten as a pre-emergent.  It is organic, and works best if you keep using it for a few years.  It does have some nitro­gen, and the Mary­land Exten­sion is pretty clear that IF YOU FERTILIZE, IT SOULD BE IN THE FALL ONLY.  Sorry for all the Caps, didn’t mean to scream at you.  The Exten­sion fact sheet has info on that too.

Chem­i­cal pre-emergents often con­tain a lot more nitro­gen than corn gluten, but I searched around and found one brand with 0 nitro­gen.  There weren’t any in the “big box” store I went to first, but it wasn’t too hard to find.  Great news start­ing this year is that many of the lawn care prod­ucts are now “phos­pho­rous free.”   This recent change will help keep lots of this dam­ag­ing nutri­ent out of the Bay.

Of course, change is not easy.  Many peo­ple just do what they’ve always done before, or what their par­ents taught them.  But things change, and just because every­one else in your neigh­bor­hood is dump­ing chem­i­cals on their lawn 4 times a year, doesn’t mean that it works.

Cut it High and Let it Fly – I’m not sure who made up that slo­gan, but I like it.  Cut­ting your lawn short stresses it out, and makes it harder for it to crowd out weeds.  You would think that cut­ting it short would shorten the time before you have to mow again, but I’ve read that this is not true – grass shoots up in response, get­ting even weaker in the hot months.  The let it fly part means using a mulching mower and leav­ing the clip­pings there.  Clip­pings are a nat­ural source of nitro­gen (less fer­til­izer needed) and do NOT cause thatch.  I hire some­one to cut our grass, so I am going to ask them to cut it higher this year.  If they won’t, I’ll find some­one else who will.  Here is a good fact sheet that cov­ers Mary­land lawn stuff and includes rec­om­mended heights.

Water­ing – I don’t water my lawn in the sum­mer.  Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could keep up with it to do any good.  The type of grass most Mary­lan­ders have is not built to be green in a hot, dry sum­mer.  Mary­land Exten­sion backs me up on this.  They advise:  “Allow estab­lished tall fes­cue lawns to go dor­mant dur­ing hot,dry weather in the sum­mer.  The lawn will recover when rain­fall and cooler tem­per­a­tures return. Only newly seeded areas and lawns less than two years old should be irri­gated.”  It might get a lit­tle crunchy, but so be it.  If you do water new grass, it is best to water deeply, and less often.  Short, fre­quent water­ing is bad for lawns because it encour­ages short, weak roots.

Whew, that’s about all I can han­dle.  I’m bored with lawn talk already, and it is only March.  Back to the real plants.  Can’t wait to get started!

Wow, have you been to the new Miller Library in Elli­cott City?  The joint was jump­ing last Sat­ur­day when I finally took my daugh­ter over there.  We enjoyed check­ing out the new space; the kids area, com­put­ers, meet­ing rooms and quiet study areas.  The His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety room on the sec­ond floor is neat and it’s all so clean and new, it’s just fan­tas­tic.  There is free Wi-Fi and a “Café” (3 vend­ing machines and lots of nice tables).  We rec­om­mend the But­terfin­ger cof­fee drink.

I have 2 favorite parts of the new Miller branch – the upstairs out­door ter­race over­look­ing the green roof, and the Enchanted Gar­den.  The green roof “absorbs rain­wa­ter, con­serves energy and roof­ing mate­ri­als, mit­i­gates the heat island effect, and pro­vides an aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing envi­ron­ment.“  Well, yes.  It’s also peace­ful and pretty and the plants will look even bet­ter when win­ter is over.  The Enchanted Gar­den isn’t even fin­ished yet, but you can tell it’s going to be awe­some.  The Mas­ter Gar­den­ers are hard at work plan­ning it, and I’ve heard one part is going to be a “sen­sory gar­den” with plants that are inter­est­ing to touch.  The planned “pizza gar­den” looks great already – a round struc­ture, split into “slices” that will each grow a pizza ingre­di­ent like tomato, basil, etc.  The focus of the gar­den is health, nutri­tion, and envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion.  The gar­den beds will be used to teach chil­dren and adults about edi­ble plants and native plants.

Part of the whole vibe of the new library comes from the mul­ti­tude of “green” fea­tures.  Even if you don’t know that it is designed for LEED sil­ver cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, you can see all the nat­ural light pour­ing in.  Other fea­tures of the green build­ing are water con­ser­va­tion, sus­tain­able site design, energy effi­cient HVAC and light­ing, recy­cled and local build­ing mate­ri­als, healthy indoor air qual­ity, a rain­wa­ter fil­ter­ing sys­tem, and 72 solar pan­els that gen­er­ate up to 16 kilo­watts of energy per day.

