{"id":279,"date":"2013-10-31T18:48:37","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/?p=279"},"modified":"2013-10-31T18:48:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:48:37","slug":"governor-omalley-highlights-efforts-to-strength-the-middle-class-protect-public-health-and-the-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/2013\/10\/31\/governor-omalley-highlights-efforts-to-strength-the-middle-class-protect-public-health-and-the-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor O\u2019Malley highlights efforts to strength the middle class, protect public health and the environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Immediate Release<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contact: \u00a0Governor’s Press Office – 410-974-2316<\/p>\n

LAUREL, MD (October 31, 2013)<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Governor Martin O\u2019Malley today hosted Maryland\u2019s\u00a0Better Choices, Better Results Forum on Sustainability,<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0the third in a series of statewide sessions designed to foster an ongoing, collaborative dialogue on strengthening the middle class.\u00a0 More than 300 stakeholders joined the Governor, cabinet officials and other policy experts to discuss the significant progress made under the O\u2019Malley-Brown Administration strategic goals and to lay a foundation for continuing the work that is creating a stronger, healthier Maryland.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have made a choice to create a better, more sustainable future for our children,\u201d said\u00a0Governor O’Malley<\/strong>. \u201cAnd we have made progress, not by chance, but by choice. We chose to foster innovation and invest in a greener, cleaner, more sustainable economy, and Maryland\u2019s workforce now has more green jobs per capita than any state in the Mid-Atlantic region. We chose to set some of the most ambitious goals in the nation — to reduce greenhouse emissions, advance \u00a0renewable energy, protect the health of our children and elderly, restore our living resources, and making our communities more sustainable \u2013 and we chose to hold ourselves accountable for reaching them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The forum highlighted key\u00a0sustainability\u00a0initiatives, including\u00a0Maryland\u2019s progress on Chesapeake Bay Restoration Efforts\u00a0as tracked by\u00a0Baystat<\/a>. Other initiatives covered included\u00a0creating and expanding sustainable communities and\u00a0sustaining our\u00a0resource-based\u00a0industries. In addition, the event\u00a0fostered an ongoing dialogue to\u00a0lay out a vision for continuing to restore the Chesapeake Bay, protect public health and the environment and generate investments in green jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the O\u2019Malley-Brown Administration, Marylanders have benefited from strong leadership on sustainability issues, including coordinated efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries,\u201d stated Congressman Steny Hoyer. \u201cI\u2019m proud that, over the past two years, we have achieved 100% of our State\u2019s benchmarks toward Bay restoration, which helps ensure that our tourism, seafood, and shipping industries continue to thrive. At the same time, the Administration is helping to build more sustainable communities by working with local governments to accommodate projected growth while focusing on renewable sources of energy and sustainable agriculture. We are fortunate to have a Governor who recognizes our sustainability challenges and who is leading the way forward in meeting them head on. I will continue to work with him and Lt. Governor Brown and ensure the federal government is a strong partner in helping Maryland achieve its sustainability goals in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

The O\u2019Malley-Brown Administration is making better choices that are leading\u00a0to better results. Since 2007,\u00a0we\u2019ve preserved more than 47,000 acres of prime agricultural land on 372 Maryland farms.\u00a0Maryland has planted 108,664 trees through the Marylanders Plant Trees program. Together with\u00a0the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the other Bay watershed states, we\u00a0developed the nation\u2019s first major watershed pollution control plan under the authority\u00a0of the Clean Water Act to achieve water quality standards for the Chesapeake Bay and\u00a0meet our 2025 water quality goals for Chesapeake Bay restoration.\u00a0In fact, Maryland has met or exceeded both the 2010-2011 and 2012-2013 milestone goals for Bay restoration. And \u00a0Governor O\u2019Malley recently announced that the State and its partners produced and planted a record 1.25 billion native baby oysters (spat) in Maryland this year \u2013 the first time any hatchery in the nation has produced more than one billion Eastern oyster spat in a single season.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarylanders take pride in preserving and protecting our environment and with the O’Malley-Brown administration’s incredible efforts to put us on a sustainable path, we are leading the way toward a greener future,\u201d said Congressman John Sarbanes. \u201cFrom getting students outdoors to giving families ways to make their homes more efficient, I am working to create opportunities for every-day individuals to become engaged in preserving our environment for the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, Maryland is a Top Ten state for Energy Efficiency for the second year in a row\u00a0according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Governor O\u2019Malley recently released the State\u2019s final Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan \u2013 one of the most stringent legislative climate change rules in the nation.<\/p>\n

Maryland recently revamped the Smart, Green & Growing\u00a0website<\/a>, where you can learn more about the State\u2019s sustainable initiatives. It features all of the State\u2019s \u201cgreen\u201d maps in one atlas, is accessible from mobile devices, and includes ways to share information via social media.<\/p>\n

Learn more about the O\u2019Malley-Brown Administration\u2019s Better Choices Better Results Forums and watch the recording of the Sustainability\u2019s live stream at:\u00a0http:\/\/www.governor.maryland.gov\/forums.html<\/a><\/p>\n

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For Immediate Release Contact: \u00a0Governor’s Press Office – 410-974-2316 LAUREL, MD (October 31, 2013)\u00a0\u2014 Governor Martin O\u2019Malley today hosted Maryland\u2019s\u00a0Better Choices, Better Results Forum on Sustainability,\u00a0\u00a0the third in a series of statewide sessions designed to foster an ongoing, collaborative dialogue on strengthening the middle class.\u00a0 More than 300 stakeholders joined the Governor, cabinet officials and  Read the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governor-omalley","category-press-release","category-sustainability"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}