The indicators a society chooses to report to itself, about itself, are surprisingly powerful. They reflect collective values and inform collective decisions.

Donella Meadows
Professor of Environmental Studies
Dartmouth College 

Across the country, local, state, and federal agencies have adopted numerous regulations and implemented countless programs in the best interest of preserving and protecting our environmental resources. In addition, businesses and individuals spend millions of dollars and work countless hours to ensure a healthy environment.

The following Environmental Assessment is intended as a vehicle for communicating to the public the relative benefit of these efforts and expenditures, and will ultimately provide a basis from which to assess performance of our collective efforts toward resource protection.

The Montgomery County Environmental Assessment identifies significant resource concerns throughout the county and region grouped into key areas, such as air quality, biodiversity, energy management, agriculture, watershed quality, and so on. Within each area, individual measures or "indicators" have been identified by working with numerous citizen advisory committees, including the Energy and Air Quality Advisory Committee, the Noise Control Advisory Board, Solid Waste Advisory Committee, the Water Quality Advisory Group, and other County agencies, regional groups, and dedicated individuals. These groups and individuals also provided vital peer review of the data.

The measures provided by this report represent benchmarks against which we can assess progress, identify trends, and determine the need for new initiatives. This report is a significant step forward in understanding our association with our environmental resources; yet it is only the beginning. It is the foundation for establishing the County’s commitment to long term improvement of the environment. Furthermore, it is the goal of the County and this department to update and refine the data found here on routine basis, leading in the near future to the development of a report card on the environment.

As a footnote, we must add that as the assessment process evolved, it became clear that the Internet would play a far more appreciable role in bringing the report to the public than was initially imagined. This online version of the assessment has transformed the report into a living document which can be continuously updated as new data is collected, and which allows for direct interaction between residents, businesses, and the agencies responsible for these varied environmental measures.