Howard County is a leader in build­ing “green” in pub­lic spaces.  Since 2008, pub­licly funded build­ings (30% or more County fund­ing) larger than 10,000 square feet must attain LEED Sil­ver rat­ings.  New pri­vate build­ings larger than 50,000 square feet must attain at least a LEED cer­ti­fied rat­ing.  These build­ings push the tech­nol­ogy for­ward, cre­ate green jobs, and reduce long-term costs, par­tic­u­larly in energy.  Check out the Green Build­ing sec­tion of livegreenhoward.com for more info.

But I digress.

Check out the new Miller Library branch!  It’s wonderful.

Oh yeah, there are books there too.

The fol­low­ing post is from Christo­pher Rus­sell, Energy Manager.

Ask any busi­ness leader if they want to reduce their energy costs, and they will almost invari­ably say “yes.”  Then, ask them if they want to devote any resources to energy man­age­ment.  That’s where the head-scratching begins.  The idea of invest­ing time and resources in order to reduce energy expenses does not res­onate well with many busi­nesses.  At the heart of this is the poten­tial role of an energy man­ager.  This begs a ques­tion:  How much should you pay an energy man­ager?  That’s what we’ll cover in this post.

Energy man­agers are not cre­ated equal. The energy man­ager con­cept is new, rel­a­tive to long-standing respon­si­bil­i­ties in oper­a­tions, main­te­nance, and pro­cure­ment man­age­ment. Because it’s new, orga­ni­za­tions have no yard­stick for mea­sur­ing the value of energy man­age­ment. Chances are that the per­son in author­ity offer­ing the posi­tion has no clue what’s involved. He or she under­stands only what you do now—so they expect to pay you what you cur­rently make. For example:

• A trades­man works with hands-on tools, duti­fully seek­ing to “fix what’s bro­ken.” But he is prob­a­bly not good at mon­e­tiz­ing the cash flow results from energy improve­ments.
• A project engi­neer may know how to spec­ify com­po­nents for a light­ing retro­fit, but may not be pre­pared to over­come the resis­tance when Depart­ment A pays for the improve­ment, yet Depart­ment B is the one that col­lects the benefits.

An energy man­ager is a com­mu­ni­ca­tor, nego­tia­tor, coach, ana­lyst, and advo­cate of change. A good energy man­ager is just as com­fort­able in the board room as in the boiler room. He or she can demon­strate the link­age between energy choices and core busi­ness goals. An energy man­ager who merely seeks to “save energy” is miss­ing the point and won’t last long.  What you get paid is related not just to the value you cre­ate, but the value you actu­ally demonstrate.  

What do you bring to the posi­tion of energy man­ager? The more of these items you per­form, the more money you should expect to make:

Util­ity bill audit­ing. You’ll need to under­stand util­ity tar­iffs and ana­lyze bills for accuracy.

Employee engage­ment to boost aware­ness. Use media to reach the right peo­ple with the right mes­sage. Make com­pelling mes­sages so that staff under­stand their respon­si­bil­i­ties with respect to energy use.

Fuel switch­ing & com­mod­ity shop­ping. Shop for fuel and power, min­i­miz­ing price risk using finan­cial port­fo­lio man­age­ment techniques.

Project man­age­ment. Orches­trate staff, ven­dors, bud­gets, and task mile­stones to achieve project implementation.

Energy and asset inven­to­ry­ing. Pre­pare a bal­ance sum­mary of energy inputs and end-uses.

Best prac­tice def­i­n­i­tion, train­ing, and pro­ce­dural imple­men­ta­tion. Train staff and ensure that energy-saving behav­iors become part of stan­dard oper­at­ing procedure.

Per­for­mance bench­mark­ing: energy flow mon­i­tor­ing, meter­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion. Cre­ate per­for­mance met­rics that demon­strate progress over time.

Busi­ness plan devel­op­ment: goals, tar­gets, account­abil­i­ties and met­rics. Make the busi­ness case to secure the resources you’ll need for con­tin­u­ous energy improve­ment. Think “process,” not “project.”

Rela­tion­ship man­age­ment with ven­dors and util­i­ties. Match your inven­tory of in-house needs and capa­bil­i­ties with the capa­bil­i­ties and incen­tives offered by these busi­ness allies.

