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Homeowners, associations can support a cleaner Chesapeake Bay watershed

January 8, 2013

Upon the release of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's State of the Bay Report, SOLitude Lake Management, an industry leader in lake, pond and stormwater basin management, fisheries management and related environmental services for the Mid-Atlantic and surrounding states, recommends actions that homeowners, homeowner associations and property management associations can take to help reduce pollution and contamination as runoff that ultimately funnels to the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

“What most home and land owners in the watershed don't realize is that everything they do to their lawn, lake, pond, or stormwater basin eventually affects the Chesapeake Bay,” says owner Kevin Tucker. “If homeowners recognize that by making small improvements on their property, a large impact can be realized in the Chesapeake Bay aquatic ecosystem. Together, along with the watershed's impacting states, I believe that the next report from the CBF will have an even greater improvement.”

SOLitude Lake Management recommends actions to be taken by homeowners, homeowner associations and property management associations as part of maintaining a healthy watershed:

• Reduce the amount of lawn fertilizer or number of yearly applications, and only apply in fall.

• Do not blow leaves or grass clippings into lakes, ponds, streams, ditches, storm drains or storm gutters.

• Outfit lakes, ponds and stormwater basins with aeration systems to reduce nutrient loading and slow the flow of nutrients into the natural waterways funneling into the Chesapeake Bay.

• Maintain a healthy and vegetated buffer along all shorelines of lakes, ponds, stormwater basins, swales, ditches and any other area through which water flows to help sequester nutrients before that water reaches the natural waterways.

• Throughout the watershed, monitor and repair areas of erosion or bare soil with grasses or other vegetation to prevent further erosion and soil with nutrients washing into the water body.

Learn more about SOLitude Lake Management and purchase products at www.solitudelakemanagement.com.

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