The Arundel Rivers report card shows water quality in West River is improving

While water quality in the West River has improved over the past year, the South and Rhode rivers showed less progress, according to a river report card released last week.

The report, released Thursday, shares both good news and a “humble call to action,” said Matt Johnston, executive director of the Arundel Rivers Federation. The organization focuses on protecting and promoting healthy water on the South, Rhode and West Rivers in Anne Arundel County.

“The good news is that water quality hasn’t fallen off a cliff, even though our watersheds have lost trees and gained septic systems, lawns, impervious surfaces and the like, so we still have a chance to restore our rivers,” Johnston said . . “Some of these figures are also deeply humbling and suggest that each of us must improve what we do on our own land to ensure our children can swim in these rivers now and in the future.”

To determine each river’s health rating for 2023, Arundel Rivers collected and scored data from nearly three dozen monitoring stations across three rivers in Anne Arundel County, testing parameters twice a month between April and October.

The figures are based on water clarity and dissolved oxygen measurements, although the organization also monitors pH levels, temperature and salinity in each river. High levels of water clarity, a measure of how deep light can travel in the water, are necessary to maintain oyster reefs and underwater grasses, or submerged aquatic vegetation. According to the press release, high levels of dissolved oxygen are necessary to sustain marine life.

The West River, which flows between Galesville and Shady Side in southern Anne Arundel County, earned a B-, or 62% – the highest score of the three rivers cited in the report. The grade, an improvement over last year’s C grade, is largely due to the river’s high dissolved oxygen scores.

The higher dissolved oxygen scores may reflect monitoring site locations closer to the main stem of the West River, the report said, as opposed to shallow tributaries. However, data collected from tributaries showed improvements in oxygen compared to 2022.

Increasing development in the West River watershed could also affect future scores as the river receives more stormwater runoff, the report said.

The Rhode River, a northern tributary of the West River, earned a C+, or 59%, a rating that has not improved from last year. . Although Arundel Rivers saw a slight improvement in dissolved oxygen readings, the river’s poor water clarity had an impact on this year’s score.

The South River, the largest river in the report, flowed from its headwaters near Crofton to its mouth south of Annapolis and received a C+ rating, or 56% – the lowest score of all three rivers in 2023. The South River’s score river did not improve compared to its predecessor. 2022 rank.

That low rating can be attributed to poor dissolved oxygen scores, according to the report. During the summer, four stations in the South River – Crab Creek, Glebe Creek, the Riva Bridge and the Upper River station near the US Route 50 bridge – recorded dead zones, or no oxygen events, which occur when too many nutrients are in the waterway. . Several algal blooms were also observed in the river last year, the report said.

Most South River monitoring stations also measured soil dissolved oxygen readings below the acceptable threshold, with only Duvall Creek, Pocahontas Creek and the mouth of the river recording averages above the passing threshold. However, neither the West nor the Rhode River recorded averages below the threshold.

At the same time, the South River also received the best clarity score of the three rivers.

Reductions in stormwater runoff and nutrient pollution from lawn fertilizers and septics are needed to improve water quality in the South River, the report states, especially in the upper reaches of the river and its larger tributaries.

In all three rivers, the quality of individual monitoring stations declined further along each river and their tributaries compared to their mouth at the Chesapeake Bay. The tributaries are often shallower than the river mouths, making them more susceptible to pollution from surrounding countries.

The data collected wasn’t a surprise, Johnston said, but confirmation of what Arundel Rivers and other organizations around the Chesapeake Bay have known for some time.

“The things we do to our land, we also do to our rivers,” he said. “That’s a huge opportunity: If we change a few things on our land and do it on a large scale over a large area, then we will see changes in those tributaries.”

These figures are just the start of Arundel Rivers’ efforts to improve water quality in all three rivers, according to Elle Bassett, the South, West and Rhode Riverkeeper. Over the next three years, the organization will monitor nitrogen, phosphorus and chlorophyll levels to track algae blooms. Monitoring these parameters will give experts a better idea of ​​what is causing the poor water clarity and low oxygen levels, allowing Arundel Rivers to focus on recovery efforts.

The river qualities also indicate that there are many places ready for targeted restoration of underwater grasses – an initiative launched by Arundel Rivers in February.

Although no sites have been selected yet, Johnston says, Arundel Rivers is looking for areas with good water clarity without suspended sediment, and a good river bottom that can support underwater grasses.

The organization has received funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Chesapeake Bay Trust to build an underwater vegetation turbulator, a machine that separates seeds from underwater grass stems to disperse them over shallow areas in the rivers, Bassett said in the news release. .

“We cannot restore our rivers without restoring the underwater habitat that once thrived,” she said.