With turf grass arguably Maryland's largest crop these days, there are growing calls for city and suburban dwellers to do their part to help restore the Chesapeake Bay by cutting back on fertilizing their lawns.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md, joined environmental activists and the head of Baltimore's Waterfront Partnership at the harbor's edge in Fells Point today to push for passage of state and federal government action to reduce pollution from urban and suburban fertilizer.

"All of us can do a better job in how we manage our particular lawns," Cardin said during the press conference, which was staged next to a rectangular patch of grass jutting out into the harbor.  But Cardin added that government has a role to play in helping citizens and communities do what they need to do.

Noting that Maryland has 1.3 million acres of turf grass, Megan Cronin of Environment Maryland urged the state Senate to approve legislation that would regulate the nutrient content of lawn fertilizer and how it is to be applied.  The group released a report on lawn fertilizer, which you can read here.

More than a fifth of Maryland's land in the bay watershed is covered in grass, and in metro areas it's even more.  About a third of Anne Arundel County is turf, according to Chris Trumbauer, a county councilman and the West/Rhode Riverkeeper.

In Baltimore, the business-led Waterfront Partnership is pledging to do its part for cleaning up the Inner Harbor by changing how it tends the patches of green stretching from Fells Point around to Federal Hill. The group plans to limit the amount of nitrogen put down to green up those urban lawns, for instance, and cut back on fertilizing at all in sensitive areas closest to the water, said Laurie Schwartz, the group's executive director.

While supporting state and local action, Cardin also said he hoped his fellow senators would join him in opposing cuts in federal funding for the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce its "pollution diet' for the bay. 

The House cuts in federal spending this year "would be devastating to the Chesapeake Bay," Cardin said of the rider adopted at the behest of a Virginia congressman to keep EPA from going forward with its diet, or total maximum daily load, for nutrients polluting the bay.

The Maryland senator pointed out that the bay reauthorization bill he sponsored, which failed to pass last year, would have provided extra federal funds to help communities deal with runoff of fertilizer and other pollutants.  Cardin said with the GOP in control of the House and seemingly intent on blocking EPA action on the bay and a number of other environmental regulations, "It's going to be tough to pass anything."

Continue reading "Going less green on lawns to help the Bay" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Cold snap notwithstanding, it really is spring.  And every spring, regular as the flowers, there's a rash of stream cleanups to clear neighborhood waterways of trash and debris. 

Volunteers are being sought for Project Clean Stream this Saturday (April 2) from 9 a.m. to noon to help give facelifts to more than 165 streams that ultimately feed into the Chesapeake Bay. 

Last year, more than 3,600 volunteers ermoved more than 118,000 pounds of trash and debris.  This year, organizers are aiming to recruit 4,000 folks to haul out 150,000 pounds of rubbish.  And they're expanding the effort to include tree plantings and removal of invasive plants.

One stream cleanup that's going to need more than three hours is Bread and Cheese Creek (seen above) in eastern Baltimore County, where previous sweeps have pulled 32.5 tons of junk from its banks. Volunteers are needed there from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Picking up trash won't cure a stream's ills if it's been degraded by development and pollution.  But it will produce some visible visual improvement - and if enough people join in, maybe it'll help build public awareness of the need to address those more systemic problems throughout the watershed. 

The annual Project Clean Stream is organized by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, with sponsorship from Perdue Inc. and help from the Chesapeake Bay Trust. 

The Alliance's map that's supposed to show all the stream cleanups in the works doesn't appear to be working, but look at the group's Facebook page for a cleanup near you, or contact project organizer Dan Ellis directly at 443-949-0575 or dellis@allianceforthebay.org

(Volunteers pull a tire from Bread and Cheese Creek in Dundalk.  2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The air at some large-scale livestock and poultry farms is more polluted than in America's biggest cities and poses health risks to agricultural workers, an environmental group says.  A Johns Hopkins researcher suggests the risks are not limited to the farms, either, but could include rural communities nearby.

