Support Mallows Bay as the next marine sanctuary

At its core, smart growth is making good choices about where and how we grow. As much as that means walkable urban places, it also means preserving natural spaces in and around our bustling region.

Mallows Bay, about 40 miles south of DC on the Potomac River, is home to marine and bird life and nearly 200 historic shipwrecks dating to the Civil War. Now, there’s a chance to designate Mallows Bay as a national marine sanctuary. Weigh in now to support preserving this regional treasure.

Here are 3 easy steps to submitting comments:

  1. Go to this page. You will see this box:

2. Paste in these comments. Remember, editing and making comments your own makes them more impactful!

Model comments:
As a resident of the greater Washington DC region, I’m writing to express my support for designating Mallows Bay as a national marine sanctuary.

In particular, I support NOAA’s preferred alternative Alternative D over Alternative C. Alternative D protects the largest area, offers many more public access points to waters within the sanctuary boundaries, greater ecological variety for educational goals, more opportunities for tourism, and a much richer scientific research palette.

In more detail, Alternative D enhances scientific goals by including a greater range of salinity from mesohaline to truly, year-round, tidal freshwater, a globally uncommon phenomenon that engenders an extremely rich ecology of national significance.

This ecosystem is an educational asset, and its vulnerability to sea-level rise makes it an ideal station for fulfilling the tenet that a National Marine Sanctuary serve as a “sentinel site.”

Alternative D also includes three sub-estuaries, including Mattawoman Creek, a concern of several Maryland Coalition members (the preferred alternative has none). The Nanjemoy sub-estuary provides an ideal forested reference to be compared to the other more developed fresh and brackish sub-estuaries.

Thank you for your consideration,
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Thank you!