From Unexploded Ordnance to Writing Ordinances

Just a few months ago I was walking in wetlands, slogging through salt marshes, stomping in bogs, and, in a culminating moment, following a Navy bomb specialist through a marsh as he scanned the area for “unexploded ordnance,” bomb shells dropped in a wetland once used for target practice.

Since late fall I’ve been doing the office routine. 8 hours of staring at a screen and forcing myself into good posture. Months of wetland data awaited translation into data tables, charts, and eventually a final report. Don’t get me wrong, there have been adventures in the office life as well. In helping write a new water quality monitoring program into the role of the County, I’ve been invited to participate in meetings between different departments and government agencies, listening as scientists and lawyers discuss something that boils down to collecting vials of water in the hopes that it will tell us how to better manage the land.

Last week one step of the process culminated as we held a public meeting then finalized the ordinance language. Very different than ordnance, which has the power to kill, the Ordinance will hopefully promote life: it will link science and law, allowing us funding to do water monitoring, and then grant authority to do something with the results. The data collection will be relatively easy compared to what the County will have to figure out how to do with it.

Emotions already run high. At the public hearing there was a dramatic moment as the head of the local environmental group brought in a jar of supposedly bacteria-infested water proclaiming- “Look! We already have water quality problems! Why don’t you go out and do something about it!?” Point taken, and the County hopes to do just that, but in a complete and effective way. What the County hopes to do is gather the data in a systematic manner, trace the problem to the source, and then find a way to deal with the results.

For me personally, the effect of the ordinance is a transition from office girl to once again be out bog-stomping, this time with a vial in my hand and the decree of law to back me.