By Zach Davidson

The iconic phrase, “Goin’ down to the O-cean, hon!” is no doubt seared into your head even if you’re not a Baltimore native. But, if Van Reiner, backed by waterside businesses, partnerships and the City’s blessing, has his way; the Inner Harbor will be courting its own beach bums by 2020. 
Reiner is championing the Baltimore Waterfront Healthy Harbor Initiative; an initiative to create a swimmable, fishable harbor by 2020, with an end to fish kills by 2012. Reiner is the President and CEO of the Maryland Academy of Sciences, based in the Maryland Science Center; Treasurer of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, and Chair of the Baltimore Sustainability Committee.

The initiative, which calls for a network of floating marshes along the water’s edge, acting as filters and oxygenators, is already moving forward. Reiner expects the marshes to go in by next summer. Water oxygenating sculptures, rain harvesters, green roofs, permeable pavements, native plant species, and large bubblers (using the same concept of bubblers in aquariums) is also part of the plan to create a swimmable harbor. The initiative also calls for the reduction of fertilizer and potable water on plants. In addition to circulating the harbor, containing and keeping out chemicals, the strategy’s goal is a reduction of outside sources of CO2, which the water absorbs. 

For Reiner, this privately funded project is more than about Harbor and Chesapeake Bay water quality; it’s about sustainability. According to Reiner, we are already seeing the beginnings of citywide sustainability, such as the implementation of the Charm City Circulator, and the effort to double the City’s tree canopy.

Despite all the strategies and support, Reiner admits that this is only a start. A clean harbor starts upstream in the County, but Reiner is hopeful that this bold initiative will inspire others upstream to be saying, “Goin’ down to the Inner Harbor, hon!”

Charmed Magazine sat down with Reiner to discuss the initiative.

Charmed| What are some of the goals of the healthy harbor initiative?

Reiner| I believe in B-HAG’S - “Big Hairy Audacious Goals.” And, our B-HAG is a swimmable fishable harbor by 2020. So, we are doing this to raise awareness of the condition of the harbor, and to galvanize support for doing what is necessary to bring the harbor back to where it should be; that’s the ultimate goal. If I catch a fish at the inner harbor I want to be able to cook it and eat it safely.

Charmed| Why is the partnership of this initiative so unique?

Reiner| A group of attractions and businesses around the inner harbor were not happy with the state of housekeeping. We thought the water was dirty, the promenade was dirty, and that the plantings weren’t acceptable. Rather than just say to the city, “we’ve identified this problem what are you going to do to fix to it,” we said, “we’ve identified this problem, but we’ve pooled our resources together to work with you: to help you with what you’re already doing, to make improvements to the atmosphere, and to the surroundings of the Inner Harbor.” And that was really the genesis.

Charmed| When did the genesis start?

About four or five years ago, the beginning of this movement was an inner harbor assessment done by the GBC (The Greater Baltimore Committee), and the results said we had to do something to improve the cleanliness (of the water). A group of people got together and said why can’t it be us? Because our visitors, our customers, our clients, don’t want to come here when they have to deal with a dirty situation, be it on the water or on land. So, that was what really brought us together, and it was more than just complaining about it; we wanted to do something about it. And, the city was very, very good in saying we want you to help us, and that’s been great. We’ve had great cooperation from virtually every agency in the city.

Charmed| How do parts of the initiative, such as recycling, and alternative transportation relate to water quality?
Reiner| The floating islands we want to install are going to be built on empty plastic, soda and water bottles, fished out of the harbor. The (plastic bottles) fly in every time we have a big rainstorm, and I can’t tell you the tonnage of trash that has been pulled out of the Inner Harbor. And, if you’re coming to a facility, or you’re coming to the Inner Harbor and you look at a corner of the harbor and as far as the eye can see it’s just floating trash; what’s your opinion of Baltimore going to be? It’s a trashy city. Now, the circulator is all about relieving congestion. Have you tried to drive in downtown Baltimore at rush hour? If you have, you’ll understand the need for the circulator. We have three Segways on-site (Science Center); I occasionally will put on my helmet and go to meetings on the Segway.  1) It’s electric, and 2) I can go in the bike lane, which means I can wave at the congestion. Most of the time, I walk because I want to reduce my carbon footprint. CO2 is put into the atmosphere, because of internal combustion (engines) a portion of it gets absorbed by the Chesapeake Bay. When the bay absorbs it, the pH (a measurement and gauge of acidity) goes down. The lower the pH, the more shellfish shells dissolve because it’s calcium. So, that’s how it all fits together.