Drawing on air quality measurements by Purdue University at 15 farms in eight states, the Environmental Integrity Project contends in a new report that such "concentrated animal feeding operations," or CAFOs, at least occasionally emit harmful levels of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and fine particle pollution. On some days, particle pollution at five poultry operations studied exceeded the federal government's 24-hour safe exposure limit, the Washington-based environmental group said.

None of the farms tested was in Maryland, and all but one of the poultry operations studied were producing eggs rather than broilers, as nearly all chicken houses do on the Delmarva Peninsula.  But at the one broiler producer checked in California, high levels of ammonia and particle pollution were measured, according to Keeve Nachman at Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future, who reviewed the data.  Nor does it appear from the air test results that there's much difference in pollution levels between the two types of poultry farm, he added.

"Based on what EIP found and what the epidemiologic evidence is suggesting, there is reason to be concerned about exposure in communities surrounding animal production sites," Nachman said in an email. "There's a pressing need for community air monitoring to help characterize risks faced by residents and chldren who attend schools near AFOs (animal feeding operations)."

The environmental group says the air pollution detected from Purdue's limited sampling of farms is serious enough that the Environmental Protection Agency should revoke an agreement made under the Bush administration to exempt large-scale animal farms from reporting their emissions. To see the report, go here.

(Chicken house near Pocomoke City.  2007 Baltimore Sun photo by Doug Kapustin)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Gov. Martin O'Malley's aides insist he hasn't given up on getting lawmakers to do something about the pollution and sprawl caused by a proliferation of homes built on septic systems. Now, O'Malley intends to highlight the issue by wading into an Eastern Shore lake rendered unswimmable by drainage from a town full of failing septics.

As my colleague Julie Bykowicz reports in the Maryland Politics blog, the governor plans to don waders Wednesday and walk into Lake Bonnie, pictured above, a private lake near Goldsboro in rural Caroline County. The aim, according to a media advisory from his office, is to show that "failure to manage the long-term and far-reaching consequences of septic systems can impact the public health and economic health of Maryland's rural communities."

It's a compelling image, wading in pollution - though I'm not sure how well Lake Bonnie illustrates the governor's campaign against sprawling housing developments on septic systems.  In this case, the problem comes from a town, albeit one where residents should never have been allowed to put in septic systems because of the high water table.  I wrote about it in The Sun last year.

The 28-acre manmade lake was the centerpiece of a private campground just south of Goldsboro.  In 1996, local health officials declared the lake unfit for swimming because of high bacteria levels linked to the many failing septic systems in the town. 

Though local officials have known of Goldsboro's septic problems since the 1970s, neither they nor the state have been able or willing to come up with the millions of dollars needed to hook the residents up to a wastewater treatment plant.  A plan for piping the waste to nearby Greensboro now looks like it may resolve the problem.  Meanwhile, though, the family that ran the campground has struggled for a decade without their prime attraction and finally shuttered the business five years ago. 

O'Malley's also apparently attempting to overcome farmers' objections to his proposed curb on rural development relying on septic.  According to an Associated Press report, his staff has drawn up amendments that would loosen restrictions in the bill on subdividing rural land, giving farmers the option to carve up their land four times, rather than just once under the original legislation.  The extra lots could only go to family members, not developers.  And another provision would let farmers divide their land for related businesses, such as a winery or dairy operation.

It's not clear if the governor really thinks all this will somehow revive his septic bill's dimming prospects.  Del. Maggie McIntosh, the Baltimore Democrat who's head of the House Environmental Matters Committee, has said she's in favor of curbing sprawling development on septics but worries it could have a disproportionate impact on rural parts of the state.  She's indicated she wants to defer the issue for more study, but her committee's still planning a hearing on the HB1107, the septic curb legislation, on Friday, and the governor's spokesman has said he intends to be there to press his case. 

(Lake Bonnie, 2010. Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Montgomery County Executive Isiah "Ike" Leggett announced today he'll seek legislation to levy a nickel fee on every paper or plastic carryout bag dispensed by county retailers in a bid to reduce litter in the Washington suburb and encourage consumers to shop with their own reusable bags.