Per­for­mance report­ing and share­holder com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Doc­u­ment and pro­mote your results while gain­ing recog­ni­tion for your company.

The real ques­tion is “What value do you cre­ate as an energy man­ager?” Answer that ques­tion, and you’ll have a much bet­ter idea of the salary you command.

The last week in Octo­ber, a group from the John’s Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity Applied Physics Lab (JHU APL) met in Sav­age to clean up trash.  No, they weren’t in trou­ble and being pun­ished.  They actu­ally vol­un­teered to do this.

It was a cool but beau­ti­ful sunny day.  We met at the entrance to the Sav­age Mill Trail then cleaned up an area across the street along the river.  The group worked very hard and picked up 245 pounds of trash and 110 pounds of recy­cling.  Our won­der­ful Recre­ation and Parks staff hauled it all away and pro­vided the trash bags.

JHU APL has done this cleanup for many years.  It was orig­i­nally started by Jeanne Pres­ley, who cared about the Sav­age Mill park and wanted the com­pany to do some­thing for the com­mu­nity.  Jeanne trag­i­cally died of can­cer, and her co-workers at APL con­tinue with the project to honor her mem­ory.  They talked about her dur­ing the cleanup last week, say­ing that she would have been proud.

As part of their JHU APL Cares Day, the vol­un­teers meet on a Fri­day after­noon each Fall and work with the County on a cleanup around the Sav­age Park area.   Over the years we have var­ied the cleanup so that it cov­ered the trail itself and other County prop­erty nearby.  It all helps keep trash and pol­lu­tion out of our environment.

Dur­ing the after­noon we spot­ted a red fox, wood­peck­ers, a North­ern brown snake and a toad.  The snake pic­ture has now been included in a state-wide sur­vey called the Herp Atlas.

The employ­ees worked together and got to know each other bet­ter out­side of the office set­ting.   After they were done, they went out to a restau­rant together.  Great team build­ing and a bit of fun.  Hey wait, why wasn’t I invited?   Just kidding.

If any of you know of a com­pany that wants to do a sim­i­lar thing, maybe next Spring for Earth Day, email me (ereineck@howardcountymd.gov) and we can plan something.

Thanks so much JHU APL!

Howard County’s Bureau of Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices is offer­ing some great oppor­tu­ni­ties to de-clutter and get rid of some stuff before the hol­i­days and cold weather are upon us:

Paper Shred­ding — So many bills and credit card offers come in the mail with our per­sonal infor­ma­tion on them.  If you would like to have them shred­ded and recy­cled, there is a con­ve­nient way to do so this weekend.

Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 15, 2011, 9 am to 1pm, rain or shine, there will be a Paper Shred­ding and E-cycling event.  It’s being held at the Mead­ow­brook Park and Ride, Mead­ow­brook Lane, Elli­cott City.  Basi­cally, it is behind the Long Gate shop­ping cen­ter, adja­cent to the park and play­ground near the inter­sec­tion of Long Gate Park­way and Rt. 100.

Howard County res­i­dents may bring up to 3 bags or boxes of paper to be shred­ded onsite. Proof of Howard County res­i­dency is required.

Elec­tron­ics Recy­cling — Got old VCRs, com­puter mon­i­tors, cell phones that no char­ity wants or can use?  This Saturday’s event will also col­lect com­put­ers, tele­vi­sions, and other types of elec­tronic equip­ment for recy­cling.  These items can con­tain lead, mer­cury, cad­mium and other toxic mate­ri­als, which should be dis­posed of prop­erly.  They should not be dis­carded with your reg­u­lar house­hold trash.

Here is a link to the web­page includ­ing the list of what you can E-cycle in Howard County. This Saturday’s event is a con­ve­nient way to get rid of those bro­ken VCR’s etc. but FYI, res­i­dents can also recy­cle these items at the Alpha Ridge Land­fill Res­i­dents’ Con­ve­nience Cen­ter dur­ing nor­mal oper­at­ing hours.  The address is 2350 Mar­riottsville Road and the oper­at­ing hours are Mon­day – Sat­ur­day, 8 am – 4 pm (except hol­i­days).  There is a sep­a­rate dump­ster for E-cycling so please do not throw elec­tron­ics in with the reg­u­lar trash !!! Res­i­dents using the con­ve­nience cen­ter are required to show their driver’s licenses as proof of res­i­dence in Howard County.