Charmed| Is there any wildlife in the harbor?
Reiner| There are fish. And all you need to do is be here when we have an algae bloom and a fish kill to see all the carcasses floating. I’ve seen people over by Harbor East pull crabs out of the water, so you can do some crabbing here. We routinely, as part of the Science Center educational experience, will dip water out of the harbor and look at all the things that you can see under a microscope. And they are all living and breathing and multiplying every day.

A lot of us assume that the bottom of the harbor is jokingly just syringes and bodies. What’s actually down there?
As nature intended there’s the sediment that’s there, plus it’s been added to by human activity since the region was settled. Part of what we want to do is identify what’s there, and hopefully lay out a game plan on what to do with it, or how to deal with it.  Are there syringes down there? I have no idea; I haven’t found one, but I haven’t gone looking for one. Are there bodies? When the Volvo Ocean Race came to Baltimore, they had to dredge the harbor to make sure that the keels wouldn’t run aground and they dredged in front of the Science Center. The only thing that I can tell you of note that they dredged up was a jawbone of a horse. So, how long has it been there?
Part of the initiative calls for installing oxygenating water sculptures and rain-harvesters, how important is this?
Nature originally surrounded the harbor with marshes, and the marshes as we know from the Katrina affect in Louisiana, and we are now learning again with the oil spill, are nature’s way of filtering out pollutants before it gets to a major body of water. So, where have our marshes gone? Well, they’ve gone into roads, they’ve gone into buildings, and they’ve gone into open space. So, what we are attempting to do with the floating marshes and the floating islands is create a live zone; the plant material and roots will go down into the water, and they will absorb some of the contaminants as part of the natural process. The other thing is, on land there’s a relationship between the oxygen I breathe in and breathe out; the carbon dioxide I breathe out and the carbon dioxide plants take in, and the oxygen they give off. Well, it’s similar relationship in the water. Once the islands are established, our belief is it will create a zone where aquatic life can go in these times of algae blooms, where it will still be oxygenated. Part of what kills the fish is the lack of oxygen. There are two ways you can remove oxygen from the water. 1) biological oxygen demand - the demand of oxygen in the water consumed by living things such as an algae bloom. 2) chemical oxygen demand – the demand by mankind. Either one, if you have too big of a BOD or a COD you’re going to have dead fish. So, you put in a bubbler, and obviously we are not doing that right away, anytime you bubble air through the water you oxygenate it. If you have an aquarium at home, your filter and the bubbler oxygenates the water, because if you don’t do anything and you don’t have live plants, your fish are going to go belly up.
Why hasn’t this initiative already happened?
Several watersheds feed the Inner Harbor, and (the issue) is it is not just the City it’s the County. So, if somebody drops an empty plastic bottle near a storm sewer in Towson, unless there’s some way to trap it, it will eventually find its way to the Inner Harbor and hence the bay. If someone breaks a sewer pipe, then that’s going to leak into the water flowing to the harbor.  It takes a concerted effort by a lot of people to make a difference, and somebody has to start.  My belief is that the government can legislate standards, but until the individual believes there’s something they can do we will never get to where we need to be. So, we are recycling plastic, we are recycling paper, we’re reducing the amount of fertilizer, because we don’t want nutrients running into the harbor, because that will just promote algae. I want my grandchildren and my great grand children to enjoy what I’ve enjoyed in my lifetime. We need to take care of what we have on this Earth.
When will this happen?
The impediments we had to get over were regulatory. We pitched (the plan) to the Maryland Department of the Environment, the army corps of engineers, the EPA and the Port Authority.  So, once we get everybody lined up and signed off, then the floating islands will go in. kids of the living classroom will be putting them together, and I think it’s just a great thing to promote awareness.

Baltimore Waterfront Healthy Harbor Initiative
http://http://www.waterfrontpartnership.org/pdfs/Healthy_Harbor_Strategy.pdf