If approved by the County Council, Montgomery would follow the lead of the District of Columbia and not Baltimore in tacking a small fee on throwaway bags to discourage their use. Here in Charm City, after protests from grocers and bag manufacturers the City Council backed away from bills to ban or tax plastic bags and opted instead to encourage recycling them.  

Baltimore may still see the nickel bag fee, though, and Montgomery wouldn't need to act if lawmakers in Annapolis adopt legislation that would apply a nickel-a-bag fee statewide. Tomorrow, (March 8), the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to review SB602, the "Clean the Streams and Beautify the Bay Act of 2011." 

Like the District law, the Senate bill and its House compansion, HB1034, would require stores to charge a nickel for every disposable carryout bag provided to customers.  Stores could keep a penny of every nickel to cover their costs, and could keep a second cent if they also offer their customers credit for bringing their own reusable bags for carrying away merchandise.

Environmentalists argue a throwaway bag fee is needed to reduce the litter that's choking urban waters like Baltimore's harbor and the Anacostia River in the Washington area.  The Environmental Protection Agency has declared both watersheds impaired by trash, and city and county governments are on the hook to figure out how to stop the torrents of trash washed into and down streams after every rain. 

The Anacostia Watershed Society says its trash surveys have found plastic bags the third most frequent litter item fished from the river and the most common type of detritus in the streams that feed into the river.

DC started charging 5 cents on every disposable shopping bag given customers there in January 2010. The fee raised about $2 million in revenue in its first year, earmarked for helping clean up the Anacoastia River. That's less than had been projected, but sponsors say what they really wanted was behavior change, and in that regard, estimates are that the number of bags consumed has dropped by 50 to 80 percent.

The state legislation could raise a lot more money.  Legislative analysts cite Census estimates that there were 19,100 retail establishments in Maryland three years ago, and suggests that if each dispensed 10,000 bags annually, they'd raise $7.6 million in total revenue - with $1.9 million of it kept by the stores.  The bulk of the fees collected by the state would go to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, a nonprofit organization that doles out grants to promote public awareness and participation in the bay cleanup effort.

Retailers and bag manufacaturers successfully fought off a similar measure last year, and can be expected to oppose it again this year. Retailers argue that the fee hurts their business by raising prices at a time when many Marylanders are still struggling economically. Plastic bag manufacturers have argued that voluntary recycling programs are the way to go.

But environmentalists point out that the disposable carryout bags handed out by stores aren't free.  Retailers usually pay 2 to 5 cents per bag, they note, and based on bag use estimates developed elsewhere, the Anacostia Watershed Society figures the average Marylander gets 750 carryout bags a year, for which they're likely paying $15 to $37.50 a year.  Reusable bags, by comparison, usually cost $1 to $3 each, and last up to two years.

If the statewide legislation fails again, that leaves the "plastic or paper" - or neither - issue to be hashed out locality by locality.  Besides the bill introduced in Montgomery, there's legislation pending in Annapolis (HB661/SB721) that would enable Prince George's County - which like Montgomery shares responsibility for the Anacostia watershed - to impose a fee on disposable plastic bags in its borders.

(Baltimore Sun photos. Top: Reusable bag display in DC Safeway, 2010, by Barbara Haddock Taylor; Above: yellow plastic bag and fast-food cup litter Baltimore's Gwynns Falls, 2008, by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

There's no hydraulic fracturing for Marcellus shale natural gas in Maryland yet, but apparently the state already has been on the receiving end of some of the wastes from the controversial drilling technique.

Wastewater from "hydrofracking" operations in Pennsylvania got shipped to Baltimore last year and passed through the city's Back River wastewater treatment plant, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Tom Pelton, who reported it in the group's Bay Daily blog.

Clean Harbors, a company that handles industrial wastes, disposed of 50,000 gallons a day at Back River "for a few months" early last year, Pelton says he was informed by the Maryland Department of the Environment.  The company treated the wastewater beforehand to remove metals, MDE told Pelton.   It also tested it and found "no detectable levels" of radiation in the liquid, which is a concern that's been raised about fracking wastes lately.

