Virginia is buying out the licenses of more than 350 of its crabbers, paying them anywhere from $500 to $175,000 each to give up their rights to harvest the Chesapeake Bay's iconic crustacean.

Jack Travelstead, fisheries director for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said letters went out today (Nov. 20) accepting the offers of 359 holders of crabbing licenses. The commission had received offers to sell from 664 crabbers, roughly a third of all licensed crabbers in the state.

"I couldn’t be happier with the results,'' Travelstead said. "I am very pleased with the number of licenses we’ve been able to purchase."

Virginia had invited the state's 1,800 crabbing license holders to name their price, in a Priceline-style "reverse auction."  

Maryland made a similar offer last summer to nearly 3,700 mostly small-time crabbers, but rejected the nearly 500 bids it got, declaring they didn't get enough reasonable offers.   Only about a fourth quoted prices Maryland's Department of Natural Resources was willing to pay, with one apparent protest bidder demanding $425 million for his $60-a-year permit.  The state then offered a flat $2,260 to each crabber, and got about 530 takers - a better result, though still short of the state's goal of retiring more than 1,300 licenses.

Continue reading "Va. buys out more than 350 crabbers" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Attorney General Doug Gansler wants boaters to stop using the Chesapeake Bay as their toilet.

Speaking at a bay symposium Thursday at the University of Baltimore law school, Gansler said he plans to ask the General Assembly to declare the entire bay (or at least the Maryland portion) a no-discharge zone for boaters.

It's already illegal to dump raw sewage anywhere, and according to the Department of Natural Resources more than 300 marinas statewide have facilities where boaters can pump out their waste holding tanks and portable toilets.

"Most boaters do bring their tanks into the marina, and (the sewage) goes to the wastewater treatment plants," Gansler said. "But some don't." Some boaters also have "fancy heads," as he called them, which disinfect the waste but don't remove the nitrogen. Boaters with certain approved "marine sanitation devices," as they're called, are allowed to discharge their treated wastes.

The state now has two official no-discharge zones in areas heavily used by boaters - Herring Bay in Anne Arundel County, and the northern coastal bays in Worcester County.  Boaters in those areas are forbidden to dump raw or even treated sewage from their heads. Gansler said he would work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state lawmakers to expand the no-discharge designation to cover the entire bay.

Gansler, who has introduced an environmental bill in every General Assembly session since being elected, acknowledged that this measure wasn't as far-reaching as his previous legislative efforts. In prior years, he's pushed to ban phosphates in dishwasher detergents, to have chicken manure declared a renewable energy fuel and to give environmental and community groups legal standing to sue polluters. The first two passed, while last year's standing bill was watered down to give groups the right to challenge environmental permits, but not to sue to enforce the laws.

"We’re not going to fix the bay so its pristine after this," Gansler said, noting that boat waste discharges account for a tiny fraction (about 1 percent, he said) of the nitrogen contributing to the bay's dead zones. "But it’s something that’s very controllable,'' the AG added.

Gansler said that boaters he's spoken with favor his idea, and he suggested that it would have broad public support among non-boaters as well. What do you think?  Is the holding tank smell and pumpout hassle worth it for such a small source of the bay's pollution? Or is it the least boaters can do to help the bay that they depend on for recreation?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Arthur Tuers recalls a day when the Chesapeake Bay teemed with oysters, crabs and clams, and the water was so clear you could "see your toenails" while standing in five feet of water. Now 79, he's been fishing and working around the bay since he was 10.

Tuers shares his recollections in this video shot by Matt Rath with the Chesapeake Bay Program . Some might see this as an emotional appeal to build public support for the costly, controversial push by the Obama administration and bay states to ramp up restoration efforts. Still, it's worth hearing how the bay used to be while pondering the price of trying to bring it back.

"People would not believe how it was back then," he says.

A look back with Arthur Tuers from Chesapeake Bay Program on Vimeo.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

Crabs, oysters and rockfish will be on the agenda, if not the menu, Thursday, Nov. 19 at a "Bay in Crisis" symposium sponsored by the University of Baltimore law school.

The focus of the day-long session will be on protecting and restoring the bay's native fish and shellfish populations. Speakers include: J. Charles Fox, the Environmental Protection Agency's senior advisor on the bay; Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler; scientists; regulators; activists, and yes, even a waterman.  To see the full agenda, go here.

The symposium will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the John and Frances Angelos Law Center, 1415 Maryland Avenue. (Directions here) The event is free and open to the public, but anyone wanting to attend is asked to RSVP by Monday, Nov. 16. You can register online here or call 410.837.4468.

(2008 Baltimore Sun photo by Glen Fawcett)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Events
        

It seems that Virginia's crabbers aren't exactly flocking to take buyouts from their state, either. As the Associated Press reports, more than 500 of the state's 1,850 commercial crabbers submitted offers to sell their licenses back to the state by the Nov. 1 deadline.

"I like being outside, and I just absolutely love catching things — absolutely love it," Joe Palmer, a 54-year-old waterman told the AP, in explaining why he didn't offer to sell his license.

Virginia has committed $6.7 million to buy out commercial crabbers' licenses, and invited them to name their price, using a method that has proven successful in reducing some other overworked fisheries. Maryland tried a similar "reverse auction" to retire relatively small-time crabbing licenses that hadn't been used in a while, but gave up after getting only about 500 offers to sell that quoted prices ranging up into the millions of dollars.

Maryland has since switched gears, offering to pay a flat $2,260 for each of the "limited crab catcher" licenses turned in. So far, state officials say, about 530 have responded to the latest offer, which remains outstanding. The 3,700 "limited crab catcher" licenses the state has issued allow holders to use up to 50 wire-mesh "pots" or traps and an unlimited amount of baited line. The state is moving to restrict the use of about 2,000 licenses that haven't reported any catch lately, to keep them from jumping back into crabbing as the bay's crab population rebounds.

(2008 Baltimore Sun photo by Glenn Fawcett)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Conservation and art take wing together this weekend at the 39th annual Waterfowl Festival in Easton, for a three-day extravaganza celebrating the Chesapeake Bay's wildlife and outdoors heritage.

Starting Friday, Nov. 13, there'll be antique and contemporary decoys to view (and buy), plus paintings, photos and other arts and crafts, fly-fishing and retriever dog demonstrations as well as goose- and duck-calling contests. Besides the arts and crafts, there'll be food and music, plus outdoor gear for shoppers.

The event has raised more than $5 million in donations for wildlife conservation projects. Besides the good cause, it's quite a scene. Festivities begin at 10 a.m., and admission is $10 for all three days, with kids under $12 free.

For tickets or information, go here or call 410-822-4567.

(2004 Associated Press photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Buy local, Chesapeake Bay, Events, Shopping, Tips
        

Howard Ernst, author of a new critique of the Chesapeake Bay restoration, will speak at 6 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 10) at the University of Maryland law school.

Ernst's new book is titled "Fight for the Bay: Why a Dark Green Environmental Awakening is Needed to Save the Chesapeake Bay."

In it, the associate political science professor at the Naval Academy assesses "how decision-makers in the environmental, political, and journalistic communities have failed the Chesapeake Bay, and what actions they must take to restore it.'' (Full disclosure: yours truly gets a mention, but I blog this because it's timely, with all the news lately about new plans for the bay cleanup.)

His earlier book was "Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics, and the Struggle to Save the Bay."

The talk is open to the public, but those wanting to attend should email Lisetta Silvestri of the Maryland Environmental Law Society at mels@law.umaryland.edu  to assure a seat.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

So the Obama administration has finally unveiled its plan for jump-starting the Chesapeake Bay restoration, and even environmentalists who had called for a stronger federal hand in the cleanup couldn't agree on the showing so far. Some smelled waffling in the feds' resolve to crack down on stubborn farm and storm-water pollution.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Doug Siglin called the feds' draft strategy " a step forward," but didn't exactly bubble over with praise. "All in all, we're pleased that the federal government is stepping up and creating a plan that cuts across federal agencies," he said in a brief telephone interview.

