Homeowners and HOAs Can Participate in a Cleaner Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Virginia Beach, VA, January 4, 2013 – Upon the release of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's (CBF) State of the Bay Report, SŌLitude Lake Management, an industry leader in lake, pond and storm water 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 run off that ultimately funnels to the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

 

“What most home and landowners in the watershed don't realize is that everything they do to their lawn, lake, pond, or storm water basin eventually affects the Chesapeake Bay,” says owner Kevin Tucker. “If each homeowner recognizes 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.”

 

SŌLitude Lake Management recommends the following 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 the fall.

 

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

- Outfit lakes, ponds and storm water basins with an aeration system to reduce the 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, storm water basins, swales, ditches, and any other area through which water flows to help sequester nutrients before that water reaches the natural waterways.

 

- Throughout your 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.