The Community

Encourage your business or even someone else's to adopt a series of coastal bays-friendly Best Management Practices (BMPs). BMPs might focus on conserving water, paper, or controlling chemicals or other pollutants at the workplace. The Coastal Bays Program is developing a "Businesses for the Bays" award program to recognize thoughtful commerce. Call us about your efforts.
Get your feet wet. Join in the local clean-ups of our streambanks and shorelines. Participate in other hands-on, community-level Estuary restoration programs such as wetland creation, dune revegetation, and wildlife habitat enhancement.
Volunteer for one of the many nonprofit groups working to protect and restore our estuary.
Educate your friends, office mates and children about the importance of our Estuary and the things they can do to protect its health.
Visit shoreline parks and join guided birdwatching and wetland ecology walks. The more you understand about the marvels of our estuary, the more you'll want to save them.
Attend public hearings on water quality and land use and development issues. Voice concerns about environmental impacts, and support for source reduction efforts, BMPs for business, sustainable development and natural resource protection.
Encourage cities and counties to launch curbside recycling and motor oil pick-up programs, and to provide regular, easily accessible household hazardous waste disposal programs.
Encourage your local municipal government to clean streets and catch basins more often, to enforce pooper-scooper laws, and to use porous asphalt for streets and sidewalks.
Be a watchdog. You can call the Coastal Bays Program to report spills, illegal dumping and other water quality problems.
Become active in the planning and zoning process in your community.

Part of the National Estuary Program,
the Maryland Coastal Bays Program is a partnership among the towns of Ocean City and Berlin, National Park Service, Worcester County, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Maryland Departments of Natural Resources, Agriculture, Environment, and Planning, who have come together to produce the first ever management plan for the coastal bays.

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Copyright 2003 - Maryland Coastal Bays Program
Questions? Email: mcbp@mdcoastalbays.org