Environment Maryland's Tommy Landers, though, called the draft strategy "a step backwards" from the Environmental Protection Agency's suggestion in September that federal regulations should be expanded and stiffened on poultry and other livestock farms (aka "concentrated animal feeding operations") and on municipal storm water. In the announcement Monday, the feds said they'd give the states a chance first to beef up their pollution controls, and if their efforts were enough to meet water-quality goals, then EPA would hold off on new "bay-specific" rules.

"But states (have) proven themselves incapable of that over the past 25 years,” said Landers in a written release.

Continue reading "Feds' Bay cleanup plan: step forward or back?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Some students from Washington College visited Fort McHenry last week.  But it wasn't your ordinary history field trip.

The youngsters from the Eastern Shore campus were visiting Baltimore as part of an interdisciplinary study of the Chesapeake Bay -- its history, ecology and culture. 

The class of 11 got a close-up view of urban environmental issues, hiking through the small restored wetland beside the fort, and seining on the postage-stamp sandy beach there.

"There's a lot of trash here," Liz Shandor, a junior from Annapolis, said as she surveyed the debris floating in the water and lining the beach.  Indeed, the students' biggest "catch" in the net was a submerged, mud-filled plastic toolcase.

The day before, the class had visited Masonville cove to learn about efforts to restore a stretch of degraded industrial waterfront. Then they spent some time at the National Aquarium.  Earlier this fall, the class did a circuit of the bay, from the Virginia capes to Jamestown and Williamsburg, Richmond, St. Mary's City and Annapolis.

As a longtime Marylander, Shandor said she'd been to many of the spots the class visited before, but this was a new perspective.

"I never really appreciated the Bay until I'd been in this class," the junior said. "I feel like I'd never really known my backyard before."  An anthropology major, she said she'd like to delve deeper into the declining culture of the bay's watermen.

Anthropology Associate Professor John Seidel, director of the Chesapeake Semester, said the program tries to broaden students' appreciation of the bay and its woes.

"The problem with the bay is not a lack of science," he said. "It's a human problem, a social problem."

For more on the college's Chesapeake Semester, go here.

(Photo by Michael Hardesty, Chesapeake Semester program manager)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

It's one thing to talk about what's wrong with the Chesapeake Bay and why it's worth preserving, but it really helps to see what you're talking about. In this video, produced by What's Up, a lifestyle and entertainment magazine in Annapolis, Derek Rodgers, a graduate student studying environmental science at Towson University, shares some insights on the bay's values and its woes.

If anyone else has done videos about the bay or local environmental issues they'd like to share, please send us links.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

There's a lot of talk these days about what it'll take to restore the Chesapeake Bay, and farming is in a bit of a hot spot. A group concerned about the environmental impacts of "industrialized" farming plans to hash the topic out at a seminar on Saturday, Nov. 7, in Jarrettsville.

The event, sponsored by Peach Bottom Concerned Citizens Group, features environmental activists, a pair of farmers as well as a former chicken grower, and a state legislator, Del. Wayne Norman, R-Harford County. The seminar runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Jarrettsville Gardens, 3825 Federal Hill Road, Jarrettsville.

The session is free, with lunch provided, but those interested in attending are asked to phone ahead to reserve space (and food?). Call Maria at 717-456-5800.

(2002 Baltimore Sun photo by David Hobby)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Republican Robert McDonnell's election as governor of Virginia on Tuesday has some worrying it could spell trouble for cooperation among states and federal government to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University in Northern Virginia, was quoted in a story by the Capital News Service suggesting that a conservative Republican administration in Richmond could undo Virginia's recent cooperation with Democrat-controlled Annapolis and the Obama administration in Washington on adopting stronger environmental regulations and spending more to restore the bay.

Neither McDonnell nor his Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds spoke much about the bay during the campaign, it seems. But the Capital News Service reports that McDonnell mentioned the watermen's plight in his victory speech Tuesday night, though he didn't elaborate.

McDonnell's campaign Web site portrays him as a strong supporter of the bay and the environment. It says he supported several bay initiatives, including a tax refund for contributions toward restoring the Chesapeake and a ban on ban on phosphate diswasher detergent.

"Bob McDonnell is committed to working with the other Chesapeake Bay states to continue responsible policies to protect and improve the health of the Bay," his campaign site says, "including making every effort to meet the goals for the nutrient reduction outlined in the Chesapeake Bay agreement signed in 2000."

There's no mention, though, of going beyond the 2000 agreement, which all states now acknowledge they won't fulfill by next year's deadline.

(Associated Press photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A small group of environmentalists, developers and government officials have taken the first step in what could be a long journey toward rethinking how Maryland should grow over the next century.

That's right: 100 years, not just five, 10 or even 30. Inspired by reports of success with a similarly long-range visioning exercise for the Seattle area, representatives of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Home Builders Association of Maryland and nine other groups pledged Wednesday to launch the "Maryland 100-year Horizon Parntership."

By taking such a long-range view, says John Kortecamp, executive vice president of the home builders, the Maryland group hopes to get past the NIMBYism (aka "not in my backyard") that always seem to bog down efforts to develop more compact, walkable communities in the state.

Participants in the "Cascade Agenda," as the Seattle-area effort is called, explained at a conference at Martin's West on Wednesday that it has succeeded in building consensus among developers, environmentalists and government officials there about halting the loss of forest and farmland to suburban sprawl by building up cities and towns.

Gene Duvernoy, president of the Cascade Land Conservancy and one of the founders of the Seattle effort, said looking at long-range projections of how the region's population would continue to mushroom prompted environmentalists to realize that the keys to conserving Washington's natural resources lay in providing affordable housing and sustainable employment opportunities for the newcomers. It also won agreement that existing cities and towns need additional money to make themselves more attractive in order to ease the pressure to develop beyond the region's growth boundaries.

"It was a sloppy process," Duvernoy recalled, with lots of false turns and reverses. It took thousands of hours of talks, but the effort has gained traction, he said, in large part because it is based on using market-based incentives to conserve forests and farms rather than more government land-use regulations.

Continue reading "Taking the long view on Maryland's future" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

A broadcast remark by the Obama administration's point person on the Chesapeake Bay about strengthening federal controls on farm pollution has triggered some high-level diplomacy between Annapolis and Washington.

Pressed by lower Eastern Shore politicians who contend that "stringent" federal regulations already are driving the poultry industry from the state, Gov. Martin O'Malley has exchanged letters and and conferred by phone with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, seeking "clarification" about whether Maryland's chicken farmers face the prospect of tougher regulation than growers elsewhere in the country.

O'Malley wrote the EPA chief on Sept. 18, forwarding a letter he'd received nearly two weeks earlier from the Worcester County commissioners complaining that federal regulations imposed by the agency's regional office in Philadelphia put Maryland chicken farmers on "an uneven playing field" compared with growers in other states.

Continue reading "Smoothing ruffled feathers over poultry pollution" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Factories and power plants discharged more than 2 million pounds of toxic chemicals into Maryland waterways, according to a new report by Environment Maryland. And three-fourths of that wound up in Baltimore's Curtis Bay, ranking it among the top 50 waterways nationally for toxic discharges.

Drawing on toxic chemical releases reported by industries for 2007, the most recent year available, the environmental group argues that government has not done enough to minimize the health and environmental threats posed by allowing such discharges into the nation's waters.

In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the group notes, the Susquehanna River ranked in the top 20 nationally for receiving toxic discharges, with industries reporting more than 2.6 million pounds released into the water body that supplies half the bay's fresh water. And at the other end of the bay, Virginia's James River received the 6th largest amount of toxic chemicals linked with developmental problems in children.

Toxic discharges are far higher in other parts of the country, the group's report reveals, with the Ohio, New and Mississippi rivers on the receiving end of the most pollution.  And the amounts industry reports discharging have been greatly reduced overall, since they first began reporting such releases two decades ago.

