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Clean Water Conversations: Year One Highlights and Lessons · Clean Water Conversations

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_07: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Clean Water Conversations, the podcast where we have casual discussions about creating clean and clear water right here in Lancaster County.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_07: I'm Ken.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_09: Hi, everybody.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_09: I'm Allison.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_07: Allison, happy new year.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_09: To you as well.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_07: And this is our season two final episode.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_09: How did that happen?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_07: It's also our year one final episode.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_09: That is amazing.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_09: That is amazing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_09: Time flies.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it has been a really fun year doing this podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_09: Absolutely.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_07: We've had so much, so much, but we will get back to that in just a sec.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um, what was your favorite moment from year one?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_09: I think one of my favorite moments was being able to do the podcast with Adam Ortiz, who is the regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_09: And he was also the keynote speaker at our full partners meeting that same day.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_09: So to be able to have him talk to our entire network, but then be a guest on the podcast and share some pretty inspirational comments about how EPA recognizes that Lancaster is making progress and acknowledging all the local work.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_09: It was wonderful.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_09: How about you, Ken?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_07: I I love the the live stream.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_09: Oh yeah.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_07: Us sitting live in a stream, uh promoting Water Week and and promoting the, you know, the that was a s our season one finale.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_07: And that was that was so much fun and simultaneously so stressful because we did it live.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_09: Um well and making sure we just didn't fall over into the screen.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_07: I almost did.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_07: I almost did.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_09: That's my favorite picture.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_07: Oh my gosh.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_09: Yep.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_09: So how about your list of awesomeness?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_09: There are many to choose from.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_07: Oh my goodness.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_07: I have to say, for the whole year, this podcast tops my list of awesomeness.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_07: This is this has been so much fun.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_07: And, you know, there are so many people that are kind of jumping on board and and listening to us have fun and be goofy and at the same time have really educational conversations.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_07: And there has been such a ripple effect because, you know, while we're sitting here having fun, the word is getting out about all of the amazing things that our partners are doing.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_07: That's right.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_07: And how much effect that work has here and in the Chesapeake Bay.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_07: That ripple effect is just absolutely incredible.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_09: It's totally working.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_09: So I'm gonna build on that ripple effect comment.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_09: And my list of awesomeness is the Fig magazine.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_09: I'm just really grateful for the spotlight that they gave on me and the Cleanwater Partners in their summer issue.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_09: So thank you to the High Foundation for that.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_09: But then also being able to connect with Fig and do our first round of advertising for the Lancaster Cleanwater Partners.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_09: It started us down a pathway of learning more about us, our audience, our spending, our income.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_09: There were a couple different pieces to it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_09: So it was really just a wonderful um experience.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_09: And I'm grateful for that from Fig.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_09: The piece that goes along with that for me is the list of awesomeness definitely includes the culture of our backbone organization, both our backbone and our entire collaborative network, because the culture is such an important part, and I think it's such a big strength of what we do.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_09: So to me, an example of that is that we've started doing our newsletters themed on our values.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_09: And that's an example of how people have committed to those values and they're really living them.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_07: And speaking of the backbone, uh, we did a video with Chesapeake Bay Trust.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_07: And it was that was another fun thing this year.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_09: It was fun and cold.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_07: It was very cold.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_07: But that video basically explains what we as a backbone do and how that affects our partners and how and it goes back to the ripple effect and supports the partners in so many ways.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_07: And how that work that our partners do affects other people.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_09: Very true.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_07: It's it's an amazing video, and you can see it on our website.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_07: Right on the homepage.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_07: LangsterCleanwaterpartners.com.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_07: Uh it is hard to believe, but we only have been doing this show since January.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_07: Uh what?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_07: I know it feels like a lot longer than that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_07: We've had a total of 19 episodes, 25 guests.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_07: It all started on January 22nd.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_07: We have talked to partner organizations, leaders in conservation, and leaders in the community.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_07: We've heard about some amazing work being done in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_07: And here's some highlights.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we call that the Conewago Flood Plain Restoration.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a large, almost 25-acre restoration site with an additional 33 acres of native meadows, and it handles 125,000 uh cubic yards of flood water, so it reduces flooding onto nearby roads.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: It um is fulfilling our MS-4, again, municipal separate storm sewer system, uh pollutant reduction plan.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we are not only getting credits, but uh other municipalities in Dauphin County, as well as Mount Joy Township, are also getting their pollutant reduction credits.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_09: So, keeping with our theme of buffers here, you have really led a collaborative effort for a pretty massive buffer at Overlook Park.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's this little park in the middle of Langster County in Manheim Township.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And another one of our colleagues, Ryan Davis, thought, okay, he reached out to the township.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They said, sure, we've got eight acres that you can have along this little stream in Overlook Park.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we were off to the races.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we uh the the first three acres were planted by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, with all of us volunteers helping.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We took over the the second half of the project, another five acres of planting, and it has turned into a community gathering place.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: It really has.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, churches are involved, the Alliance's riparian rangers program are involved to help us with the maintenance.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one other thing that we're doing there that is so much fun is that it's giving us space to really stretch out and fill that wetland area around that stream with as many different species of trees and shrubs and wildflowers that we can because we know that it's going to be a place that people can come and get up close and personal, and we want to show them the absolute best of the best.