Maryland Campaigns

Every community in the state of Maryland deserves to have their health and environmental safety treated with equity and integrity. Clean Water believes that your health and quality of life should not be determined by your zip code. We work with overburdened communities to ensure their voices are heard.

Marylanders love their crabs, fish, and the Bay, but this way of life could disappear forever unless we follow through on our pollution reduction commitments. Clean Water is working to reduce agricultural pollution, address polluted runoff, and keep Maryland on track.

Toxics used in Maryland’s crops and food have continually increased over the past years, and the use of more harmful and toxic pesticides has become common. Clean Water cofounded the Smart on Pesticides campaign and has worked for years to reduce sources of toxic exposures in Maryland communities.

Cleaning our water and air means both reducing dirty energy and promoting clean energy. Clean Water helped pass the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act and the fracking moratorium, and works with a diverse coalition of organizations to persuade legislators that fracking is inherently dangerous to water resources and community health.

Over the past three years, we have worked with environmental and public health allies, workers, and neighborhoods across Baltimore to fight crude oil trains. These shipments travel throughout Maryland, along some of our largest rivers, across critical infrastructure, and through the heart of Baltimore City, enabling fossil fuel development that's driving climate change put our homes, schools, and drinking water at risk. If a train car carrying crude oil derails, it explodes catastrophically.  In March 2017, Baltimore City passed the Crude Oil Terminal Prohibition, a landmark victory that will prevent any new terminals for crude oil from being built in Baltimore.

How communities across Maryland handle their trash has enormous impacts on local air quality, municipal budgets, and contributions to climate change. In the past decade, community-led campaigns in Baltimore City, Prince George's County, and Frederick and Carroll Counties prevented new trash incinerators from being built; but old incinerators in Baltimore City and Montgomery County remain in operation, over the protests of the communities they're located in. And Maryland policies and priorities tip the scales toward trash incineration and other polluters, holding back the zero waste revolution we need to reduce pollution, sequester carbon, and create good green jobs all across the state. We're working to push Maryland away from trash incineration and toward Zero Waste. Join us!