Recy­clable Items — The County’s land­fill also offers recy­cling of the usual items like card­board, bot­tles and cans, etc.  You may not have heard that you can now also recy­cle rigid plas­tic items like toys and bro­ken stor­age bins.  They go in the Rigid Plas­tics con­tainer at Alpha Ridge.

Here is a link to infor­ma­tion about all of the items that you can bring to the Alpha Ridge Res­i­dents Con­ve­nience Cen­ter.

Bulk Pick-up — Got bro­ken fur­ni­ture or a worn out chair?  New this fall is the County’s Bulk Pickup pro­gram.   As of this month, Howard County res­i­dents can call and sched­ule col­lec­tion of large items such as fur­ni­ture and large metal items like fil­ing cab­i­nets and lawn mow­ers.  Donat­ing usable items to char­ity is the best option and sev­eral local groups also offer pick up ser­vices.  Here is some more infor­ma­tion about donat­ing options and the rules for the County’s Bulk Pickup ser­vice. Large plas­tic items like those tur­tle sand­boxes, bro­ken bins and large toys can go out on recy­cling day next to your blue bin.  No call is needed and put out as many as you like.

For More Information:

Vist www.howardcountymd.gov/newsandupcomingevents.htm for more details about Saturday’s event and other upcom­ing events such as Good­will at the Land­fill and the Pre­scrip­tion Drug Take-back program.

Visit www.howardcountymd.gov/electronics.htm for more infor­ma­tion about E-cycling includ­ing donat­ing usable items and E-cycling for businesses.

Visit www.howardcountymd.gov/bulk.htm for more infor­ma­tion about other Howard County trash ser­vices includ­ing the new bulk pick-up ser­vice and curb­side recy­cling of large metal items and large rigid plas­tic items.

Good luck clear­ing stuff out of your home!  You’ll be glad you did – such a great feeling.

More idling = more car­bon = more cli­mate change.
Good news:  Com­pared with unreg­u­lated vehi­cles 30 years ago, today’s new cars gen­er­ate 98 per­cent fewer hydro­car­bons, 96 per­cent less car­bon monox­ide and 90 per­cent fewer nitrous oxides.

Bad news:  One ele­ment in tailpipe emis­sions can’t be “cleaned up” – car­bon diox­ide (CO₂). This is the prin­ci­ple green­house gas linked to cli­mate change. Every gal­lon of fuel that is burned pro­duces about 20 pounds of CO₂. The bot­tom line: the more fuel you use, the more CO₂ you pro­duce. And one of the best ways to cut fuel con­sump­tion is to avoid idling. After all, it gets you nowhere.

Is it impor­tant to idle my engine to warm it up, espe­cially in win­ter?
No.  Idling may be a habit bestowed upon us by our beloved grand­par­ents, but remem­ber that they had cars with car­bu­re­tors. Today, we rely on fuel injec­tion.  Tests show that you need no more than 30 sec­onds of idling to cir­cu­late the engine oil before you can drive away on cold days.  The best way to opti­mize engine com­bus­tion and vehi­cle per­for­mance is to warm up the tires, trans­mis­sion, wheel bear­ings and other mov­ing parts. As well, the cat­alytic con­verter doesn’t func­tion at its peak until it reaches between 400°C and 800°C. The best way to warm the engine and all other com­po­nents is to drive your vehicle.

Is it more eco­nom­i­cal and fuel-efficient to leave my car run­ning for a few min­utes than to con­stantly turn it off and on?
No. If you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 sec­onds (except in traf­fic), you’ll save fuel and money by turn­ing off the vehi­cle and then restart­ing it when you’re ready to drive again. Every 30 min­utes of idling costs you nearly one-tenth of a gal­lon in wasted fuel – and more than three-tenths of a gal­lon if your vehi­cle has an eight-cylinder engine. As well, restart­ing a car many times doesn’t wear out the bat­tery and starter motor too soon. And cat­alytic con­vert­ers stay warm for up to 25 min­utes after you turn off the engine, so fre­quent stops and starts don’t pro­duce the large amount of harm­ful emis­sions seen with cold starts. There’s no ques­tion about it – idling gets you nowhere. Instead, it wastes fuel and money and dam­ages the environment.