But there's still plenty that could be done in Maryland and the rest of the bay region to reduce exposure to harmful chemicals, argues Environment Maryland's Tommy Landers. He urged state and federal leaders not to skip over toxic pollution as they draw up plans for ramping up the bay restoration effort.  To see the full report, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Environmentalists worry that the push to clean Maryland's air could wind up degrading the state's waters.

Under the state's Healthy Air Act passed in 2006, coal-burning power plants are required to reduce their emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury, which impair our breathing, foul the Chesapeake Bay and make some fish unsafe to eat in large quantities. Beginning next year, the plants are supposed to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by almost 70%, sulfure dioxide emissions by 80%, and mercury emissions by 80%.

To meet those requirements, the coal plants are in the process of installing "scrubbers" to clean the pollutants out of their smokestacks before they get into the air. But environmentalists are concerned that the pollutants scrubbed from the stacks may wind up in the water if there aren't adequate safeguards to clean the plants' wastewater.

Even before the scrubbers are hooked up, they note, at least one coal-burner, Mirant Corp.'s Morgantown plant in Charles County, is discharging hundreds of pounds of toxic chemicals daily into the Potomac River. Based on the company's own sampling, the water coming out of the Morgantown plant's outfall pipe into the river is carrying more than 200 pounds of arsenic and nearly 600 pounds of selenium a day.

"It's just shifting pollution from one medium to another in an area already suffering from pollution,'' says Jennifer Peterson, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project in Washington. The University of Maryland's environmental law clinic pressed the group's concerns with the state Department of the Environment.

Continue reading "Cleaning the air at water's expense?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Air Pollution, Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Washington College's decision to buy a contaminated waterfront tract on the Chester River is a proverbial win-win, according to an official with the small Eastern Shore liberal arts college.

Writing in the Chestertown Spy, Bryan Mathews, director of athletics and associate VP for administrative servcies, calls the five-acre plot "a wonderful gift" that the college got at a bargain and will clean up after sitting undeveloped for decades because of the toxic chemicals left behind in the ground by farm chemical and fuel storage businesses that once operated there.

"It won’t cost the citizens a thing, and in fact everyone will benefit many times over," Mathews writes. He doesn't mention the $400,000 in federal funds school officials have said they intend to apply for to help with the cleanup, which two different assessments have said could cost either $1.6 million or more than $4 million.

As reported in B'more Green earlier, the college intends to build a new boathouse there, plus a new headquarters for its Center for Environment & Society.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Government and university biologists are mounting another, perhaps last search for the elusive Maryland darter, one of the world's rarest fish, which hasn't been seen in 21 years.

As reported in The Baltimore Sun today, scientists plan to check again the few Harford County streams where the little fish has only sporadically been found over the past century. But they also intend to broaden their search and bring in some new "electro-trawling" gear to see if the darter could be lurking in the Susquehanna River. A West Virginia biologist who's joining the search has had success finding other seemingly lost fish using the technique.

Rich Raesly, the Frostburg State University biologist who was the last to see the bottom-feeding member of the perch family in the wild, has searched in vain since then. He says the coordinated and expanded search, which scientists hope to make for two years, offers a "glimmer of hope" for the state's namesake fish.

If scientists still can't find it after that, the federal government will be left with a tough call - whether to declare it extinct and remove it from protection under the Endangered Species Act. No one likes to do that, if only because long-lost fish sometimes turn up. In the mid-1990s, Raesly and another scientist independently spotted another missing fish, the stripeback darter, after it hadn't been seen in 51 years.

For more on the Maryland darter, and the state's rare plants and animals, go here.

(Illustration by David Neely, courtesy of the MD Department of Natural Resources)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Some of us have a hard time looking beyond today. But when it comes to thinking about growth and development - perennial hot topics virtually everywhere - what if we took a longer view? What do we want our communities to look like? Not next year, or ten or even 20 years from now. A century from now.

That's what nearly 100 businesses, civic and environmental groups and government agencies and hundreds of citizens have done in the region bordering Washington's Puget Sound. Starting four years ago, the participants hammered out the "Cascade Agenda," a call to conserve working forests, farmlands, shorelines, parks and natural areas while also making cities and towns attractive places to live, work and raise families.

Now, in Maryland, environmentalists and development interests who are often at odds want to see if taking a similarly long view here can lead to some broad agreement on how and where to grow in this state. They've come together to examine the Cascade effort and how it might work in Maryland at a one-day conference Oct. 28 at Martin's West in Baltimore County.

Continue reading "What will Maryland look like in 100 years?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The lagging Chesapeake Bay cleanup has been criticized over the years for its largely voluntary approach to restoring North America's largest estuary. Now, with the Obama administration vowing to step up the pressure to make progress, federal officals are toying not just with new regulations and mandates, but with sanctions that they might impose on state and local governments in the region if they fail to live up to their commitments to reduce pollution.

J. Charles "Chuck" Fox, special bay advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said in a telelphone briefing Wednesday that agency officials are mulling ideas for "consequences" should the cleanup effort continue to dawdle.  Among them: EPA scrutinizing or even blocking permits for new or expanded releases of nutrient pollution into the bay or its tributaries, and possibly withholding federal funding. 

That could slow economic or residential growth in some areas, if new businesses or sewage treatment plant expansions are held up.  Environmental groups, though, contend the bay will never be restored if new pollution is allowed before already fouled rivers get cleaned up.

But Fox indicated the federal government also wants to extend a helping hand, not just a hammer. He  said he would be seeking additional funding for farmers to help them keep manure and fertilizer from their fields and feedlots from fouling the bay's waters.  He also said state and local governments need financial help to fulfill their obligations to clean up the growing tide of polluted storm runoff from urban and suburban lands.   But he warned that the federal government faces its own funding crunch, so all the additional resources to clean up the bay can't come from Washington.

Continue reading "Bay cleanup: the "hammer" and the helping hand" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

A Pennsylvania environmental group is warning that pollution from large-scale livestock farms in that state is worsening, and it's calling for stricter government regulations and enforcement to help restore the Chesapeake Bay.

Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, or PennFuture, released a report contending that there's been an increase in the past five years in the amount of farm animal manure washing into one of the major tributaries to the Susquehanna River - itself the bay's largest tributary.

Among the group's findings:

- just 57 percent of livestock operations in the Octoraro Creek watershed are in compliance with "nutrient management plans" limiting how, when and where they can spread manure on their fields to fertilize crops;

- though the number of livestock operations has declined in the past five years, the amount of manure generated has increased substantially and nearly all of it is used or disposed of in the watershed.

"The cleanup program based on voluntary efforts is going the wrong way," Jan Jarrett, PennFuture's president and CEO said in a release accompanying the report. Her group called for stricter enforcement by Pennsylvania, or to have the federal Environmental Protection Agency step in and start denying permits for any new livestock operations in watersheds already impaired by nutrient pollution from farm runoff.

The Chesapeake group of the Waterkeepers Alliance has been making similiar complaints about Maryland's oversight of manure generated by livestock farms, especially the many poultry operations on the Eastern Shore.

You can read PennFuture's report here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Now the anti-sprawl group 1000 Friends of Maryland is trying a new tack to keep farmland from growing houses. It's decided to extend a hand to farmers, offering to support tax reforms, public funding and other incentives to keep farming profitable and the developers at bay. Under the slogan "Keep Farmers Farming", the Baltimore-based group is launching its new campaign tonight with a $65-a-head bash at the Green Spring Valley Hounds hunt club in Reisterstown, featuring locally produced food and drink, and a chance to meet and mingle with the farmers who produced it.

"We've always supported agriculture," maintains Dru Schmidt-Perkins, Friends' executive director.  The group has long advocated for farmland preservation as a key part of the state's Smart Growth policy, which seeks to preserve rural and environmentally sensitive lands by steering development into existing urban areas.   But Friends has favored putting more teeth in the state's growth management laws, something farmers have tended to fight because they have more clout at the county courthouses.

