November 2005 Issue of Chesapeake Life
Movers & Shakers
Annapolis
Written by Kessler Burnett and joe Sugarman
Photography by Kirsten Beckerman
http://www.chesapeakelifemag.com/nov05issue/movers-nov05.html
Drew Koslow will tell you that he stood a chance of getting the job as president of the South River Federation. But when you consider how he almost single-handedly resurrected the organization, it's clear that no one else stood a chance.
In the spring of 1999, the forty-three-year-old Annapolis resident began volunteering with the local conservation group. Although it's one of the region's older environmental organizations, founded in the late 1950s, when Koslow came on the scene he estimates that there were only three committed volunteers and only one issue attacked in the foundation's existence. He shook up the near-defunct group by proposing and implementing projects such as oyster and shoreline restoration and sediment and erosion control. "It was the perfect opportunity to take things into my own hands," says Koslow. "Basically we were starting from scratch."
Three months later, Koslow, a University of Virginia-trained wetland scientist and former fishery biologist with the Maryland DNR, was elected president. One of his first tasks was to apply for a river keeper program. In the interim, he raised enough grant money to hire two full time staff, began a membership drive (now 400 members strong), and created a board of directors.
In 2004, he was hired by the board of directors as the first South River Keeper. And Koslow had his work cut out for him. The sixty-six-square-mile tributary is on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of the nation's most impaired water bodies. "In osprey eggshells," he explains, "scientists were finding PCBs, carcinogenic lubricants used in transformers and found in industrial watersheds like the Anacostia River."
Today, Koslow has established himself as the go-to guy when there's trouble on the river. Folks call him constantly (some anonymously from pay phones) to investigate construction sites dumping sediment into creeks and even to report an injured tundra swan marooned on the frozen river. "I go out and confront the offenders directly instead of calling the county on them. But unfortunately, I'm not equipped to break ice and rescue swans."
While the clean up is a long-term process, Koslow is seeing results. The red head grasses, destroyed by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and replanted by volunteers last summer, have come back. And for the past two years, Koslow has been getting to know the watershed intimately by investigating every mile of stream—on foot. "I helped raise awareness of water quality issues around the region by creating this organization," says Koslow. "Now all these people are involved no matter what I do." — Kessler Burnett