Can idling dam­age my car’s engine?
You bet it can! Because the engine isn’t work­ing at its peak oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture when it’s idling, the fuel doesn’t undergo com­plete com­bus­tion. This leaves fuel residues that can con­t­a­m­i­nate engine oil and dam­age engine parts. For exam­ple, fuel residues tend to deposit on spark plugs. As the amount of engine idling increases, the plugs’ aver­age tem­per­a­ture drops, and they get dirty more quickly. This, in turn, can increase fuel con­sump­tion by four to five per­cent. It’s a vicious cir­cle of wasted fuel and need­less green­house gas emis­sions. Exces­sive idling can also let water con­dense in the vehicle’s exhaust. This can lead to cor­ro­sion and reduce the life of the exhaust system.

What steps can I take to min­i­mize idling?
It’s easy – think about fuel effi­ciency every time you use a car. Try these sim­ple steps:

• Min­i­mize warm-up idling. This is espe­cially impor­tant in win­ter, because emis­sions can dou­ble in a cold engine. Drive away after no more than 30 sec­onds of idling, assum­ing the vehicle’s win­dows are clear.
• If you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 sec­onds, turn off the engine. Never leave the vehi­cle run­ning while you zip into a cor­ner store or fast-food restau­rant – it’s hard on your pock­et­book, bad for the envi­ron­ment and an invi­ta­tion to car thieves.
• Avoid using remote car starters. They encour­age you to start your car before you’re ready to drive it, which just means need­less idling.

The fore­cast called for 97 degrees by 11 a.m. — ugh.  The hottest day of the year, and what was on my agenda?  Haul­ing tires out of a river with vol­un­teers.  Well, quite a bit of plan­ning had gone into it, so what else was there to do but pack a lot of water and get out there?

Yes, it was the hottest day of the sum­mer, the day we could have had a black­out caused by heat.  But Fri­day, July 22, turned out to be a great day because I was lucky enough to spend the morn­ing with a fun and ded­i­cated group of peo­ple and work with them to clean up a sec­tion of Howard County.   There were about 100 teens and adult lead­ers from the local Youth Group from the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints.

This youth group had a choice of other vol­un­teer projects, but they were excited about clean­ing up the envi­ron­ment.  And clean they did.  They pulled 83 tires and an addi­tional trailer of trash, mostly auto­mo­tive, out of the water and banks of a sec­tion of the Dorsey Run River run­ning through Jes­sup.  They did a great job.  Extra thanks go out to Janet Yarn who brought the project to the youth group and did a fan­tas­tic job orga­niz­ing such a large group.  Sorry about those spi­der webs, Janet!  Our won­der­ful staff at Recre­ation and Parks pro­vided the trucks and hauled away the tires for recycling.

This was our sec­ond attempt to get the mess out of the river.  Our first was ear­lier this year, in April, dur­ing a region-wide project called Project Clean Stream.  It was a dif­fer­ent group of vol­un­teers, and we ran out of time, energy and truck space to get the whole mess cleaned up.

There was a very unusual amount of tires and auto trash at this site, and it begs the ques­tion of where it is all com­ing from.    Cur­rently, the Mary­land Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment is inves­ti­gat­ing it, and I hope that there will be some action taken.  It is just not right to dump this stuff and even worse to get away with it.  Who knows how much it would have cost to pay some­one to do the work these vol­un­teers did.

The next stream cleanup we have planned is com­ing up on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 17, 2011.  We’re going to a dif­fer­ent site, still being cho­sen, but it will be in Howard County.  The effort is part of the Inter­na­tional Coastal Cleanup.  Howard County isn’t exactly “coastal,” but trash in our streams will end up there, so it all helps.  I don’t expect any­thing as hard as the tires.  There may be a few, but it will prob­a­bly be more of your reg­u­lar trash, bot­tles and cans, etc.  Please email me at ereineck@howardcountymd.gov or call 410−313−1175 if you are inter­ested in vol­un­teer­ing for that event.  I’m going out on a limb here and guar­an­tee­ing that the weather will be cooler.

If you haven’t tried this type of thing yet, you might not believe me, but it’s actu­ally fun.  Not to men­tion reward­ing in that warm fuzzy feel­ing kind of way.

Thanks again LDS Youth Group!  You were amaz­ing and you really made a dif­fer­ence out there this summer.

This blog was writ­ten by Megan Hand­shu, of the Howard County Nat­ural Resources Divi­sion.  Thanks Megan!

Every­one in Howard County who has tried to grow some­thing in their yard knows that deer are enemy num­ber one. Not the drought. Not the stinkbugs. Deer. They will prac­ti­cally stand on your front porch and eat from planted urns beside your door, unafraid of your bark­ing dog, uncar­ing of the fact that you did not intend for your land­scape to become their smörgåsbord.