Now the group has decided to throw its lobbying weight behind helping farmers in the belief that the best way to save the farmland is to help ease the economic pressures driving farmers out of business.

"There isn't going to be a fresh peach on every (Baltimore city) student's desk next fall if the farmer who raises the peaches is gone," Schmidt-Perkins says.  "We have to make farming work because we have to eat.  We're not going to get at climate-change issues, transportation issues, healthy food issues unless we have a really strong agriculture system nearby."

Continue reading "Can farmland be saved without the farmer?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The New York Times's Green Inc. blog has an item about an effort to compost dog waste in Ithaca, N.Y. It's kind of a pilot project where dog owners at a certain dog park are given special corn-based bags to pick up poop. They dump it in a special container that is picked up by a composting company.

The compost people haven't yet decided what to do with the waste. They'll mix it with top soil if it's not such good quality or use it in gardens if it's good quality.

But I've long thought about the amount of dog poop I throw away. All those plastic bags that sit in the landfill forever. But the alternative is to leave it on the ground. That's not really an alternative, though. People, including little kids, would step in it. And some of it would -- and lots does now -- end up in our waterways where bacteria already is a serious problem.

But would people actually participate in a composting operation here? There used to be a bin at work that was bright yellow and labelled for ink jet and electronic recycling only. Yet every day there was trash in it. I don't know if people didn't pay any attention or did it on purpose, but either way, I can imagine the other stuff that would go into the compost bin at the dog park.

So, what's the answer?

Associated Press photo of dogs in a park in Ithica, N.Y.

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Going Green, Parks
        

No one has more at stake in wanting the Chesapeake Bay cleaned up than the men and women who still make a living - or try to, at least - from the fish, crabs and oysters still hanging on amid the bay's nutrient-fouled waters..

That's the point of "Watermen Blues," a new report by Environment Maryland. The Baltimore-based advocacy group produced the 36-pager to back up its call for the federal and state governments to ramp up bay restoration efforts.

"After decades of voluntary programs, minimal accountability and lax enforcement of bay protections, it's crystal clear that we need greater accountability and better enforcement of limits on all sources of pollution," the group's Tommy Landers said in a press release accompanying the report.

Environmental groups crank out reports like a popcorn popper sometimes, packed with policy prescriptions in dry prose. This report talks policy, too, but it's got flavor. Co-authored by Heather Dewar, a talented environmental writer who used to report for The Baltimore Sun, it vividly recounts how the bay's watermen and once-thriving seafood industry have faltered.

Pollution isn't entirely to blame for that, the report frankly acknowledges.  Overfishing and lower-priced imported seafood has taken a toll as well. But it points out how fishermen have struggled as pollution has smothered the bay's grasses and starved it of fish-sustaining oxygen, rendering the deep waters a sterile "dead zone." Seafood packing houses have closed, boat carpenters have gone elsewhere to find work and watermen have been forced to take jobs on land building homes or working as prison guards

It's an eloquent, sobering reminder of how pollution hurts people and communities, even when it doesn't directly threaten their health.   They say you don't know what you've lost 'til it's gone, but sometimes what's gone is forgotten. To avoid that, read the full report, go here.

(Baltimore Sun photo 2002 by Chiaki Kawajiri)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The harbor has long been a popular place to kayak, boat, fish, crab and admire. And more people than ever live near the water. Still, most people probably understand it is polluted.

We're interested in hearing from you about this. Do you boat or fish despite the water's condition? Do you avoid the water, or prefer to admire it from land only? Did you buy a house near it? Do you believe it's an important part of the local economy? What do you think should be done?

Please comment here or email meredith.cohn@baltsun.com.

Baltimore Sun file photo of the Inner Harbor/Jed Kirschbaum

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

Maryland and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay states get some pretty poor marks in a new report assessing their performance in curbing polluted runoff from developed lands.

Despite adopting strict new rules aimed at protecting streams from new development and demands put on largely suburban Montgomery County to clean up already built-up neighborhoods, Maryland rates only a D-plus overall for its efforts to rein in polluted runoff, according to the Chesapeake Stormwater Network.

"Once a national leader in stormwater, Maryland has fallen behind its peers, and has not exploited the permit system to restore the bay," says the report by the network, a new environmental group dedicated to curing what it sees as a glaring weakness in the struggling bay cleanup.  The report, underwritten by the Keith Campbell Foundation, was presented last week to the Chesapeake Bay Commission at its meeting in Williamsburg, Va.

There's a "collusion of complacency" among state regulators almost baywide in avoiding tackling the problem, says Tom Schueler, the network's coordinator and a widely recognized expert in storm-water pollution.  Their reluctance is understandable because it's tough and expensive to develop without harming streams.  It's even tougher and costlier to prevent trash and pollution from washing down storm drains in communities like Baltimore that were built decades before any pollution controls were required. (The photo above is of a weed- and trash-clogged storm drain in Highlandtown.)

But unless something is done to clean up storm water, Schueler warns, the bay will never recover.  While farmland is still the leading source of nutrient pollution fouling the Chesapeake, there's more land in lawns and turf than in growing corn, he points out.  Runoff from urban and suburban lands, new and existing, accounts for 16 percent of the nitrogen fouling Maryland's portion of the bay.  And the harm it is doing is growing as more pavement and lawns spread across the state.

Continue reading "MD gets poor grade on stormwater pollution" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

It seems the latest ideas for restoring the Chesapeake Bay got delayed yesterday on purpose - not necessarily because they weren't quite ready.

An Environmental Protection Agency official, who would only speak on background, says the public release of federal agencies' plans for ramping up the bay restoration were held until today to avoid getting overshadowed in the news by President Obama's nationally televised speech last night about health care reform. 

"We wanted to give the subject the attention that it deserved," the official said, "and Americans were focused on health care yesteday." 

This reason for the delay was reported today by The Washington Post, quoting the same unnamed official.  But it's a different explanation than I got yesterday from Jim Edwards, deputy director of EPA's bay program office in Annapolis. He told me that more time was needed to finish tweaking the seven separate reports and to prepare brief executive summaries of each.   Calls and emails to other EPA officials and to EPA's Washington press office did not elicit any other explanation.

Of course, a one-day delay in the release of some draft reports is trivial compared with the bay cleanup's history of failing to reach its pollution reduction targets.  But given the weeks-old public pledge EPA officials had made to release the reports yesterday, it's not a model of clear communication - something EPA's bay program has been criticized for in the past.   

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

If you've been anxiously awaiting, as I have, the chance to see what "game-changing" ideas federal officials have come up with for jump-starting the lagging Chesapeake Bay restoration, you'll have to wait until tomorrow. There's been another delay - an all-too-familiar event in the troubled 26-year history of the bay cleanup effort.

Today was the day the state and federal bay "partnership" had publicly announced it would release a series of draft reports outlining proposals for accelerating the pace of cleaning up the Chesapeake and safeguarding its fish and wildlife. Spokesmen for the Chesapeake Bay Program office in Annapolis had said as recently as yesterday that the seven draft reports would be posted online by around 9 a.m. today, and that there would be either a press conference or a tele-conference in early afternoon with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

Late this morning, more than two hours after the promised release time, Jim Edwards, deputy director of EPA's bay program office, told me when I reached him by phone that the reports were not quite ready for prime time, and their release had been delayed until Thursday. 

The documents are still being "finalized," he said, in particular one report that focuses on restoring and maintaining the bay's "living resources," including bay grasses, oysters, crabs, fish and other wildlife. Plus, he said, officials are busily writing executive summaries so the public won't have to wade through all those 30- to 50-page reports to get the gist of what's being proposed.  For background on what to expect in the reports, go here. 

