A University of Maryland environmental research group is developing a “report card” to assess the health of the Baltimore Harbor.
The Baltimore Harbor Report Card will help track water quality levels as property owners and city officials work to clean up the polluted harbor over the next decade.
The report card, which is being developed by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, is being modeled after a similar tool the group created to score Chesapeake Bay water quality.
Research by UMCES’ Heath Kelsey, who is helping to design the report card, found that Baltimore Harbor water is safe for swimmers only 21 percent of the time because of high concentrations of bacteria.
Development of the report card is in the early stages, Kelsey said. He expected it to be released in 2012.
The report card will measure specific indicators of water health like levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and toxic contaminants.
UMCES, in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Chesapeake Bay Program, developed the first report card program for the Chesapeake Bay, EcoCheck, in 2007.
-By Maryland Newsline’s Madhu Rajaraman