Our multilayered analysis allowed our advisory team to deliver comprehensive reports and profiles on the accumulation of litter within the watershed over time, adjacent legislative events, detailed breakdowns of geographic locations, weather, and other associated dynamics. Using this, the city of Washington DC and the major jurisdictions of Maryland were able to better gauge the effectiveness of recent and proposed changes to policy, and use that as a guide to enacting new Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

An even greater impact, however, was to future studies. Our deeper exploration uncovered the larger data environment and raised issues about how effectively current resources were capturing the reality of field observations and context. We made recommendations to improve present data collection, and identified and helped the stakeholders to integrate critical new data sources to provide better understanding of the social, physical, and environmental dynamics of their decisions and outcomes. This led to several refinements and improvements in process, strengthened confidence by facilitating data-informed interpretations, and opened the door for new and continuing lines of research. Furthermore, these studies were provided to Congress to promote and guide bipartisan discussions on local and Federal environmental initiatives to protect and benefit constituents and those directly affected by the quality of major bodies of water.