Radioactive contaminants have been reported in the "flowback" water pumped out of wells drilled in Pennsylvania using hydraulic fracturing, the New York Times reported earlier this week.  Much of the fracking wastewater is disposed of at municipal sewage treatment plants there, the Times said, but those facilities lack the capacity to remove radioactive contaminants, so they're likely getting into  rivers like the Susquehanna, a backup drinking water supply for the Baltimore area. Likely is the best that can be said because state and federal governments apparently don't uniformly require testing for radioactive contaminants in wastewater.

Back River, which receives the treated wastewater from the city's sewage plant, is not a drinking water source for anyone because it's brackish. But one of the comments on Bay Daily raises another concern - that the drilling fluids often contain certain chemical compounds that can be lethal to Chesapeake Bay oysters at levels even below what can be readily detected. 

(Settling tanks at Back River wastewater treatment plant. 2010 Photo by Colby Ware, special to The Sun)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

For those who like a bracing swim - or who were too chicken to take the Polar Bear Plunge right after New Year's - here's another, slightly less frigid, chance to wade in for a good cause.  Supporters of the Marshy Point Nature Center in Baltimore County are holding their 5th annual "Popsicle Plunge" on Saturday (March 5).

The waterfront park on Dundee and Saltpeter creeks encompasses nearly 500 acres of wetlands and woodlands, and it's a great place for hiking and bird-watching. The center at 7130 Marshy Point Road holds festivals, summer camps, weekend canoe trips, discover hikes and demonstrations, and every 5th grader in Baltimore County schools visits Marshy Point as part of the EcoTrekkers environmental education program.

Because the shoreline at Marshy Point is mostly marsh and protected wetlands, the plunge will actually be held on the beach in the Hammerman area of Gunpowder Falls State Park - across Dundee Creek. It costs $20 to register for the plunge, but you get a free T-shirt with just $40 in pledges, and there will be other prizes for costumes and the most pledges raised, as well as food, games, activities and exhibits.

The whole shebang kicks off at noon, with the plunge at 2 p.m. All proceeds benefit the Marshy Point Nature Center Council. For more information, contact Marshy Point Nature Center at 410-887-2817 or visit http://www.marshypoint.org for forms  And for directions to the plunge site at Gunpowder, go here.

(Photo courtesy Marshy Point Nature Center Council)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

While a lot of attention has been focused lately on the sorry state of Baltimore's harbor, conditions there won't improve much until the watershed itself gets better.

Toward that end, some architects from the University of Virginia are proposing a radical remedy - "daylighting," or uncovering, part of the lower Jones Falls, which which flows underground two miles under city streets before emptying out in the harbor.

The Jones Falls was actually the birthplace of Baltimore, where the first settler, one David Jones, built his house along its banks in the 1600s.  The river was a source of drinking water for the fledgling city, and ships reportedly could sail as far inland as Calvert and Lexington. 

But growth, flooding and pollution inspired efforts to drain, tame and ultimately bury the troublesome water way around 1915.  Finally, in the early 1960s, the subverting of the Jones Falls was completed with the construction of the expressway of the same name along and atop its course.  It's just the largest of Baltimore's streams to get buried - experts estimate that two-thirds of the city's waterways are underground now, serving as conduits for storm water washing off city streets and parking lots.

That lower stretch of the Jone Falls is like the mythical River Styx - musty, foul and eternally in darkness. I paddled with some others upstream from the harbor many years ago, and the only living thing we encountered was a somewhat startled looking pigeon roosting in the gloom.

"We only peeked into the openings of the culvert and did not dare to go much further," writes Jorg Sieweke, one of the U.Va. architecture professors.  But he and his colleagues would like dare rethinking the Jones Falls, and turning back the clock.

