After 25 years working often literally in Maryland's trenches trying to help restore waterways that feed into the Chesapeake Bay, 53-year-old John L. McCoy came back to Columbia for a very special job.
"I've come home," said the beefy, crew-cut and mustached new Columbia Association watershed manager. Five years short of a full state pension, McCoy, of Clarksville, resigned his Department of Natural Resources job to return to Columbia, where he had worked part-time for CA as a college student. He's taken the new watershed position, pleased by the commitment of residents who pushed hard for the homeowner association's officials to create it.
"I've come to work in a watershed I live in," which is exciting for him, McCoy said. "This is a nice place to work and a great job" that also cuts his old 56-mile daily commute down to 8 miles. Better yet, "it's an extension of the work I've been doing. It's a perfect fit," McCoy said.
At 43, Columbia is moving into a renewal phase marked by major redevelopment plans for Town Center, the growing public environmental consciousness and commitment to protect and restore the Patuxent River watershed that feeds into the Chesapeake. CA officials have also learned It's expensive to clean and repair streams and lakes after years of too little attention.
Responding to citizen pressure, the CA, aided by residents, created a detailed watershed maintenance plan to restore and improve water runoff, stop erosion, protect waterways, engage more of the public and educate people about what they can do to help. Simple things can make a difference, McCoy said, like using rain barrels to catch runoff, or building rain gardens to filter storm water through stones, flowers, plants and small swales to absorb and slow the flow, reducing damage.
If successful, the plan can have very concrete results for the CA, too, by cutting back expensive projects such as the multimillion-dollar dredging of the town's three manmade lakes. Hiring a dedicated watershed manager was one of the key goals for residents pushing for more modern environmental techniques.
Now they're happy McCoy is on the job.
"We are really looking forward to having a watershed manager, which has been desperately needed," said Elaine Pardoe, founder of CLEER, Community for Lake Elkhorn's Eventual Restoration. One need look no further than the $5.2 million dredging under way of sediment from the algae-choked 35-year-old lake, she said, to appreciate the benefits earlier watershed planning might have provided. A regular schedule of small dredging jobs and efforts to keep sediment and runoff out of the lake might have paid off in a much less extensive job now, she has said.
Another major dredging is planned soon for Lake Kittamaqundi, and a smaller project is slated for Wilde Lake, the smallest of the three.
McCoy pointed out that Columbia was started before storm water management techniques were developed, and the prevailing theory for controlling runoff in the late 1960s and 1970s was primitive and simple.
"Get it in a culvert and get it out of here," is the way McCoy described it. "Now, we've shifted our whole philosophy." Officials now realize the nutrients, chemicals and sediment that went with the water had an effect on everything that lives in water. The new idea is to slow the flow, absorb more water into the ground and keep it, and the chemicals, nutrients and pollutants it carries, out of streams, lakes and the bay.
That's the goal of the first 11 watershed restoration projects, worth $1.6 million, that were developed before McCoy's arrival July 8. Lake Elkhorn will be the initial focus of what could eventually be a $40 million, years-long program.
It is his job to bring the planned town's outdated storm water ponds, streams, creeks, drainage ditches and every other water source up to modern standards on all 3,500 acres of CA land, while encouraging and teaching owners of the other 12,500 acres to do the same.
The detailed watershed management plan drawn up over the past 18 months is "an absolutely excellent playbook," McCoy said, and he met with Pardoe and members of a citizens advisory board on his first day on the job.
"People are generally committed. They're interested and they've assumed this leadership mantle," McCoy said.
Pardoe said she was equally impressed with McCoy.
"He came to the meeting to be introduced, but he took an active part and asked questions. He put forth ideas. He seemed very involved in the subject right from the get-go," she said.
McCoy said he appreciates the size of the task, however.
"What we have found over time is the magnitude of restoration that needs to get done to significantly affect water quality is more than people expect," McCoy said. But he helped do just that on the Eastern Shore by hauling off poultry waste and planting cover crops to absorb the rain and nutrients before they ran into the Pocomoke River, a project that produced results, he said.
"This is a very big challenge," McCoy said about the Columbia job, but it's the kind of work he's been doing for years, and the former director of the Department of Natural Resources' Eco-system Restoration Center said he's eager to continue.
"I was definitely not in state service to put 30 years in for a pension," McCoy said. Maryland Secretary of Natural Resources John Griffin appreciated that professional commitment, he said through a spokesman.
"John McCoy's in-depth knowledge of watershed processes, water quality monitoring design and analysis, and on-the-ground habitat and water quality restoration were a great asset to the state for over 25 years," Griffin said. "While we will miss his enthusiasm and expertise, we look forward to working with him."
Columbia Association President Phillip Nelson said he's just as happy to have McCoy, whose new job pays between $86,910 and $130,364. Neither CA officials nor McCoy would reveal the exact salary.
"He has all the experience and expertise. He's a great person with experience. He helped write the regulations. He's going to be a great addition to our staff," Nelson said.