The stream’s ponds and marshes captured storm runoff, reducing flooding and recharging groundwater. Soil and trees along its banks filtered sediment and pollutants from water. Sumwalt Run is now lost 40 feet below our roads and rowhouses. But the living trees, plants, and soil in today’s city continue to provide massive benefits by cooling city streets, sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, and reducing flooding. A single tree can drink up to 150 gallons of rain water per day!

All of this green infrastructure supports our human spaces and reduces strain on Baltimore’s century-old storm sewer system. Even in 1904 the Olmsted Brothers plan promoted the value of preserving urban streams to control stormwater, in addition to their importance to human health and wellbeing.

Today, cities and neighborhoods have belatedly begun to realize the benefits of green infrastructure. Street tree plantings and pavement removal in Remington and other neighborhoods are slowly restoring Baltimore’s tree canopy, helping to reduce the heat island effect that has had an outsized impact on Remington and the city’s working class neighborhoods. Residents have converted vacant lots into new green spaces and gardens, such as Sisson Street Park and Remington Village Green, supporting recreation and food self-sufficiency. Stream restoration at nearby Stony Run has greatly improved the health of that creek and its ecosystem.

These landscapes all connect and flow together, from the lawns and sidewalks of our neighborhoods to Baltimore’s buried streams to the Chesapeake Bay. Action in our own backyard ripples across the entire watershed.