Edwards said the bay program staff still expects to present the reports to the EPA administrator by the end of the day today. If that happens, then techincially, at least, they would avoid running afoul of the deadline set by President Obama in the executive order he issued last May calling for a new federal strategy for restoring the bay. Obama's order requires the draft reports to be submitted by Sept. 9, and that a cleanup strategy be developed from those drafts and put out for public comment by Nov. 9.  EPA bay program officials, however, had gone beyond the letter of the president's order to say the reports would be made publicly available today, the day they had to be submitted.

The delayed release drew a mildly barbed response from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which has sued the EPA over its failure to step in in the face of repeated failure by the bay restoration "partners" to meet deadlines and commitments they've set for cleaning up the estuary. President Obama's executive order was meant to break out of that rut.

"They're not off to the kind of start that you want to be off to," said John Surrick, spokesman for the Annapolis-based environmental group. "

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Could federal regulation of lawn fertilizers be on the way?

Obama administration officials are tightlipped about the laundry list of ideas they've come up with for jump-starting the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. Draft reports are due to be released on Wednesday -- the first step in fulfilling President Obama's May executive order directing federal agencies to take the lead in pushing for more progress in the long-running bay cleanup.

One Environmental Protection Agency official did hint last week, though, that rules on lawn care in the bay region may be among the ideas floated.

Speaking to a lunchtime gathering of lawyers in Washington, J. Charles Fox, special adviser on the bay to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, pointed out that polluted stormwater runoff from urban and suburban areas is an increasing threat to the bay.

Then Fox brought up home use of lawn fertilizers, whether do-it-yourself applications of products bought from Home Depot or Lowe’s or lawn-care services.

"We are going to have to look at this," he said, adding that "today we have more turf grass in the watershed than we do corn."

A few years back, bay area states got fertlizer manufacturers voluntarily to agree to halve the amount of  phosphorus used in lawn-care products in the region.  But the regulatory screws have tightened even more here in Maryland. The city of Annapolis this year banned lawn fertlizers containing phosphorus, while the General Assembly barred the sale of anything but low-phosphorus fertilizer for use on lawns by April 2011. Lawn care sevices and lawn startups were exempted from the state decree, however.

Continue reading "Saving the bay one lawn at a time?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

They're still struggling to rebuild New Orleans, four years after Hurricane Katrina dunked the Crescent City and other low-lying areas in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.  The costliest storm in US history hit Aug. 29, 2005.

Now come two coastal scientists who warn that what's being rebuilt is likely to get flooded again - and that other waterfront communities, including Baltimore, face the risk of similar watery calamities as global warming raises sea levels across the planet.

In "The Rising Sea," Orrin Pilkey and Rob Young argue that "the world is poised on the edge of a cliff (of its own making).  We must act now by responding to the challenges of sea level rise in a planned and rational way, taking a long-term view.  If we don't start planning now, a huge 'natural disaster' is facing us."

Their book, published by Island Press, focuses on New Orleans and Miami and other cities frequently in the cross-hairs of hurricanes.  But in a telephone interview, the authors say the Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore will not escape the rising seas, either.  We do get hit by the occasional storm - just six years ago, Tropical Storm Isabel flooded the Inner Harbor, as seen at right, as well as City Dock in Annapolis and other low-lying communities around the bay.   But Pilkey and Young say even without storms, the bay will continue to creep inexorably inland, as it has for decades.

"One of the interesting problems you guys face is your port facility," said Pilkey, professor emeritus at Duke University and a long-time critic of coastal development. As the seas rise over the next century, he says, "you can bring in bigger ships, but your docks will be inundated."

Some may wonder what the fuss is about when even the United Nations-backed scientific study two years ago projected that sea level would rise somewhere between 7 and 23 inches by the end of this century  But Pilkey and Young point out the scientific congress low-balled its estimate because it couldn't agree how much the seas would rise as ice sheets and glaciers melt in frozen Greenland and west Antarctica.   Other scientists since have suggested that that melting ice could dwarf the cautious official projections, by several feet.  Pilkey and Young suggest planners might want to assume as a worst case that sea level could actually climb 7 feet by next century.

A scary scenario, to be sure.  But, they argue, sea level rise is already under way, and no one in authority is taking the gradual threat seriously enough yet, particularly in cities like Miami, with high-rises crowding the beachfront.

Continue reading "Katrina's warning unheeded?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

It's gardening time on the Chesapeake Bay - oyster gardening, that is.

With the bay's oysters depleted by disease and habitat loss, the state Department of Natural Resources and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation separately are trying to enlist waterfront residents in bringing the pollution-filtering bivalves back.  Oysters are one of the keys to the bay's restoration, since each large one can filter up to two gallons of water an hour.

After an initial tryout getting residents along the Tred Avon River to raise oysters, the state is expanding its "Marylanders Grow Oysters" campaign to 11 new rivers around the bay. Up to 5,000 cages with baby oyster "spat" bred in a state hatchery are to be distributed to pier owners willing to tend the shellfish over the next 10 to 12 months, so that they can be "planted" on the bay bottom next summer. For details on which rivers are being targeted and how to participate, go here.

The Annapolis-based bay foundation, meanwhile, is offering oyster gardening workshops in September and October for residents with water access.  Volunteers will be given several thousand "seed" oysters for cultivation, and taught how to build four wire-mesh cages in which to grow them. Once the oysters grow to one or two inches across, they're returned to the foundation, so its staff can plant them with volunteers' help in sanctuary waters off limits to commercial harvest. CBF has a brief video about its program that you can see here.  For details on the workshops and to sign up - there's a $75 fee - go here.

Growing oysters doesn't require special talent, just some dedication - mostly rinsing the cages every couple weeks to make sure they don't get fouled with marine organisms that keep water from flowing freely past the oysters inside.  You can get an idea what's involved in the photo above, of a cage hung off a pier a couple years back at the Captain Sam Avery House Museum in Annapolis.

Sadly, there probably aren't enough piers out there to put a big dent in the bay's oyster problems. But it's a great way to enlist waterfront residents in the effort to restore the Chesapeake, which needs all the help it can get.

(2007 Baltimore Sun Staff Photo by Amy Davis)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Going Green, News, Volunteer
        

As a follow-up to my recent post about "Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out of Balance," I caught up with general curator of the National Aquarium, Jack Cover. I asked him about local jelly populations and what, if anything, they can tell us about local waters. Apparently, an increase in jelly activity is typically attributed to increased human activity, as well as to warmer waters. In general, global warming has contributed to a longer jelly season and larger populations. Read more below.

What kinds of jellies people can expect to see in local waters?

Jellies are nearly invisible, but they are everywhere including the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay, and even in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Many of our local jellies are seasonal and a greater variety of jellies are found in the lower bay, in the coastal bays and offshore in the Atlantic Ocean were salinities are higher. Some of the more common species include:

Moon Jellies: Lower Bay and Atlantic Ocean. Summer the remains of moon jellies can often be found washed up on the beach at Ocean City
Atlantic Sea Nettles: Very common in the middle and lower bay- late spring, summer and early fall
Comb Jellies: Found throughout the bay and ocean, year-round, most common in the warmer months
Lion’s Mane Jellies: in the bay from late November through May, also known as the winter jelly

Are there certain local beaches where jellies are more abundant?

The abundance of jellies varies throughout the year and changes with the tides (incoming tides often bring them close to shore). Water temperatures, salinity and abundance of food greatly influences their population densities. Forecasts of Atlantic sea nettle populations in the Chesapeake Bay are regularly posted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Which ones sting and which ones do not and how can you tell the difference?

Many jellies are harmless, but others can deliver a powerful sting. Locally, the Atlantic sea nettle and lion’s mane jelly can deliver an annoying, but not life-threatening sting. Atlantic sea nettles account for thousands of tourists seeking help each summer. Atlantic sea nettles can be recognized by their milky white color and three- to five-foot long tentacles. They are very abundant in the middle bay region at mid-summer.

