Blue Water Baltimore just made it easier for citizens to report pollution and harder for polluters to get away with harming the environment.

The nonprofit that watches over Baltimore’s waterways recently launched an online pollution reporting form where residents, after alerting local agencies, can report pollution directly to the environmental group.

The form, which is accessible from Blue Water Baltimore’s web site or via smart phone, allows users to report pollution from a street address or using GPS coordinates – which is preferable when citing pollution in parks.

The purpose of the new reporting form is to better track pollution complaints, to make sure they get sent to the proper agencies and monitor the agencies’ progress, says David Flores, Blue Water’s Harbor Waterkeeper.

Blue Water will accept reports of all kinds of pollution, Flores says, including illegal dumping (report illegal dumping to 911 first, he advises).

Once Blue Water receives the information, their pollution investigation team takes over.

A Paper Trail

The team will follow up on the report immediately and forward the compliant to the appropriate agency.

Additionally, Blue Water will make a formal request to the agency, starting a “paper” trail, Flores says.

“It’s important that pollution reporting be crowd-sourced,” Flores says. “There are only so many agencies paying attention and they are not working 24 hours a day.”

At the same time, he notes that residents don’t always know the best way to report or document pollution that they see – or what kind of pollution they are looking at, or which agency is responsible for its cleanup, so sometimes complaints are mis-directed or lost.

Blue Water is a pollution authority and knows how to address everything from dumping, to sewage overflow to industrial contamination, on land or on water.

“We can interpret citizens’ reports and ensure that reports don’t’ get mis-categorized, or lost,” he says.

Less Chance a Report Will Get Lost

When a report is sent to the wrong agency,there is no guarantee it will be forwarded to the proper one, Flores admits. “Intra agency communication is not always great. Misfiled reports can get lost,” he says.

He cites, by way of example, Baltimore 311.

“If a report is mis-categorized or there is no category for that type of pollution,” he said, “it could get closed.”

With Blue Water’s form, he says, such mistakes and oversights are less likely to occur.