Continue reading "A radical idea for helping Baltimore's harbor - uncover the Jones Falls" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

The New York Times reports that radioactive contaminants in shale gas drilling wastewater are getting into the Susquehanna River and other Pennsylvania waterways because sewage treatment plants there are incapable of removing the contaminants.

The Times report is the latest to highlight risks to public health and the environment from the boom in drilling going on in Pennsylvania and West Virginia for large reserves of natural gas locked deep underground in Marcellus shale formations. High levels of radioactivity have been detected in the wastewater from rigs tapping gas using a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking - or just plain fracking.

The Susquehanna is just one of three rivers mentioned in the Times report where radioactive wastewater may be going.  But it's the main tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, and a backup source of drinking water for the Baltimore region.

The Times report says drillers trucked at least half their wastewater to public sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009, while some also was shipped out of state to New York and West Virginia. The sewage plants are incapable of removing enough of the radioactive contaminants to meet drinking water standards, the Times reports.

That's a potential problem because some sewage plant discharges are upriver from other communities' drinking-water intakes. Yet neither the state nor the Environmental Protection Agency is requiring testing for radioactivity at most of the the plants taking the drilling wastewater, the paper reports. 

Maryland has yet to issue any permits for fracking for gas in the Marcellus shale deposits in Garrett and Allegany counties. Legislation is pending that would tighten state regulations for such drilling, or would delay any permits for up to two years so more study could be done of the risks and how to prevent harm to ground water or surface waters.

(Drilling rig in Pennsylvnia, 2005 Baltimore Sun photo by Doug Kapustin)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Overshadowed by the debate over Gov. Martin O'Malley's bid to curtail rural and suburban development on septic systems, jockeying has been taking place in Annapolis around a less sweeping but nonetheless significant proposal to require all new homes built on septic in Maryland to use advanced pollution removal technology.  Not everything is as it seems, though, with the proffer of support from the state's builders. 

HB 177 and its companion bill, SB160, would extend virtually statewide the law enacted two years ago that bars installation of conventional septic systems on land near the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic coastal bays.  Similar statewide legislation was introduced in 2009, but its scope was whittled down to apply just to the 1,000 strip of waterfront known as the "Critical Area" around the bays and their tidal tributaries.

Environmentalists are backing this new statewide legislation, possibly as a fallback should the measure backed by O'Malley, HB1107 and SB846, not pass.  That bill would bar any development of five homes or more on septic systems and require less polluting advanced septics whenever individual homes or smaller projects are built beyond the reach of sewer lines.

Advocates point out that conventional septic systems leak nitrogen into ground water and streams, which contributes to the fouling of water quality in the bays.  Officials estimate there are 420,000 homes on septic systems in Maryland already, contributing 8 percent of the nitrogen responsible for algae blooms and the formation of a sprawling "dead zone" every summer in the Chesapeake.  A household on a conventional septic system releases up to 10 times as much nitrogen into the water as one where waste is piped to a state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant, state officials say.

Advanced septic systems can cut the nitrogen leakage in half, but they cost around $10,000 to $13,000 to install, thousands more than a conventional system.  For that reason, Realtors have come out against expanding the requirement for them, arguing that the added cost would deter some rural and suburban home sales in a still-weakened real estate market.

The Maryland State Builders Association, though, raised some eyebrows last week by offering to support the advanced septic requirement if it was amended to their liking.  The builders group opposes outright the more sweeping measure backed by Gov. O'Malley, so its backing of another major septic mandate would be noteworthy.  On closer inspection, however, one of the amendments the group proposes to the advanced septic requirement would carve out a massive loophole, severely limiting the reach of the new pollution control measure.

Continue reading "Builders offer to support weakened septic requirement" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Maryland State Builders Association is taking a stand against the bill being pushed by the O'Malley administration that would limit future development in the state on septic systems.  Not exactly man bites dog, but they're joining rural lawmakers and Realtors against any significant change in where or how growth occurs. 

 They're calling the administration-backed bill, titled "The Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2011,"  the "Anti-Growth and State Control Over Local Land Use Act”.   They argue that the bill, which has enthusiastic backing from environmental groups, would lead to "significantly heightened unemployment and massive damage to local tax bases."