Here are a few tips on how to fight back by pro­tect­ing your plants from deer. As much as we wish they might just go away, deer over­pop­u­la­tion can be an unfor­tu­nate side effect of a grow­ing com­mu­nity. So set aside the wish­ful think­ing and take action. One or more of these tac­tics may help you save your yard!

Tree Shel­ters:

Bark pro­tec­tors and tree shel­ters are a won­der­ful way to pro­tect your young trees from deer. Not only can they help pro­tect your trees from becom­ing a deer snack, but from becom­ing a scratch­ing post as well. In the late sum­mer and fall male deer will rub against young saplings to remove the vel­vet from their antlers. This may snap young trees before they get a chance to acquire the girth to with­stand such abuse. There are many types of shel­ters out there, from the blue tubes you may often see on the side of the road to sturdy plas­tic mesh.

Whether you choose per­fo­rated or solid tubes you will have to keep an eye on them. Solid tubes can trap mois­ture caus­ing mold and mildew prob­lems. They may also invite small rodents or wasps.  Per­fo­rated tubes may need extra main­te­nance as limbs can grow through the holes in the shel­ter. You want the branches to grow up through the top and not side­ways through a hole.  In win­ter, the shel­ters can be weighed down by heavy snows and ice, bend­ing the tree with them, and may need to be uprighted.  Also, make sure that when your tree begins to out­grow its shel­ters, you take it off, or else the shel­ter can restrict fur­ther growth.

Tablets:

Deer repel­lent tablets are a new prod­uct just reg­is­tered with the US Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency ear­lier this year. You bury them at the base of your plants where water dis­solves the tablet and the chem­i­cals are  absorbed through the roots. The active ingre­di­ents  are cap­saicin and related cap­sai­ci­noids, the chem­i­cals that make pep­pers so hot and spicy.  As unpalat­able as a hot pep­per can be for (many) humans, so is it for deer and other brows­ing ani­mals. Not only will these tablets help pro­tect your plants form deer, but also from rodents such as voles and rab­bits.  Don’t worry, no harm will come to these ani­mals if they do ingest part of the plant, except maybe a case of heartburn.

This prod­uct is not for use in veg­etable gar­dens or fruit orchards as it will affect the taste of the food, but it has a lot of poten­tial for pro­tect­ing other types of  plants. Depend­ing on the size of your plant, it can take  one week to a month for the bad taste to absorb through­out the plant. Dur­ing this time it may be wise to use a spray-on repel­lent to pro­tect your plants.  How­ever, once absorbed, it will last the entire grow­ing season.

Repel­lent Sprays:

There are lots of repel­lent sprays avail­able and each seems to  claim that their active ingre­di­ent is the only one that works. Ingre­di­ents vary and some smell really bad.  There are also dozens of home­made deer repel­lent recipes avail­able on the inter­net.   Look for repel­lents that will not wash off your plant every time it rains.  You will need to re-apply peri­od­i­cally, but some last longer than oth­ers.  Also be care­ful about using repel­lents on edi­bles. They may affect the taste and some may not be safe for con­sump­tion at all.

Howard County’s Stream ReLeaf pro­gram is look­ing into all three of the meth­ods men­tioned above for con­trol­ling deer dam­age to the trees and shrubs it pro­vides. The Stream ReLeaf pro­gram pro­vides native plant mate­r­ial to home­own­ers whose prop­erty is within 75 feet of a stream. With each tree given away by the pro­gram, a tree shel­ter will be pro­vided as well. For those plants that can­not be shel­tered, a com­bi­na­tion of tablets and a spray will be used. These meth­ods will help the plants to sur­vive and thrive, reduc­ing ero­sion and keep­ing pol­lu­tants out of the Chesa­peake Bay.  Once the plants are larger and estab­lished, they won’t need as much attention.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Stream ReLeaf pro­gram please visit our web­site. If you believe your prop­erty qual­i­fies, con­tact Megan Hand­shu at mhandshu@howardcountymd.gov or (410) 313‑6205.

Addi­tional Resources:

Howard County has a com­pre­hen­sive deer man­age­ment pro­gram. For more infor­ma­tion about deer man­age­ment in Howard County, visit the web­site.

The Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Coop­er­a­tive Exten­sion Ser­vice offers a list of deer resis­tant plants.  No plant is deer proof, but you will have bet­ter luck with plants from the “rarely dam­aged” part of the list than from the “fre­quently dam­aged” section.