Politics & Government

Working for the Watershed: PATH Connects Students With Environment

A new county program gives students the opportunity earn money while helping keep the Bay clean.

“What keeps you up at night?”

That’s the question Cynthia Marshall and other members of People Acting Together in Howard County (PATH) ask each other in small group meetings as they decide what issues to tackle.

PATH is a network of faith-based organizations that helps Howard County residents organize and making changes in their communities and lives.

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Most recently, Marshall said, complaints have focused on the difficulty of finding summer work, particularly work that's career-oriented. "Working retail," she said, "doesn't help on your resume" if you want to something else after college.

On Wednesday, Marshall joined more than two dozen members of PATH and Howard County Executive Ken Ulman at for a press conference to announce Restoring the Environment and Developing Youth (READY), an initiative to employ young adults to help keep polluted stormwater runoff from entering the Chesapeake Bay.

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“We also have a lot of people who care deeply about the environment,” Marshall said of PATH members.

At Bethany United, the parking lot has a rain garden, which funnels rainwater runoff into a garden instead of to storm drains. The Rev. David Simpson pointed to other environmentally friendly aspects of the grounds, too.

"Notice the weeds?" he said, motioning to the grass. “We don’t use chemical on our lawn,” he said. The church has had an environmental stewardship committee for seven years.

PATH is already set to build rain gardens at 10 sites, including another at Bethany United, and has committed to stormwater mitigation of 250,000 square feet in Howard County, according to Marshall.

Ulman said several times that working in partnership with faith-based and other non-profit organizations is integral to the success of environmental mitigation in Howard County. “The government can’t do it alone,” he said. 

“There are lots of organizations the point out problems,” he added, but working to find solutions made PATH special.

The program is run in conjunction with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland Sea Grant, the Center for Watershed Protection and the Parks and People Foundation. It is funded by a $432,000 grant from the Howard County government. 

For information about employment opportunities, visit the PATH website


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