New Year, New Approaches to Resilience
A year into the current federal administration, organizations working on climate resilience, watershed restoration, and infrastructure are operating with different expectations. The work continues, but the context has shifted. Federal funding is less predictable. Regulatory alignment often requires more explanation. Public conversations feel more charged, even as the underlying challenges—flooding, land loss, grid reliability—remain familiar.
Investing in people who will carry the work forward
As federal signals fluctuate, state, regional, and community-level capacity has become even more important. Resilience work increasingly depends on people who understand how decisions are made locally and how to engage productively within those systems.
Maryland has long benefited from informed civic participation in environmental matters, and that capacity does not sustain itself automatically. Programs like Watershed Stewards Academy reflect a recognition that durable progress depends on developing the human resources needed to navigate the science, community dynamics, legal processes, and institutional constraints of the work—not just advocate outcomes.
Over time, this investment shows up in quieter ways: stronger boards, more constructive public engagement, and fewer unforced conflicts when projects reach decision points.
Being clear about what cannot be replaced
Another theme that has sharpened is the need to speak plainly about what is at stake. Maryland’s preserved farmland, forested riparian buffers, headwaters, and intact habitat networks represent decades of public investment and private stewardship. Once fragmented, many of these resources are effectively gone for generations.
Current debates about energy infrastructure bring this tension into sharp relief. The ongoing CPCN process for the 70-mile Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project highlights how projected growth in electricity demand is colliding with land conservation, agricultural use, and community character in parts of the state long valued for exactly those reasons. While the legal and technical questions are complex, the underlying concern is widely shared: how to meet legitimate infrastructure needs without undoing long-standing commitments to land and water protection.
These issues do not sort neatly along political lines. Property owners, conservation advocates, local governments, and utilities often arrive with different priorities, but many share an interest in careful siting, transparent analysis, and respect for resources that cannot be recreated elsewhere.
Working across difference because place requires it
Maryland occupies a particular space. It is not so politically uniform that one perspective can dominate, and not so polarized that collaboration becomes impossible. People here routinely encounter one another around shared landscapes, shared infrastructure, and shared consequences.
Environmental protection and cultural heritage frequently intersect in Maryland. Working lands, waterways, forests, and historic communities shape both identity and economy, anchoring conversations in place rather than abstraction. That grounding has made it possible—often imperfectly, sometimes slowly—to work through disagreement without disengaging altogether.
At a moment when national debates feel increasingly detached from on-the-ground impacts, Maryland has an opportunity to continue demonstrating a steadier approach. Complex environmental and infrastructure challenges can be addressed through institutional competence, sustained engagement, and attention to what is held in common—particularly the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the landscapes that feed it.
What to focus on now
With the legislative session underway, this is an active period of positioning, not a holding pattern. A few priorities stand out:
Strengthen the bench. Invest in people and institutions that will still be here five and ten years from now.
Name non-negotiables early. Be clear about which lands, waters, and commitments cannot be compromised, grounded in existing plans and public investments.
Lead with place and outcomes. Frame projects around community protection, continuity of services, and stewardship of shared resources.
Engage constructively. Maryland’s mix of perspectives makes collaboration necessary, not optional.
The world feels unsettled right now, and in many places it is. Maryland cannot resolve that on its own. But it can continue to show that working across difference—patiently, pragmatically, and with attention to place—remains possible. It depends on steady work, honest engagement, and a clear understanding of when firmer tools are necessary to protect shared interests.
--Jennifer Wazenski
Watershed Legal Counsel advises private clients and government instrumentalities in environmental and natural resources matters, serves as outside general counsel for mission-driven enterprises in the environmental sector, and provides strategic legal services that help organizations manage change. Founder Jennifer Wazenski is a Maryland attorney who has practiced environmental and natural resources law since 1991. She served as Principal Counsel to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources from 2010 through 2021, and, prior to that, Deputy Counsel to the Maryland Department of the Environment.
Disclosure: The firm represents intervenors in the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project CPCN proceeding; references here are offered for general context only.
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