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Some bigger projects that are happening this year.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: We have uh the first of our uh sewer separation projects.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: So this will actually be uh separating the combined sewer system into uh and building a new stormwater pipe that will collect most of the stormwater, if not all of the stormwater, um, and uh have a a new sometimes a new discharge, sometimes relying on existing discharges, but separating that out um in conjunction with some of our green infrastructure, these are pretty big projects that we're planning, and and we're really excited about these opportunities.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_06: Well one of the others we've had was uh JB Zimmer.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_06: JB Zimmer.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_06: He wanted to come in and create some parking.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_06: And we said, eh.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_06: So we work with him and we work with our engineer, and he actually put some pervious pavers in, but then he put a rain garden in.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_09: Oh, great.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_06: And we helped put him in, and he agreed to maintain it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_06: So he got growth as a business, we got water quality improvements.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_06: And that was actually at the headwaters of the big area going down toward Blue Bowl.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_06: But big deal.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_07: Well, we have spent a lot of time in 2024 shaping the narrative of the work that's being done here for clean water.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, things like the Chesapeake Bay Report card that came out in July, that's one of those examples I feel like that told the story locally to a bigger audience.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_09: The fact that the Susquehanna had the best score in 20 years, that's an amazing example of local progress showing up in the waterways, but also thanks to many of the local storytellers, it's showing up in the headlines, it's showing up in their annual reports, it's showing up in their conversations with landowners.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_09: So just fantastic to be able to have storytellers at the local level, as well as some of our bay leaders and their way of talking about Lancaster, I think it really has shifted.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_09: That narrative is different than it was a year ago, definitely different than it was five or six years ago.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_09: So the progress of what partner organizations are doing in Lancaster, working towards clean and clear by 2040, it's just incredible.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_09: So the podcast has got a few of those examples.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_09: So let's take a listen.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: How are we doing?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I can tell you, and I don't know how familiar people are with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences report card that came out in, I believe it was July.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_04: We have been saying that our water quality was improving at the river input monitoring stations at USGS reviews trends analysis.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_04: We've been seeing it in the data that's been submitted.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_04: But finally, we're seeing it in this report card that showed that the upper bay, where the Susquehanna River basin drains into, was drastically improving.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm so excited.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_08: And when people asked me, I was at a talk, I was doing a talk in St.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_08: Michael's with the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, and somebody stood up at the end and said, What's the Chesapeake Bay's biggest challenge and what gives you hope?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_08: I was like, Well, that's easy.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_08: Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_08: And I also love with the passage of the whole watershed act in Maryland, which is a piece of legislation that passed last year.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_08: A lot of the models that they were looking at are from Pennsylvania.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_08: And so to have Pennsylvania be leading and showing the way for Maryland, I think is just a perfect example of what's possible when we focus our positive energy on this long-standing challenge.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_05: The city of Lancaster has been a tremendous leader in just driving around, seeing the amount of bioretention and permeable um pavers and stuff like that, tree canopy and what's being done in the parks and the regener regenerative um stuff.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, wow, this is like really thoughtful.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that shift is the result of all of the hard work that you folks are doing and people are noticing.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_07: Now, I wanted to say, have you ever heard the phrase work hard, play hard?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_09: Yes.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, well, our folks are working hard and we play hard.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_07: That's right.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_09: We're gonna have some fun.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_07: That's right.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_07: You may have noticed we have a bit of fun here when we record these episodes.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_07: We laugh a lot and we buzz a lot.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_06: And MS4.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_06: I'm the COO now.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_06: Development work.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: I love a good meadow.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's a new lumber.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're funding things like um EDC.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: There it is.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just gonna hear it for months if I was the only one I'm gonna find.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: What's a humor, Kevin Ellison?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_04: The things that we would go for for DEP.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: Sorry.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_04: So close.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: We've received some significant grant funding from Noah and also the PADEP.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've been waiting to get fun.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Good job.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and it's it's become a badge of honor now.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_07: We come back to a meadow again.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, you love a good meadow.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, good.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_09: As we mentioned, this is the end of season two.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_09: But we are setting up a lineup of guests for season three, which starts later this month.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, one thing that you will notice that is different in season three um is that we will be dropping these every three weeks as opposed to every other week that we did in season two.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_07: And a lot about a lot of that, and I'm just being transparent here, is um the the the internal workload.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_07: We've got a lot going on, and the podcast isn't the only thing we're doing.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_07: So we still want to give you the podcast, but we also need to to balance it out.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_07: So uh it so look forward to every three weeks.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_07: I'll still drop them on a Thursday.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, and trying to be as respectful as possible of our partners who are our guests and their workload and the amount of time that they're putting into this, it is a great way for them to tell their story.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_09: And we want to make sure that that is the best way to represent them.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yep.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_07: And we will continue to celebrate the successes, we'll continue to celebrate the awesomeness.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_07: We will continue to have fun and having conversations about creating clean and clear water right here in Lancaster County.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_09: Thanks, everybody.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_09: Enjoy your happy new year.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_07: And we will be back in just a couple of weeks.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_07: Until then, take care.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_09: Bye-bye.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_07: Cleanwater Conversations is brought to you by Lancaster Clean Water Partners.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_07: If you have comments or suggestions on show topics, please contact us at infol at Lancaster Cleanwater Partners.com.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you for listening.