Walnut-shaped comb jellies do not sting at all and can be distinguish from other local jellies by not having any stinging tentacles. Moon jellies have very short stinging tentacles that are mostly unable to penetrate the skin and are harmless to swimmers. The thick calloused skin of your hands are less vulnerable to a penetrating sting of our local jellies than the skin on other parts of your body. Many curious beachgoers pick up jellies and are not stung because of the thickened skin of the hands and by picking the jelly up by its non-stinging bell.

Are they around more during a particular time of the day?

They are active both night and day moving up and down the water column searching for food. Movements and abundance of jellies are affected by tides, winds and rainfall. Their abundance can be somewhat unpredictable as multiple factors affect their movements. They typically avoid coming to the surface of the water on windy days with lots of wave action.

Also, has there been an increase/decrease in the local jellyfish population and what does that tell us (if anything) about our local waters?

Local jelly populations fluctuate greatly from year to year. Species like the Atlantic sea nettle are naturally very abundant by mid-summer in the Chesapeake Bay. Long-term increases in local jelly populations or a lengthening of the jelly season could be the result of environmental degradation caused by human activities.

Cover offers basic facts on jellies survival:

As our exhibit points out, jellies are survivors. Jellies have survived for over 500 million years. They have survived environmental changes that have negatively affected other forms of sea life. The key to this survival is their ability to adapt and thrive to changes in the environment.

Jellies appear to be better able to survive in polluted water than other forms of aquatic life. Polluted runoff may be a cause for increases in jellies populations.

Polluted runoff from the land makes life impossible for many aquatic species, except for jellies. Fertilizer, manure, and sewage runoff into streams and the ocean decreases oxygen levels, leaving water hypoxic and unable to support many forms of aquatic life. When water conditions are poor, fish find it hard to breathe so they go elsewhere or die in large fish kills. But jellies have very low oxygen requirements and are able to survive, and even thrive, in these human created conditions.

Many seasonal jellies appear and reproduce when the ocean warms up. Global warming is making the ocean temperature warmer thus extending the growing, feeding, and breeding season of several jelly species. Some jellies also appear to be adapting and expanding their ranges due to this warming climate. Warmer water also speeds up the jellies' metabolism, causing them to consume more food, grow, and reproduce faster.

Image of moon jellies courtesy of lyng883.

Posted by Christy Zuccarini at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Fun facts
        

Weather maven and Baltimore Sun colleague Frank Roylance reports that the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va. picked up some unusual patterns in its radar earlier this week.

An odd bluish ring showed up on the radar screen around 6 am in the upper Chesapeake near Pooles Island, and then expanded across the area, Frank reports in his Maryland Weather blog.  At left is one of the radar images.

The weatherman thought it might be birds. They're likely purple martins, according to Jerome A. Jackson, professor of ecological science at Florida Gulf Coast University (and father of Baltimore Sun photo editor Jerry Jackson).

"They gather in enormous flocks prior to migrating to the Amazon basin for the winter ... and usually roost near large bodies of water where they then move out to feed on the hordes of insects that are produced in the area," Professor Jackson emailed Frank.

Are there any early risers out there who can confirm that weather radar is picking up a huge flock of birds getting up as dawn arrives?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

Imagine sitting in a small boat in quiet, open water on the Chesapeake Bay and peering down into the murky depths, when suddenly a massive SOMETHING breaks the surface right in front of you, not four feet away.

That's what Jack Cover reports happened to him this week as he was out on Eastern Bay, not far from Kent Island.  Cover, general curator for the National Aquarium, was looking for comb jellies to add to the aquarium's jellyfish exhibit. 

Cover reports in his blog that his gaze was diverted briefly by a cownose ray swimming on the surface in the distance, when without warning "a big object lauched out of the water like a polaris missile."  His initial shocked reaction was that a diver was surfacing, then he recognized this was a marine diver - a loggerhead turtle.

"It was the strangest experience,'' Cover told me.  He says he wasn't the only one startled, either.  The sea turtle, after gasping for air, took one look at him and dove back under water.  He watched it surface again four more times, each time farther away.

It's a rare treat to see a loggerhead this far up the bay.  Cover says they're seen more often in the lower bay, drawn in from the Atlantic in a quest for horseshoe crabs and blue crabs to feed upon.

But it may become rarer still to see the big sea turtles anywhere in the bay, or elsewhere along the Atlantic coast for that matter.  A group of biologists reviewing the status of loggerheads for the National Marine Fisheries Service has found that their populations off both the Atlantic and Pacific U.S. coasts are in danger of extinction.  The chief threat is from being unintentionally caught in fishing gear, primarily commercial longlines but also gillnets.  Their nesting beaches also are under pressure.   Dustin Cranor of Oceana, a Washington-based environmental group, reports that Florida officials say this year was one of the worst on record for sea turtle nesting there, in one of their prime areas for laying eggs.

Oceana and other conservation groups have petitioned the federal government to declare loggerhead populations on those two coasts endangered and to impose protective measures. For more, go here and here.

(2006 AP photo of a loggerhead at the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston.  It was recovering after being found in poor shape on St. Simon Island in Georgia.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

It was standing room only last night at the town hall meeting in Annapolis, and the crowd was hot. Feelings ran high.

This forum wasn't about health insurance reform, but about restoring the Chesapeake Bay.  People attending were concerned, worried, even upset.  Voices were raised at times, but no one got shouted down, not even the representative of the Obama administration who spoke.  Not even when he suggested that more regulations, not fewer, may be needed to bring the bay back to vitality.

"We have to look at game-changing solutions,'' said J. Charles Fox, pictured at right, special advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator for the bay. 

Fox drew applause.  The crowd of about 350 there weren't demanding that the federal government keep its hands off their bay.   They wanted more, not less, federal muscle to stem a rising tide of pollution from population growth and development.  Speakers complained of lack of local and state enforcement of laws and regulations to prevent sediment and stormwater pollution. and an unwillingness to crack down on illegal waterfront building and clearing.

"Where are you guys?" demanded Paul Spadaro of the Magothy River Association, which has waged a long-running and so-far fruitless legal battle over a home built on Little Dobbin Island in the river.  Though environmentalists contend the development is counter to the state's Critical Area law meant to protect the bay from harmful waterfront building, Anne Arundel County has allowed the residence, in some cases issuing after-the-fact approvals for work already done.

Others complained about waterfront housing development in Annapolis, which they say has stripped all the vegetation to the water's edge on a tributary of the Severn River.

"Every time it rains, streams of sediment pour into Saltworks Creek," complained Fred Kelly, the Severn Riverkeeper.  He complained that Anne Arundel County improperly approved the development with inadequate runoff pollution controls, and now won't come inspect the damage. The Severn, he noted, flows through the state's capital on its way to the bay.

"If we can't clean up the capital river of the state of Maryland, what the hell are we doing here?" he challenged.

Continue reading "Citizens are hot about more than health care" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

The first batch of oysters raised under Maryland's citizen oyster-growing program have "graduated" to a new home on the Eastern Shore.

Cages of oysters grown by 177 waterfront pier owners along the Tred Avon River in Talbot County were collected by staff from the Department of Natural Resources and the Oyster Recovery Partnership, a nonprofit group. As the DNR-supplied photo above indicates, several watermen and volunteers also helped.

The oysters from 858 cages were moved to a sanctuary near Oxford, where they're to be protected from harvest for eating so they can help clean up the water.

The program was begun last year by Gov. Martin O'Malley in a bid to enlist the public in restoring the Chesapeake Bay's signature bivalve, which helps to filter pollution from the water.  Oysters raised by residents since last October were produced by hatcheries run by the University of Maryland and by DNR.

Plans are to expand the citizens' oyster growing effort this year to other rivers and creeks around the bay. For more information, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As if it isn't hot enough already, environmentalists want to turn the heat up on federal officials to be bold in trying to jump-start the hit-or-miss restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. Green groups have scheduled a "town hall" style meeting Tuesday night in Annapolis to push for enforceable limits on pollution and tough consequences if cleanup goals aren't met.