"This bill is being justified as a measure to address Water Quality issues related to septic systems, when in fact, the focus of the bill is restriction of land use in rural areas of Maryland as an indirect means to force Smart Growth development,'' writes D. Stephen Seawright, the president of the builders group.  "By restricting the types and number of septic systems that can be used in rural areas, this measure provides the Maryland Department of Environment and Maryland Department of Planning with veto power over local land use decisions."

They question the state's projections that 145,000 more homes could be built on septic systems over the next 20 years, and contend that the impact of septic systems on bay water quality is overblown. 

"Over each of the past two years roughly 9,000 permits per year have been issued statewide for construction of single family homes," Seawright says, "with the State estimating that 20% of those permits are issued for homes in 'unplanned sewer service areas.' This means the 20 year projection is approximately 36,000 homes, not 145,000."

Of course, home construction has declined precipitously since the recession began.  The state's projection is based on the rate of home building before the market crashed.  But the builders' president argues that even if the pace of building recovers to double what it is now, that would produce only half the number of homes on septics that the state projects. 

The builders group also argues that not all of the nitrogen in household waste gets out of septic drain fields and into the bay.  State officials estimate that anywhere from 30 to 80 percent does make it to surface waters, depending on soil type, the depth of the water table and the distance to water.   State officials also say that a household using a conventional septic system releases up to 10 times as much nitrogen as one hooked up to state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant.

Continue reading "Builders dispute case for limiting septic systems" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

If it's bad for the Chesapeake Bay to spread poultry manure and other feritilizer on farm fields in winter, why is it okay to do the same with sewage sludge?

That's the question being posed by Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, the House minority leader, with a bill he's introduced in Annapolis.  His bill, HB24, would require the Maryland Department of Agriculture to limit the application of sewage sludge in winter in the same way the spreading of animal manure is curtailed in cold-weather months.

The bill, which O'Donnell has put in before, has the backing of agricultural interests, who contend it's unfair to make farmers store their animals' manure in winter while allowing sewage sludge to be spread without the same restrictions.

But it's run into the usual buzzsaw of opposition from the county and municipal agencies that operate wastewater treatment plants.  They argue that they have no place to store the accumulating sludge during winter, and that building storage faciilities or else putting the stuff in landfills for 3 1/2 months would jack up utility customers' water and sewer bills.

"The opposition seems to be concerned with costs of the landfill alternative, and therefore would rather apply it to potentially frozen ground," O'Donnell wrote in an email. "This is akin to potentially dumping this stuff directly into the bay."

O'Donnell, who represents Calvert and St. Mary's County, is not known as a green legislator.  He has just an 18 percent lifetime score (out of 100) with the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, though his votes last year earned him a 38 percent rating.

On this issue, though, he's managed to get at least one environmental group - the Chesapeake Bay Foundation - on his side.  

"This practice does not protect water quality," the Annapolis-based group said in its printed testimony submitted during the hearing on O'Donnell's bill earlier this month.  While cities, towns and counties might have to invest in building sludge storage facilities, CBF says it's necessary to keep excess nutrients from treated sewage out of ground water, streams and the bay.

Continue reading "Rural lawmaker tilts at metro areas' sewage sludge" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Is Gov. Martin O'Malley waging "war on rural Maryland" by calling for curbs on building new homes on  septic systems?  That's what a pair of Eastern Shore legislators contend.  Sen. E.J. Pipkin, R-Upper Shore, and Del. Michael Smigiel, R-Cecil, have accused him of trying a "power grab" to wrest control over land use from local offiicals.  They've even set up a website to that effect.

Rural folks being picked on by city dwellers and suburbanites: That's a familiar rallying cry in the seemingly endless struggle in this state over cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, and over how - or even whether - to curb sprawl.

