CBF Offering 6 Live Online Classes To Empower Volunteer VoiCeS In PA To Advocate For Clean Water

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is hosting six live, online classes for Pennsylvania residents interested in learning more about water quality issues and what they can do to help protect and restore local rivers and streams.

“We hope participants in CBF’s Volunteers as Chesapeake Stewards (VoiCeS) online classes will gain a deeper appreciation of the value of clean water to our communities, economy, and quality of life,” says Harry Campbell, CBF’s Science Policy and Advocacy Director in Pennsylvania. “With that deeper knowledge and appreciation, new local volunteers will be empowered to take real and meaningful actions from their backyards to the halls of Congress.”

Voices virtual learning will be held online Tuesday evenings, October 6 through November 17, except for November 3, from 7-8:30 p.m. 

Classes will include one to two hours of pre-recorded materials that participants can watch at their leisure. 

Participants will be sharing learning with other like-minded folks from across Virginia and Maryland and all must attend at least five of the six classes.

Professionally-taught class subjects include:

-- Pollution problems and solutions; 

-- Meet your Pennsylvania watershed and aquatic bugs; 

-- Environmental justice;

-- Polluted runoff, riparian buffers in PA, Bay science and fisheries; 

-- Urban and rural pollution issues; and 

-- Ways you can save PA and the Bay, the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership, and how to be a clean water advocate.

The weekly live classes will include a Q&A with expert speakers.

A field trip will be held for each region at a later date when the group can safely gather.

After classes, VoiCeS participants will commit a minimum of 20 hours of volunteer work toward improving local water quality and the Chesapeake Bay.

“Volunteer activities could take the form of joining a local group effort the plant trees, writing letters to state and federal decision-makers about the importance of water quality programs and proposed legislation, or even reducing the size of lawns by planting wildflower meadows and trees,” Harry Campbell adds. “It is their path to take. We’ll be there to help.”

The course fee is $25 per household, which includes one seat on the Zoom webinars. A limited number of spaces are available for those who cannot manage the registration fee at this time.

For more information, visit CBF’s Volunteers as Chesapeake Stewards (VoiCeS).  Questions should be directed to Carla Johns by sending email to: cjohns@cbf.org. 

For more on Chesapeake Bay-related issues in Pennsylvania, visit the Chesapeake Bay Foundation-PA webpage.  Click Here to sign up for Pennsylvania updates (bottom of left column).  Click Here to support their work.

Also visit the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership to learn how you can help clean water grow on trees.

CBF has over 275,000 members in Bay Watershed.

PA Chesapeake Bay Plan

For more information on how Pennsylvania plans to meet its Chesapeake Bay cleanup obligations, visit DEP’s PA’s Phase 3 Watershed Implementation Plan webpage.    

Click Here for a summary of the steps the Plan recommends.

How Clean Is Your Stream?

DEP’s Interactive Report Viewer allows you to zoom in on your own stream or watershed to find out how clean your stream is or if it has impaired water quality using the latest information in the draft 2020 Water Quality Report.

[Posted: Sept. 30, 2020]  PA Environment Digest