Federal environmental agencies are under orders from President Obama to come up with ideas by Sept. 9 for accelerating government efforts to clean up the bay.   With less than a month to go before those recommendations are due, environmental leaders want to light a fire under the feds so they don't produce a bunch of warmed-over proposals of the type that have yielded only lackluster results over the past 26 years. 

Speakers include Chuck Fox, senior bay advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator; Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the Rev. Rick Edmund, Methodist pastor on Smith Island, and the heads of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Environment Maryland.  (The graphic here is UM's recent report card giving the bay's health a C-minus overall.)

But since it's billed as a town hall, I assume there'll be chances to question or even talk back to the speakers.  So here's your chance to hear and be heard about what it'll take to get the bay cleanup on track.

The meeting is from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, 730 Bestgate Road in Annapolis. It's open to the public, but if you're planning to go, please RSVP online here so organizers can ensure there'll be enough seating. 

And you won't have long to wait to see if your voice was heard -- a spokesman for the EPA's Chesapeake Bay office says all the federal bay cleanup ideas will be made public promptly, even though they'll officially be considered "draft" recommendations that are subject to revision until they're released as a proposed strategy in November. 

Some had worried that the feds would keep a lid on their initial proposals while they hammered them into some sort of cohesive plan.  The president's executive order issued back in May had directed the agencies to publish a "draft strategy" within 180 days for public review and comment, meaning in November.

But Travis Loop, spokesman for the EPA bay program, says they "absolutely" will be released and available for public review by Sept. 9. 

So mark your calendars, and meanwhile, get in the conversation.  What do you think the federal government needs to do to get the bay restoration on a faster track? 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

Only a fraction of Maryland's commercial crabbers responded to the state's offer to buy back their licenses. "Close to 500' crabbers bit on the state's offer to pay them to surrender their right to catch crabs for sale, according to Lynn Fegley, assistant fisheries director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

DNR had mailed buyback offers last month to 3,676 Marylanders holding "limited crab catcher" licenses, and they had until last Friday to respond. The licenses allow them to deploy up to 50 wire-mesh "pots" or an unlimited amount of baited line to catch crabs for sale.  They cost $60 a year, but are automatically renewable and transferable.

The state has issued about 6,000 commercial crabbing licenses in all, but officials say only about 1,800 are actively fished.  Fisheries managers say they need to retire a big chunk of those unused licenses to help ensure that the Chesapeake Bay's crab population continues to recover.  If those inactive crabbers return to the water, they could overwhelm the crabbing restrictions the state has imposed to guard against overfishing.

Fegley acknowledged that the response to the state's buyback offer was "clearly short" of what DNR had hoped, but pointed out that "it’s the first time we’ve done something like this."  

This is the state's second attempt to retire unused crab licenses. Last winter, the state had tried to "freeze" more than 1,000 limited crab catcher licenses that had not reported any catch in the previous five years, but withdrew that attempt amid a flurry of protests.

Continue reading "Crab license buyback gets a nibble" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A group of advocates and experts is warning that pesticide pollution from farm fields and households is contributing to the Chesapeake Bay's decline, and may well be linked to declines in frogs across the region and intersex fish seen in the Potomac River.

In a report released today, the group calls on federal, state and local government to accelerate research into what threats pesticide contamination may pose to the bay, and to step up efforts to reduce such toxic pollution.

"The thing that alarms us the most are the endocrine disruptors and the findings that have come out about intersex fish and frogs with reproductive problems,'' said Robert SanGeorge, director of the Pesticides and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Project. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that mimic the natural hormones in humans or animals and can disrupt their growth and reproduction. 

The project is a partnership between the Maryland Pesticides Network and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The group's warning and recommendations are the product of two years' study, in consultation with scientists, public health experts, government officials, watermen, environmentalists, farmers and pest management industries.

The report comes as federal and state governments attempt to jump-start the 26-year-old effort to restore the bay.  The multi-state bay campaign has focused mainly on reducing nutrient pollution from sewage, farm and lawn fertilizer, power plants and vehicles.  But the report argues that not enough attention is being paid to the potential harm being done by pesticides, primarily herbicides that wash off farm fields but also the many household products with a plethora of chemical ingredients that are washed down sewers.

"There's no smoking gun," SanGeorge says, acknowledging the lack of conclusive research showing toxic chemicals in the bay and its tributaries are harming fish and wildlife and bay grasses.  But he points to studies suggesting problems and "enormous data gaps" that need to be filled.

Continue reading "Report: Pesticides hurting Bay, need closer look" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The fish-stressing "dead zone" in the Chesapeake Bay is bigger than predicted this summer, scientists say.

Just about a month ago, University of Michigan scientists had forecast that the amount of oxygen-starved water in the Chesapeake should be much lower than average for the troubled estuary.  University of Maryland scientists had followed with similar predictions that the bay's ''dead zone'' -- where dissolved oxygen levels in the water are too low for fish to breathe comfortably, if at all -- was likely to be one of the smallest ever measured.

The scientists had based their predictions on below-normal flows in late spring of the Susquehanna River, which supplies half of the fresh water entering the bay.  Though it rained a lot in Maryland and Virginia in May and June, it had been relatively dry in the Susquehanna's drainage basin in New York and Pennsylvania.

But based on water sampling conducted every two weeks since May, University of Maryland scientists hve found that the volume of water with little or no oxygen in it has exceeded the forecast -- increasing from below-average in late May to above normal for June and remaining about average for this month, even as rains locally subsided.

Bill Dennison, vice president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said it appears that the wet spring in Maryland and Virginia washed more water-fouling nutrients into the bay from farms, lawns and streets, essentially making up for the decreased runoff from Pennsylvania and New York.

"We're not going to have a terrible year -- but not the great year we would have expected," Dennison said.  He said he and other researchers were "humbled" by the sampling results, since in prior years the amount of nutrients washed into the bay from the Susquehanna had dictated water quality conditions for the summer. Below is Dennison's graph showing the volume of "hypoxic" water, where oxygen levels are low enough to stress fish and shellfish.

Bill HypoxicVolume20092

Continue reading "Bay 'dead zone' bigger than predicted" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

A federal scientist calls "very troublesome" the state budget cut eliminating funds to monitor algal blooms in the Chesapeake Bay.

Robert E. Magnien, director of sponsored ocean research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, writes in an email that the elimination of state funding for phytoplankton or algae monitoring is a "double-whammy of sorts" because the states and the Environmental Protection Agency also have proposed cutting funding for such monitoring baywide.

As I reported in The Baltimore Sun, the $220,000 in algae monitoring funds were eliminated as part of a $281 million spending reduction across all state agencies.  State Natural Resources Secretary John R. Griffin said the effort was considered expendable because the multi-state bay program was in the process of revamping its monitoring efforts, and this was deemed a low priority. 

The EPA bay program office has proposed reducing monitoring of water quality in the main bay, while doing more sampling in the upper reaches of rivers and streams flowing into the bay. But bay scientists have opposed that, arguing it would reduce their ability to tell how the bay is doing.  The algae bloom sampling is one of the elements of annual bay health report cards issued by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Magnien, who once oversaw bay monitoring for Maryland DNR, also disagrees.  

"Harmful algal blooms have increased dramatically in Chesapeake Bay since the 1980s and constitute one of the largest threats to both public and ecosystem health," he writes.  "This doesn't seem like a good time to be unplugging a critically ill 'patient' from its monitoring system."

To learn more about harmful algal blooms, and to see where they've been spotted in the bay, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Ilya is paying social calls along the Susquehanna River, it seems. The National Aquarium confirmed another sighting on Wednesday in Perryville.

Town Commissioner Gary Tennis spotted the marine mammal from Florida, the aquarium reports, and took the pictures you see here.

The aquarium also provided a helpful aerial photo you can see below that shows where the sightings have occurred. I'm not sure if the "unconfirmed" sighting July 20 on the map is the same one aquarium folks had told me about -- of a novice sailor being startled when what she thought was a manatee surfaced next to her boat.  If so, I'd thought that happened Sunday, instead of Monday.

