BALTIMORE—Every drop of rain rushing over pavement is a dilemma, picking up pollution and sweeping it into streams. And in this low-lying city on the water, it doesn’t take much to trigger flooding.

But around one Northeast Baltimore church, plenty of raindrops slow down.

Faith Presbyterian Church planted a 200-square-foot rain garden and converted part of its parking lot into a small forest. Instead of rushing through pipes and directly into local waterways, rainwater flowing off the church roof tarries in the garden, pollutants filtered by native plants as it works its way underground.

It’s an example of using natural solutions to withstand climate impacts, as stormwater systems engineered for the weather of the past increasingly fall short. And even when those systems work well, they don’t offer all the benefits of green space.

A traditional stormwater system “is good if you don’t want your basement to flood,” said long-time parishioner and clerk of session William Curtis. “But it’s not good for much of anything else.”

Rainwater running off hot roofs in the summer into traditional systems, for instance, is a problem for fish and other aquatic life sensitive to even the smallest temperature changes.

“So this water is too warm, and fish are very, very touchy about water temperature,” Curtis said.

The church’s rain garden allows water to cool and settle before it continues through the watershed. The church property is shaded by trees, some recently planted and others in full bloom, squirrels darting between them.

The rain garden dates back to 2010. Curtis said the work was completed with assistance from the Herring Run Watershed Association, one of several groups that later formed the environmental nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore.

Recently, the church expanded its environmental efforts by converting more pavement into a mini forest. In the fall and spring of 2023, congregants and neighbors planted about 44 native trees and a variety of wildflowers to support pollinators and native birds. Last fall, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay planted an additional 30 trees on the property.

To make room for the forest, the church uprooted a portion of its parking lot in May 2023.

The Rev. Cat Dodson Goodrich, the church’s pastor, said the decision highlighted a shift in the congregation’s size and needs. Built to accommodate more than 1,000 members, the church now serves a smaller crowd.

The project was carried out through a partnership with Blue Water Baltimore and Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake, a nonprofit that helps churches protect and restore their surrounding neighborhoods.

“We translate that really kind of technical, up-in-the-air language around environmental issues into language that resonates with faith communities,” said Mollie Rudow, who was senior outreach coordinator with Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake at the time.

Struggling With Flooding in Baltimore

Slowing down rainwater has another benefit: helping the city tackle flooding.

Rising sea levels from climate change paired with aging infrastructure and numerous impermeable surfaces are worsening the problem in Baltimore, including through so-called sunny-day flooding. That’s inundating basements and damaging property.

Baltimore is in a low-lying region that borders the Chesapeake Bay and other tributaries, making it particularly vulnerable.

“Baltimore is surrounded by water. With increased climate change, increased storms, increased water flow, where does it go?” asked Robin Lewis, director for climate equity with the regional affiliate of Interfaith Power & Light. “If you have impermeable pavement, which Baltimore has, there’s no way for it to sink into the ground and get absorbed. So it sits on the top, and it flows out.”

First Street, a research and technology organization, predicts that in 30 years, 82 percent of properties in the Inner Harbor will be at risk of flooding, compared with about 63 percent this year.

“These asphalt parking lots and streets, they do nothing,” said Lewis. “The water just runs over and runs into our tributaries.”

Congregations are well-positioned to lead resiliency work because of their deep roots in the neighborhoods they serve, Rudow said.

“Faith communities are organizers,” she said. “They’re consolidated places where we can make broad-scale change. We oftentimes see in disasters that faith communities are the ones who are organizing to provide shelter, water, food or clothes.”

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The vicious cycle of climate change can damage a city’s infrastructure, decrease property values and result in less tax revenue to improve the infrastructure for future disasters.

According to a 2024 Pew Charitable Trusts report, limits on local governments’ ability to raise funds can create investment gaps that delay maintenance and improvements to critical infrastructure, such as transportation and wastewater systems. .

Resiliency Hubs

The Rev. André Briscoe Jr. leads three congregations—St. Matthew’s New Life United Methodist Church, Govans-Boundary United Methodist Church and New Waverly United Methodist Church—with aging buildings along the city’s Greenmount-York Road corridor.

Briscoe said the issues facing his parishes reflect deep disinvestment. The neighborhood surrounding St. Matthew’s New Life, for instance, is both a food desert and an urban heat island, he said. Both conditions reflect the broader environmental challenges facing under-resourced Black neighborhoods in Baltimore.

Govans-Boundary hasn’t had any major renovations since 1958, and both Govans and New Waverly, rely on oil furnaces. The churches burned through their oil supply faster than expected this year as temperatures plunged.

“We had several weeks where we had to wait for oil beyond our normal wait times because of high demand,” Briscoe said.

He’s trying to make the churches and the areas they serve more resilient. His effort to find funding to go solar at all three churches hasn’t borne fruit yet, but St. Matthew’s New Life and Govans-Boundary have been official resiliency hubs through Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability since 2024.

“If there’s an emergency or disaster in the neighborhood, the hubs go into full effect,” Briscoe said. “It could be food, it could be water, it could be disaster relief.”

For Briscoe, this work stems directly from his faith.

“We believe that we are to be good stewards over all of God’s creation,” he said. “That is, human beings and animals, insects, the land, the air, everything.”

Back at Faith Presbyterian, where rain soaks into the soil where cars once parked on pavement, the pastor thinks about how the property can continue to serve the neighborhood. She envisions a future where the benefits of the green space keep expanding.

“A beautiful natural playground that is used by kids in the community, trees that have begun to grow and mature, and maybe even some gardens that are producing food that goes to feed hungry people,” Goodrich said.