Community Climate Resilience in Turner Station

NeighborSpace is excited to be part of a new project in Dundalk, led by Baltimore County government and in partnership with several other environmental nonprofits. The project’s goal is to improve the Turner Station community’s resilience to the effects of climate change, and will be funded by a $500,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Flooding associated with climate change, both from increasing sea levels and greater precipitation, is impacting communities across Baltimore County, Maryland. On the banks of Bear Creek, a highly polluted tributary in the Baltimore Harbor watershed, the low-lying Turner Station community is particularly vulnerable to climate change and the waterway contamination from this area’s industrial legacy. Initial modeling by the Army Corps of Engineers conducted for Baltimore County indicates increased future flooding under moderate climate scenarios within this community that already lacks trees, green spaces, and fishable or swimmable waterways. Turner Station and its adjacent waterways could benefit from a comprehensive community-centered approach to planning for green and gray stormwater solutions to both improve aquatic habitat and community resilience to a projected warmer, wetter future.

Baltimore County and partners, including NeighborSpace, Turner Station Conservation Teams, The Nature Conservancy, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Greater Baltimore Wilderness Coalition, propose a robust community-centered approach to building a Climate Resilience Roadmap with the Turner Station community. The roadmap, developed through a consultant-facilitated process, will help residents understand projected future climate impacts and articulate their needs and resilience priorities.

NFWF Coastal Resilience funding will support consultants to design and lead an interactive and iterative process through which residents and partners will discuss climate change and its impacts on Turner Station, Bear Creek, and Baltimore County. From this shared baseline, stakeholders will build a thoughtful and comprehensive plan that establishes a vision for what a resilient Turner Station could look like. This Resilience Roadmap will provide a guide for green and gray community resilience projects and help partners prioritize funding needs for implementation. The proposed process will prioritize engagement among residents, churches, community groups, and other stakeholders and support residents engaging their neighbors to ensure broad participation through small groups, surveys, and other activities. In addition to gaining input and resident buy-in, we will help build necessary community-based capacity and leadership to guide the plan’s long-term implementation.

NeighborSpace has been involved in Turner Station since 2019, when it purchased a 0.58-acre site at the request of the Turner Station Conservation Teams. That site is now Chestnut Park, pictured below, which was festively opened in October. Given its experience integrating green infrastructure into small sites through a community-driven design process, NeighborSpace is well-suited to help draw up the Resilience Roadmap. We are excited to continue working with the Turner Station community.