Marian Dombroski (right) receives the 2017 Environmental Service Award from Martha Ainsworth, Chair of the Prince George’s Sierra Club Group, at Watkins Regional Park. Photo courtesy of Dan Smith.
College Park, June 15, 2017. Clean water advocate Marian Dombroski, of Cheverly, is the 2017 recipient of the Prince George’s Sierra Club’s Walter “Mike” Maloney Environmental Service Award. The award is presented annually to a County resident for excellence in environmental leadership.
The award recognizes Dombroski’s leadership in engaging communities along the Anacostia River and its tributaries on clean water issues. “What stands out about Marian is her ability to reach out and work with the community, to help make the link between healthy rivers and quality of life, to engage the community as activists who take ownership of clean water and become stewards in the long run,” said Martha Ainsworth, Chair of the Prince George’s Sierra Club Group, in presenting the award.
In receiving the award, Dombroski proclaimed that “clean water is our right and responsibility.” Dombroski is the founder of the Friends of Quincy Run Watershed (FQRW). The watershed includes parts of Cheverly and Bladensburg. Quincy Run joins the Anacostia River at Bladensburg Waterfront Park. Although the watershed is known for its high density of residential and industrial areas, there are fragments of natural and historic areas along the length of the waterway.
Efforts to restore Quincy Run have become a rallying point to educate and mobilize local residents about the importance of the Anacostia Watershed to the health of the community. In collaboration with residents, municipalities, the county, and other environmental groups, FQRW, led by Dombroski, has organized annual trash clean-ups, removed invasive species, improved infrastructure along the river, reduced impervious surfaces, planted native trees, and constructed rain gardens to reduce runoff and improve water quality.
Dombroski is the Project Manager for Rainworks, whose objective is to identify, design, and implement on-the-ground projects to reduce damage to streams and rivers caused by rainwater runoff from private property. With the Friends of Lower Beaverdam Creek as its financial agent, the Stormwater Stewards Grant Program, administered by the Chesapeake Bay Trust and funded by the Prince George’s County Clean Water Fee, awarded the project a $115,000 grant in late 2015, for projects in the Quincy Run and Moss Run watersheds, both tributaries of the Anacostia. “This is a great example of our stormwater fees at work,” Dombroski says.
Rainworks is being implemented in partnership with the “B5” initiative – Building a Better Bladensburg Block by Block and Business by Business – and with support from the Town of Cheverly. Dombroski has helped identify and find solutions to citizens’ and businesses’ stormwater runoff problems and connected them with resources to encourage water conservation while improving private property. The five Rainworks sites in Bladensburg and Cheverly were selected because they face highly problematic stormwater issues and solutions can be applied to other nearby areas.
Although her home is located near a steep slope, longtime Bladensburg resident Garrine Laney had never had water in her basement until recently, when stormwater came pouring in “like a waterfall” through a basement window. Dombroski not only helped diagnose the problem and bring resources to bear, “she took out her shovel!” says Laney. The problem was solved and Laney is now one of many resident clean water activists.
"Marian reaches out to residents to get them involved in ways that her projects become their projects. She is an inspiration, a hands-on doer who sets up workshops and goes yard to yard," said Dan Smith of Cheverly, founder of Friends of Lower Beaverdam Creek.
Throughout her life, Dombroski has been drawn to rivers. She launched her first river cleanup – along the Potomac – when she was in high school in 1970, two years before passage of the Clean Water Act. In 2010, after her studies, raising a family, and working at the University of Maryland as an architect, she enrolled in the Watershed Stewards Academy, with financial support from the Friends of Lower Beaverdam Creek. In 2012 she founded the Friends of Quincy Run Watershed.
The award was presented to Ms. Dombroski on Sunday, June 11, at the annual Prince George’s Sierra Club picnic at Watkins Regional Park in Upper Marlboro.
Marian Dombroski, winner of the Prince George’s Sierra Club 2017 Environmental Service Award (holding plaque) celebrates with citizen stormwater activists from the Friends of Quincy Run Watershed and Friends of Lower Beaverdam Creek. (Front row, left to right: Marian Dombroski, Garrine Laney, Esther Rice, Chris Hodge; Back row, left to right: Christine Laney, Dave Kneipp, Steve John, Dan Smith, Pat Jackman, David Rice, Matt Dernoga) Photo courtesy of Martha Ainsworth.
The Prince George’s Sierra Club Group established the annual environmental service award in 2005 to honor the late Walter “Mike” Maloney—a civic activist, County Council member, and attorney dedicated to the rights and the quality-of-life of everyday people. Nominees are County residents who have shown excellence in local environmental leadership. Previous winners include Thomas Dernoga (2005), Fred Tutman (2006), Imani Kazana (2007), Carmen Anderson (2008), Paul Pinsky (2009), Kelly Canavan (2010), Bonnie Bick (2011), Dan Smith (2012), Vernon Wade (2013), Jacqueline Goodall (2014), Mary A. Lehman (2015), and Lore Rosenthal (2016).
The Sierra Club is the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization in the nation. Its mission is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the Earth.