The aquarium says it and the Coast Guard plan to monitor the manatee's movements to ensure its safety.  They ask that boaters in the upper Chesapeake Bay be alert and slow down, especially when in the vicinity of recent sightings.

Any more sightings of manatees (or dolphins or other large marine animals) please call the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police stranding hotline, 1-800-628-9944.  Also, let us know here at B'more Green, and we'll share any info, pics or video.  But please, don't get too close, for the animals' sake.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 5:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Here's an ultrabrief clip from the National Aquarium providing a close-up look of the manatee sighted in a Havre de Grace marina on Saturday.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

After a couple close encounters with people over the weekend near Havre de Grace, the visiting Florida manatee named Ilya seems to have grown shy. No new sightings have been reported the past couple days. according to Jennifer Dittmar, coordinator of the marine animal rescue program at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

That's just as well. Manatees, slow-moving and favoring shallow inshore waters, are prone to being run over by powerboats. In fact, that's how biologists in Florida were able to identify this upper Chesapeake Bay visitor - Ilya had distinctive scarring on his tail from wounds received years earlier - presumably from an outboard propeller. Such collisions with boats rank among the marine mammals' chief threats to survival.

Continue reading "Manatee baywatch - look but steer clear" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay
        

While the federal government is busily trying to shovel economic stimulus money out of Washington, it seems there's a countermove that could put a crimp in efforts to reduce farm-related pollution of the Chesapeake Bay.

Environmentalists say a Senate subcommittee cut $250 million from a federal farm conservation program that offers farmers technical and financial help to do a better job of keeping poultry and other farm animal manure from washing into nearby streams.

The spending cut was among a batch sought by the Obama administration. If the cut to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) stands, it could reduce payments to Maryland farmers by $2 million, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. The neighboring bay states of Pennsylvania and Virginia, with even more farms, stand to lose more than $3 million each. 

The cuts are potentially significant because until recently, at least, federal and state officials had relied on such financial incentives rather than regulations to get farmers to reduce polluted runoff from their fields and feedlots.  The EQIP program pays up to 75 percent of the cost of some conservation improvements.

Continue reading "Farm pollution help for Bay on chopping block" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Phosphate-free dishwasher detergents may help restore the Chesapeake Bay, but there could be a price to pay -- dirtier dishes.

Maryland is one of 14 states that are banning sales of dishwasher detergents containing phosphates next July, and Congress is considering extending the ban nationwide.  State lawmakers are yanking phosphate dishwasher detergents from store shelves to protect the environment -- the phosphorus in standard detergents spurs growths of algae, which can suck the oxygen out of water that fish need to survive.  And the bay is choking on an overdose of nutrients, including phosphorus.

But some consumers have complained that the new phosphate-free detergents don't get their dishes as clean as the old standbys.  In Spokane, Washington, where phosphate products were banned last year, some housewives becames so upset with their dirty dishes that they began driving across the state line to Idaho to buy the outlawed dirt-fighting blends.

Now comes Consumer Reports to say the greener dishwasher detergents generally don't work as well as the phosphate soaps.  "In our tough tests, five of seven phosphate-free dishwasher detergents left lots of baked-on food," the magazine reports in its August issue.  The rankings are available only to subscribers, but you can read the magazine's general comments on dishwasher detergents, with mentions of some individual products, here.

Continue reading "Green, but not so clean" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

When looking for culprits to blame for the Chesapeake Bay's foul shape, it's tempting to point fingers at smelly sewage treatment plants, or at farmers whose flocks or herds of animals produce highly visible, not to mention odoriferous, mounds of manure.

But before pointing fingers, maybe we should look a little closer to home. Household pets, particularly the legions of dogs taken for walks every day, collectively are a significant source of water pollution, experts say, and even a threat to human health.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation issued a report today highlighting the ways in which pollution and bacteria put humans at risk when they swim in the bay or its tributaries, when they eat locally caught fish or when they drink water from wells.  I wrote a story about it for The Baltimore Sun.

The report cites the usual suspects for much of the pollution that is linked to disease-causing bacteria, harmful algal blooms and toxic substances in the water.  It points to farm animal waste, for instance, as a likely source of nitrates getting into ground water and people's wells on the Eastern Shore and in southeastern Pennsylvania.

But it's another story in urban and suburban areas.  According to a state study, pet waste is the leading source of bacteria found in a stretch of the Severn River where a few years earlier a Crownsville man acquired a life-threatening bacterial infection after swimming with a mild scrape on his leg. 

The 2008 state study estimated that 69 percent of the bacteria found in the water came from pets, with wildlife contributing about 24 percent, livestock and humans just three percent each.  And the report noted that about 41 percent of the dog owners in the area admitted they do not pick up after their pets most of the time.

So, fellow dog owners, ask yourselves, how diligently do you clean up after your four-footed companions?  Do you scoop the poop?  Put it in the trash, bury it or even flush it down your own toilet?  That's what expert say you ought to be dong with it. 

Continue reading "Save the bay, clean up after Fido!" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Conservation advocates and community leaders have mixed feelings about a potential deal for Baltimore County and the state to buy a 190-acre farm on Back River.

As I reported in The Baltimore Sun today, county and state officials say they're considering teaming up to preserve it from development, even though its ecological value was called "mediocre" by the land acquisition chief for the Department of Natural Resources. The deal is still in negotiation, and no one would say what the price might be.  Funds for buying open-space are tight now because of the slumping real estate market.

Turns out, if the deal goes through, this would be the third, rather than the second, piece of land in the Edgemere area that Baltimore County has bought from developer Mark C. Sapperstein. Late last year, according to a report in The Dundalk Eagle, the county paid $839,000 for 21 wooded acres on North Point Road - the second half of what's known as the Karll Trust property.  The county bought the other half the year before, paying $900,000, above the appraised value.

The Eagle story by Randy Leonard reports that the tract, bought by the county for recreational use, has a history of contamination.  Tests of various spots found elevated levels of arsenic in the soil, plus chromium, mercury, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.  The county's recreation and parks chief was quoted in the article saying he was not concerned by the levels of contaminants found.

The Bauer's Farm property, which Sapperstein is considering selling now, also had a patch of contaminated soil.  But Sapperstein had it cleaned up - and the Maryland Department of the Environment has given the tract a clean bill of health.

(Baltimore Sun photo by Amy Davis)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Chesapeake Bay's fish, crabs and oysters could be breathing easier this summer - the oxygen-starved "dead zone" in the troubled estuary should be one of the smallest ever measured, predicts a University of Michigan scientist.

Aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues issued forecasts this week for the nation's two most infamous "dead zones," those stretches of the Chesapeake and Gulf of Mexico where fish and shellfish can't get enough oxygen to breathe because of nutrient pollution fouling the water.

Scavia had good news (of sorts) for the bay, but gloomy tidings for the Gulf.

First, the good news:

The dead zone in the Chesapeake is likely to be the smallest since 2001 and one of the smallest on record, Scavia predicted. He based his forecast on the dry spell that lasted from January through much of April, dumping relatively little rain and snow on the bay's vast watershed, which stretches from Virginia north to Cooperstown in New York and west into West Virginia.

It's only good news of a sort, because the expected improvement in water quality stems from the weather, not from anything that's been done to reduce the massive overdose of nutrients we've been feeding the bay from sewage, lawn and farm fertilizer and air pollution.

"The predicted 2009 dead-zone decline does not result from cutbacks in the use of nitrogen, which remains one of the key drivers of hypoxia (low oxygen levels) in the bay," Scavia said in a statement released with his predictions.

University of Maryland scientists make summer forecasts of their own for the bay, but a spokesman said this week that they aren't ready yet.  The accompanying map, produced by UM, charts last year's dead zone - blue is where oxygen was good, orange, red and brown where it was poor.

Continue reading "Smaller Bay 'dead zone' forecast this summer" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News