Kevin Hedge and Ted Gattino, Managing Partners of BlueWing Environmental Solutions & Technologies, have been named two of 2011's Innovators of the Year by The Daily Record.

Since 2002, The Daily Record has recognized Maryland businesses and individuals who have had a positive effect and tremendous impact in Maryland.

This year’s Innovators will be honored at a reception Wednesday, Oct. 26 at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

Peter Franchot, Comptroller of Maryland, also wrote to congratulate Kevin and BlueWing. Read that letter here.

by Donya Currie
June 29, 2011
marylandlife.com

Christopher Myers

Tucked into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor just below the Hard Rock Café sign reading “Save the Planet” floats a manmade island designed to do just that.

About the size of a minivan, the developed-in-Maryland island looks like a slice of nature—lush with green plants—bobbing along the surface of the water as Styrofoam cups, empty soda bottles, and other litter float by.

Its native wetland plants, such as rose mallow and seaside goldenrod, thrive in harbor water that’s been over-fertilized by nutrients running off the nearby land. Underneath, the island provides a habitat for microbes that will literally consume pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus, bringing the harbor one step closer to being swimmable and fishable by 2020.

“They’re a concentrated wetland, and they’re made of all recycled materials, which is cool,” says Ted Gattino, a managing partner of the Ellicott City-based BlueWing Environmental Solutions and Technology, which has obtained contracts to place a total of 18 acres of such islands in the harbor.

“They can be placed in almost any water body. The reports keep getting better and better.”

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Maryland is well-positioned to help in the quest for cleaner water, both thanks to the natural backyard laboratory that is the Chesapeake Bay and because a trove of scientists, engineers, and business owners has come together to showcase the viability of new technology for pollution prevention and cleanup.

Entrepreneurs and environmental stakeholders from the areas of government, science, research, and the technology community are joining forces to demonstrate these projects in the Chesapeake Bay, including Baltimore Harbor.

“Besides the innovative technologies, we have an important model that we can share,” says Peter Gourlay, founder of the Maryland-Asia Environmental Partnership (MD-AEP), which highlights local clean-water technologies.

“We have over 80 years of science and research invested in the Chesapeake Bay.”

Beloved and relied upon for serving the area’s recreational and fishing needs as well as industrial-, agricultural-, and potable-water demands, the bay also faces unprecedented challenges, Gourlay says, ranging from excessive nutrient runoff resulting from increased urban and suburban sprawl to rising sea levels to depleted fisheries.

“Every country in the world is facing similar challenges to those we face in Chesapeake Bay,” says Gourlay, illustrating why the bay provides a great model for lessons learned—both good and bad—that can be shared with other countries.

With its 41 million acres of watershed and 200,000 miles of shoreline, the bay is the most-studied estuary—which, by definition, contain salt water, fresh water, and brackish water, a mixture of both—in the world.

Wildlife in such an environment must be hardy. If it’s dying off, “You know you’re doing something really wrong,” says engineer Christopher Overcash of the Maryland office of KCI Technologies.

Dwindling oyster populations and algae blooms resulting in fish kills have long concerned area lawmakers, citizens, and scientists, leading to clean-water advancements that can serve as lessons across the country and worldwide.

“This region, more than any other region in the country, has absolutely embraced advanced waste-treatment technology,” says Ann Swanson, executive director of the tri-state Chesapeake Bay Commission, which pushes for bay restoration.

“All of our facilities of the larger 100,000 gallons or more have advanced phosphorus removal, and most of them now are moving toward advanced nitrogen removal.”

Swanson traveled to Ohio’s Little Miami River in May to share lessons learned from the Chesapeake Bay. Although that river is a mere 100 miles long, with 1.1 million acres of watershed—tiny compared to the bay—clean-water advocates there wanted to apply the Chesapeake region’s wastewater treatment knowledge.

In terms of numbers, Swanson explains local clean-water progress this way: In 1985, the load for wastewater treatment plants in the Chesapeake Bay region was 90.9 million pounds per year. By 2009, the number was nearly halved, at 53.3 million pounds. The current goal is to bring the figure to 30.9 million pounds by 2025.

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Read the entire article on marylandlife.com

(June 16)--Forty-one American businesses, corporations, and industry trade groups issued an open letter today supporting federal coastal ecosystem programs as good for both the economy and the environment.

America’s Small Businesses and Corporations Agree: Coastal Ecosystem Restoration is Good for the Environment and Business

(Washington)—Forty-one American businesses, corporations and trade industry groups have joined together to support federal coastal ecosystem restoration programs as good for both the economy and the environment.

The letter, from businesses with ties to the nation’s coasts, estuaries and rivers, urges legislators and other federal government decision-makers to show “strong support for federal habitat restoration programs that are essential components to restoring the health and vitality” of the nation’s coastal communities. It notes that “when healthy, these areas support and protect countless commercial and recreational industries that feed dollars into local economies,” but that “ever-increasing demands placed on these areas have resulted in substantial habitat loss…requiring restoration efforts to reverse these trends.”

The letter states that for more than a decade federal habitat restoration programs overseen by NOAA, USDA, and the Army Corps of Engineers, among others, have worked together successfully to complete on-the-ground restoration projects through non-regulatory approaches that emphasize community involvement and unique public-private partnerships. And that, further, these cost-effective restoration programs not only help the environment, but create jobs for local and regional economies and in industries represented by each of the companies and associations—a powerful one-two punch on behalf of the environment and the economy and jobs.

28 October 2010 | Rebecca Ward | Washington DC - from voanews.com

Water may be the source of life, but its life-giving quality depends on how we treat it.  Farm runoff, pesticides and fertilizers, even treated wastewater make their way back into our waters and our lives.

But at the Port of Baltimore in Maryland, the National Aquarium has a pilot program that could help improve the water below its piers.  An island made of garbage.

"This is a floating island here in the Baltimore harbor," says Laura Bankey, the aquarium's conservation manager. "These technologies have been used in other systems.  And there is an estimate that one acre (.4 hectares) of these wetlands would equal 200 acres (81 hectares) of natural wetlands, which in themselves have tremendous habitat value and water quality value."

Bankey says the little floating trash island was put together in just a few hours.  Native plants are planted in a plastic mesh, then anchored into place.

"The plants themselves will actually grow through the island material and take up nutrients from the water.  And that's really what's causing a lot of our problems here in the Chesapeake bay.  Those excess nutrients are causing fish die-offs and dead zones and some other things.  So we're trying to prove that new technologies like this can improve water quality here."