It’s frozen now, chilled to winter stillness with a rim of ice white along the edge of Annapolis.

Even in warmer times, Weems is often forgotten among the city’s creeks, overshadowed by Spa or Back and the grand campuses on College Creek.

Yet for the next decade, this 2-square-mile watershed — from the Severn River to Annapolis Mall, from West Street to the townhouses near Bestgate Road — will be the No. 1 priority for the Severn River Association, America’s oldest river conservancy.

“It’s going to take a lot of working with a lot of different partners to make it happen,” said Ben Fertig, the group’s restoration manager. “But I’m very optimistic and enthusiastic about it.”

It’s not the first time someone has tried to help this little waterway. You can see some of its reed-choked headwaters from Route 50, where it begins a short trip to the Severn, passing under bridges on Rowe Boulevard and Ridgely Road.

But it reflects a historic change for the association. Founded in 1911, the group has built oyster sanctuaries near Annapolis, measured water quality and lobbied for long-suffering tributaries like Jabez Branch.

Then, in 2022, it hired Jesse Iliff as executive director. He shifted away from exclusive reliance on volunteer projects toward a paid staff and a goal of making the entire river healthy again by 2050.

“We are really focused on not just measuring the water quality as it is currently, but also doing things to actively change it and improve it,” Fertig said.

Last year, the SRA surveyed tributaries for water quality, interest expressed by the communities, environmental justice and the potential to make a difference.

And Weems, poor little Weems, outscored all the others. In some ways the worst, it was — oddly — the best. It presented an opportunity to make a difference.

Four decades ago, the National Park Service took interest in a largely undeveloped tidal estuary dividing Annapolis from unincorporated Anne Arundel County. The idea was to give local activists a plan.

“As one of many tidal estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay, the creek may not appear to be particularly unique,” researchers wrote in their 1982 report. “But as the only relatively unspoiled waterway in Annapolis … the creek is indeed special.”

About 3,300 people lived within the watershed then, 90% of them in Annapolis neighborhoods like West Annapolis, Admiral Heights and Wardour.

The Park Service identified a range of strategies. It called on the state to protect Priest Point, 17 acres owned by the Catholic Church’s Redemptorist Order. Maryland already owned the Hock property, a 30-acre, wooded fragment of Colonial land grants.

Development came anyway.

Expansion of the new Annapolis Mall and construction of shopping centers upstream started before the park service report was a year old.

The state widened Route 50 to interstate status, turning the Hock property into an isolated drain field for 10 lanes of traffic. Priest Point was sold and sits vacant today in the lee of a highway noise wall.

“That point where the creek meets the river has eroded 60 feet in the last four years,” said Andy Fegley, a city Maritime Advisory Board member who keeps a kayak on the creek.

Anne Arundel Medical Center built a 57-acre campus north of Route 50, and 1,000 townhouses and condos emerged along Bestgate Road. More development may be coming.

There were various plans to fix the problems.

By 2006, Anne Arundel County ranked Weems Creek as the fourth-most polluted tributary of the Severn River. It was filled with nitrogen, nitrous oxide, phosphorous and bacteria from poop.

A decade later, the city and county agreed to a single law enforcement authority on the creek. Harbormaster Beth Bellis spent some of her first years on the job removing derelict boats and cracking down on live-aboard boaters dumping their toilets overboard.

The county poured millions into restoring Cowhide Branch over the next decade, rebuilding the tributary from Route 50 to the edge of the hospital campus.

It’s hard to look at Weems Creek and see it as the worst spot on the river. But one of its greatest strengths might be people interested in making it better.

“I would agree that is something the Severn River Associaton could find,” Bellis said.

One of Fertig’s first jobs in 2023 was to update that 2006 study.

In its survey of Weems Creek, association researchers found 42% of the watershed — 658.6 acres — paved or covered with buildings and roads. Residential lawns cover another 33%. That forest described as so special 43 years ago has dwindled to just 13% of the watershed. There are still fish and other species, but the creek scores among the worst for water quality, habitat and biodiversity.

Kayakers and small boaters enjoy the creek, and there are private docks. But the farther north you go, the more silt clogs the creek so deeply that Fertig wonders if it might make more sense to improve it as wetlands than restore the creek.

If that history has been damning, though, the plans and studies provided something to build upon.

The study identified existing stormwater controls that could be improved, spots for new ones, and coves and streams ripe for restoration. The city is working on its own plans.

The association is already in talks about partnering with civic groups and property owners. Luminis Health, which owns the Annapolis Exchange office park and Anne Arundel Medical Center at the headwaters, expressed interest in helping lead the way.

“We are exploring potential partnerships with nearby businesses and considering grant opportunities to support stream restoration efforts,” said Justin McLeod, spokesperson for Luminis.

The initial cost estimate is only $1.3 million. Not much.

Maybe if the SRA multiplies that by community associations, government agencies, property owners, boaters and others — it could make a difference on a small, often forgotten waterway.

“This is really a beginning,” Fertig said.

Again.