But in this case, where are the most septic tanks in Maryland?  The Baltimore metropolitan area, it seems. According to data supplied by the Maryland Department of Planning, the four counties with the highest number of homes on septic are: Anne Arundel, with 43,733; followed by Baltimore County, with 37,772; Carroll, with 31,061 and Harford, with 28,070.

In a way, that's not terribly surprising, since the metro areas are where the most people are, and there are portions of every county in the state not served by public water or sewer.

Of course, if you look at which counties have the highest percentage of homes on septic, it is mostly - but not exclusively - rural. Calvert County is tops, with a whopping 84 percent, according to state planning data, followed by St. Mary's County, with 70 percent, and then the Eastern Shore counties of Caroline and Wicomico (both 68 percent), Cecil (61 percent) and Carroll (59 percent).   But in some rural counties, like Allegany, Washington, Kent, Talbot and Worcester, homes with septic are in the minority.  Not such a clear divide.

To see all the data and map for yourself, go here.  Click on the + or - buttons at the bottom of the frame to zoom in so you can read the numbers and county names.

(One oddball footnote:  The state's map shows no septic tanks in Baltimore city, but in a followup email, planners report that there are about 5,000 there serving homes and nonresidential properties.  City public works officials say that only heavily industrial Hawkins Point isn't served by public sewer, and they couldn't confirm the state's figure or where those septic tanks might be.)

Of course, the bills in Annapolis are about limiting or changing the use of septics in future growth.  So where are the most homes on septic likely to be built in years to come?   Based on current zoning and planned sewer service, Carroll and Frederick are expected to add the most - 10,000 or more homes on septics each - by 2035, state planners project.   Next, they foresee 5,000 to 10,000 septic-served homes each going up in Washington, Harford, Cecil, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, Prince George's, Charles and St. Mary's.

Somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 new homes on septic are forecast for each of these counties - Garrett, Howard, Baltimore, Calvert, Queen Anne's, Caroline, Wicomico and Worcester.  Lastly, Allegany, Kent, Talbot, Dorchester and Somerset counties - and almost entirely sewered Baltimore city - are expected to add the fewest septic systems, somewhere between none and 1,500 each over the next 25 years.

So when it comes to talking about changing or limiting development on septic systems, it's not so clear that rural counties would be most affected.  Maybe the Shore legislators want to amend the title of their website to: The War on Suburban and some of Rural Maryland?

(Map: Maryland Department of Planning.Baltimore Sun photo: Septic tank going in at Baltimore County home site, by Kim Hairston.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

The House has voted to block federal funding for the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay "pollution diet," casting a cloud over the Obama administration's two-year-old effort to accelerate the long-delayed cleanup of the nation's largest estuary.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who sought the spending ban, hailed the vote late Friday night as "an important step in stopping the EPA’s regulatory power grab." He had introduced an amendment earlier this week barring EPA spending on the bay "total maximum daily load" as the Republican-led House prepared to order more than $60 billion in spending cuts across a wide array of health, environmental and social programs over the next seven months.

"These overzealous regulations will affect everyone who lives, works, and farms in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed," Goodlatte said in a statement reported by the Roanoke Times, "and the cost of complying with these requirements will be devastating during our current economic downturn, result in many billions of dollars in economic losses to states, cities and towns, farms and other businesses large and small.....I believe that each individual state, and the localities in each state, know better how to manage a state’s water quality goals than the bureaucrats at the EPA."

The 230-195 vote on Goodlatte's amendment split largely along party lines, with only eight Democrats joining Republicans in seeking to block the EPA's bay diet. Fifteen GOP members voted against the spending.

Maryland's two Republican congressmen, Andy Harris and Roscoe Bartlett, voted with the majority to block funding for the federal polution-reduction plan, which was finalized six weeks ago after more than two years of back-and-forth negotiations with Maryland and the other five states that drain into the bay.  The state's Democratic members opposed the blockage.

Continue reading "Bay 'diet' funding cut by House" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Friends of Blackwater, the volunteer group supporting Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore, are atwitter over the imminent hatching of as many as three baby bald eagles there. 

