“He’s Just a Dynamo”

Eric Buehl makes a difference as a Sea Grant watershed specialist

Rona Kobell

Eric Buehl kneels next to a walkway, showing a plant to someone next to him

Sea Grant Extension watershed specialists sometimes refer to themselves as the grease that gets the wheels to move. Trained in water quality restoration techniques, their job is to bring people together and help them find the money and the technical assistance to put stormwater management projects in the ground to improve water quality. Those projects might include rain gardens at municipal buildings, or median strips filled with green plants and pervious pavers to take up stormwater. They are helping clean the Chesapeake Bay by keeping excess nutrients out of it, and they are especially important to cash-strapped and small communities that don’t have their own staff to accomplish their clean-water goals.

Five years into his tenure, Eric Buehl’s projects are growing. Buehl works in five counties north of the Choptank River: Kent, Cecil, Queen Anne’s, Talbot, and Caroline. He has helped county planners and environmental staff in those jurisdictions secure grants and find contractors for various projects that reduce the amount of runoff entering the Chesapeake Bay.

Eric Buehl stands with Leslie Grunden, Caroline County’s assistant director of planning

Maryland Sea Grant Extension Specialist Eric Buehl stands with Leslie Grunden, Caroline County’s assistant director of planning, at Choptank River Park. They worked together on water quality projects that also make the park more pleasing to visitors.

“He’s just a dynamo,” said Leslie Grunden, the assistant director of planning in Caroline County, who partners with Buehl and others on many of the projects he champions. “His momentum really carries so much of what we do.”

A Shore resident since 1989, Buehl had worked on similar projects for more than a decade as the restoration coordinator for the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. A veteran of the U.S. Navy, where he worked as an air traffic controller, Buehl graduated with an environmental science degree from Wesley College in Dover, Delaware. He is one of five watershed specialists at  Maryland Sea Grant . (Chesapeake Quarterly has profiled his colleagues  Kelsey Brooks  and  Jennifer Dindinger , who work in other parts of the state.) 

On a recent tour, Buehl said that three years ago, most of his projects were still just dreams. Now, he can see the fruits—and flowers—of his labor.

A rain garden that Maryland Sea Grant Extension Specialist Eric Buehl helped plant at the Greensboro Volunteer Fire Company. The grounds are along a main highway and are a gathering spot for community events.

“His momentum really carries so much of what we do.”—Leslie Grunden, assistant director of planning in Caroline County

Buehl helped the fire station on the outskirts of Greensboro design and install a rain garden. He also helped the fire company design and fund a stormwater management project to keep runoff out of the Choptank River. At Choptank River Park, he helped design a trail with native plantings and a meadow along the trail to absorb stormwater runoff. A lot of these towns have requirements to reduce their runoff, Buehl said, but they don’t have the funding or the technical expertise to design programs that will accomplish that goal. He can help; often, he has applied for grants on similar projects, and he knows where to turn for assistance.

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Choptank River Park was a prime candidate for some restoration, as it sits along the river and is a large, public spot.

Before, the park’s meadow looked a little bare.

After, native grasses and a new fence give the meadow a more inviting look that also helps absorb runoff before it arrives at the river.

Before, the park had grass that looked like a suburban lawn.

After, a meadow with wildflowers is more inviting for visitors and more beneficial for the river, as it absorbs runoff and rains.

Before, water tended to pool in the grass.

After, native plantings make the area more inviting and also improve water quality.

“The satisfaction in this job comes when we help somebody get to the point that now problems can start getting solved,” Buehl said.

He’s especially proud of the Adkins Arboretum’s Parking Lot Alive! retrofit project in Caroline County. Buehl helped connect the arboretum with $328,750 from the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to transform a flat parking lot into gardens focused on stormwater retention. “He really helped us pull it together,” said arboretum director Ginna Tiernan.

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The Parking Lot Alive! project revitalized an asphalt area that was uninviting and harmful to the waterways near it.

Before, when it rained, water would pool in the lot and run off into Blockston Branch, a tributary of Tuckahoe Creek.

After, landscaping areas help hold the water and allow the plants to take it up.

Before, the drains that removed the water from the lot sometimes became overwhelmed.

After, bioretention areas designed specifically for the arboretum help to hold the water so that it doesn’t run off the land. The project removed 4,987 square feet of asphalt, according to the arboretum.

The previous lot’s landscaping was convex mulch islands with native plants that broke up the pavement, but the new plantings are concave and help the plants retain the water.

Native flowers bloom in the spring at Parking Lot Alive!

The flowers have attracted all sorts of species, including monarchs.

Buehl said his colleagues were correct when they warned him that the first year would be about understanding how the position worked, the second would be about building relationships, and the third and fourth would be about getting projects ready to put in the ground.

“I look at the minor successes as being nice—when we get an email that a grant was approved, when someone calls me back, when people return and ask for my assistance on a different project,” he said. “It’s been several years, and several iterations, but you go back and you look at the feedback, and you think, yeah, we made it.”

Header image: Maryland Sea Grant Extension Specialist Eric Buehl examines new growth near the parking lot of Adkins Arboretum with Kathy Thornton, the arboretum’s land steward.

Photos by Nicole Lehming / MDSG

Before photos of the arboretum and park by Eric Buehl

Maryland Sea Grant Extension Specialist Eric Buehl stands with Leslie Grunden, Caroline County’s assistant director of planning, at Choptank River Park. They worked together on water quality projects that also make the park more pleasing to visitors.