Southern Anne Arundel County's Herring Bay watershed will be under assault on October 16 as citizen surveyors fan out over the area seeking potential pollution problems. The Herring Bay watershed survey is being organized by the Lower Western Shore Tributary Team, Maryland Save Our Streams and residents of that area in an effort to raise public awareness of human impacts on water quality.

The Herring Bay watershed is approximately 25 square miles and runs from Deale in the north, to Rose Haven in the south. A watershed is the land area that drains into a particular body of water, whether it be a stream, creek, river, bay or ocean. Herring Bay's water quality is a direct result of what happens on the land, along the shoreline, creeks, streams and marshlands.

Volunteers are needed to conduct the survey. Interested persons are requested to meet at Deale Elementary School (located at 759 Mason's Beach Road) at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, October 16 for a training session. Surveyors will be given the information and equipment necessary to identify sources of concern to the health of the watershed and any factors that might degrade local waters.

After a light lunch, teams will be sent out to cover a specific area. They will travel by car, foot, air and boat to locate and/or identify bank erosion, trashy areas, various odors, sunken boats, and sewage pipe outfalls within the watershed. Farms and places where vegetation could or need to be planted will also be identified. That initial assessment of the watershed's 65 miles of stream banks, marshes and shorelines should be completed in less than three hours.

Once potential and real pollution sources are identified, Maryland Save Our Streams will guide community groups and local residents in activities to correct the problems. Stream and shoreline cleanups may be done by each area by homeowners. Other problems may require help from the county, the state or even the federal government.

The surveyor training will be conducted that morning regardless of the weather. Volunteers will be assigned to teams and given information to complete the survey at a later date, if it is not possible to do so on the 16th. Surveyors should wear casual attire, long trousers and sturdy shoes.

The Lower Western Shore Tributary Team is one of 10 teams across Maryland working to restore and protect their neighborhood streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. The teams have been working for three years on community education, policy recommendations, and innovative demonstration projects to clean up local rivers and the Bay.

Teams were created for each of Maryland's 10 major Bay watersheds, and are made up of citizens, farmers, environmentalists, state and local government representatives. The Lower Western Shore Tributary Team reviews water quality issues within Anne Arundel and a portion of Calvert counties. Their work is focused on reducing nutrient pollution, considered to be one of the largest threats to good water quality in the state.

Nutrient pollution, primarily excess nitrogen and phosphorus, come from both point and non-point sources, and the teams focus on both. The teams were appointed by Governor Parris N. Glendening in 1996.

For more information and to pre-register, contact Terri Lehr at Maryland Save Our Streams at (800) 448-5826.