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After a period of slowed activity, the Friends of the Cabin John Creek Watershed are renewing their push to keep the Cabin John Creek and its tributaries healthy. The group hopes to advocate for creek restoration with county officials and lead by example by starting up a new rain garden project at the Clara Barton Community Center.

The 10-year-old group aims to improve the health of the watershed, a 26.5-square-mile area including parts of Rockville, Potomac, Bethesda and Cabin John that drain to the Cabin John Creek. The group organizes yearly creek cleanups and has also worked on invasive species removal and water quality monitoring, though their advocacy efforts have slowed in recent years, according to Burr Gray, who heads the Cabin John Citizens Association and helped found the watershed group.

"Our number one goal is to revive the effort and generate interest and sort of rally the troops," said Roy Seidenstein, a member of Friends of Cabin John Creek Watershed who has helped to spearhead the efforts. "We're looking to really energize our membership – where we live, there's a lot of people who have professional expertise in the area, so we're basically just trying to bring people together and get them motivated," he said.

The Cabin John Creek was identified in 2006 by the Montgomery Stormwater Partners Network, a countywide advocacy organization that supports local watershed groups, as one of the 10 dirtiest streams in the county. The creek's degradation is largely due to polluted stormwater that runs off from surfaces and structures into the creek and its tributaries, which run through heavily developed, urban areas. The stormwater can introduce harmful sediments and nutrients into the water, advocates say.

The issue of stormwater is one that plagues rivers and streams in many urban areas, and the enormity of the problem was disheartening to the group, Gray said. "We looked to the county to see what solutions they might propose, but they can only do a limited amount," Gray said. "I think that made us pause."

However, with a little encouragement from Steve Dryden, a Bethesda resident who co-chairs the Montgomery Stormwater Partners Network, the group is taking on the stormwater problem and once again sounding the alarm that their creek is in danger. The group has resolved to "get back in the saddle" by tackling small projects, one at a time, Gray said.

They plan on beginning at the Clara Barton Community Center. The group is seeking a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to plant a rain garden, or an area of vegetation that helps sop up stormwater, to help stop the flow of polluted runoff into the Cabin John. Gray said he hopes the garden would encourage homeowners to try out the technique themselves.

The project could get started as early as this spring.

At the same time, efforts are underway through the county's Department of Environmental Protection to help restore Booze Creek, a stream that drains into the Cabin John, one of the most degraded streams in the watershed. Work will begin in June to held stabilize stream banks for a stretch of about a mile between River Road and Cabin John Parkway to help combat erosion, according to Craig Carson, a watershed planner for DEP. The project will cost about $1 million, Carson said.

And Dryden, who himself lives near Booze Creek in the Greenwich Forest neighborhood, helped to spearhead a project to install a bio-retention area in Bethesda's Greenwich Park. The bio-retention area, a partnership between DEP and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning commission, will help curb stormwater runoff into Booze Creek. Work was completed on the project several weeks ago.

Carson said that watershed groups play a crucial role in generating interest for stewardship of streams in the county. "They play a large role because they're out walking along the streams in their neighborhood," Carson said. For Booze Creek, Carson said, "hopefully they can gain some interest from the neighbors and kind of adopt the area. Once people feel some ownership, I think it gains more interest."