You can join their vigil, via the group's Eagle Cam, which gives onlookers a bird's eye view of the nest.  The group has been watching the nest for a bit, and earlier recorded three eggs in it. They're expecting the first hatch any time now, though no obvious cracking has been spotted yet.  It'll take the chicks up to 24 hours to work their way out of the shell, so you can check in and out.  The cam gives new snapshots every 15 seconds.

The Friends have cameras tracking eagles and ospreys at the sprawling refuge, and they've got a neat blog explaining what's been happening and what to expect.  There's also video, which you can catch on YouTube.   Watch the male eagle bringing food to the female as she sits on the eggs, and other action around the refuge.

For those who can't get enough of our national bird, the refuge is having an Eagle Festival March 12.  Check it out here.

(Photos courtesy Friends of Blackwater)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Obama administration and the House Republican leadership appear set to tussle over federal funding for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort - along with almost every other environmental program.

While proposing to trim overall funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, the president's budget for fiscal 2012 requests $67.4 million for EPA's Chesapeake Bay program - $4.4 million more than he proposed for this year and $17 million above what the agency actually received in fiscal 2010. 

According to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, his spending plan also included an increase in federal funding for upgrading Washington's Blue Plains sewage treatment plant, the bay's largest, from $20 million last year to $25 million next year.  Though not specifically for the bay, overall federal conservation program funding - a portion of which would go to this region - would increase to $3.6 billion, up from $2.9 billion in 2010.

The Republican-dominated House, though, has other ideas, bidding to cut this year's bay funding along with the rest of EPA's budget.   (With Congress unable to agree on a budget for the current year, the federal government has been operating under a continuing funding resolution.)

Under cuts proposed by the House Appropriations Committee, EPA's Bay program would dip 20 percent to $40 million, while Blue Plains funding would be halved.   Other environmental and conservation programs, in which this region would share, also would get pared back.  Most notably, EPA's clean-water revolving fund, which helps states and communities finance upgrades to sewage treatment plants, would be cut by two-thirds, from $2.1 billion last year to $690 million.   The president proposed about a 30 percent reduction, to $1.55 billion.

Not surprisingly, the Annapolis-based bay foundation favors the Obama administration's plan to increase spending on the Chesapeake restoration effort over the "devastating cuts" the House would make not just in bay cleanup funding but in all clean-water programs. 

(News cameras record workers on Capitol Hill stacking Obama administration's 2012 budget.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The explosive, albeit planned development of Clarksburg in the Washington suburbs is testing whether Smart Growth and storm-water pollution laws really can prevent degradation of nearby streams. So far the results are not encouraging.

Clarksburg is the fastest growing place in Maryland, according to Census data released this week, with a population that skyrocketed 650 percent over the past decade to nearly 14,000. The growth there was planned - Montgomery County approved it as far back as 1994.  And though there are McMansions on large lots in outlying neighborhoods there, the detached and town homes clustered in Clarksburg's core certainly would qualify as Smart Growth.

So far, something like 2,700 homes and a half million square feet of offices and stores have been built or permitted, mostly on the eastern side of Interstate 270, with 8,900 homes and 3.7 million square feet of shopping and work space planned in the first three phases of this huge community.

But the project has not gone exactly as planned. As reported today in The Baltimore Sun, residents are still waiting for the shopping and other walk-to amenities that were promised as part of the massive development. Many neighborhood streets and roads are not complete.

Something else that was promised when the county decided to plant a community there has not gone as planned, either. Ten-Mile Creek, one of Montgomery County's last trout streams, was supposed to be shielded from harm, even though it flows past Clarksburg's town center.

"It's the most sensitive, most high-quality stream we have in Montgomery County," says Diane Cameron, conservation programs director for the Audubon Naturalist Society, based in Chevy Chase.  It also drains into Little Seneca Lake, a backup drinking-water supply for the county.

The county took what, at the time, seemed like extra precautions to protect this fragile stream.  It limited the amount of pavement and rooftops to 15 percent in the areas where most of the offices, stores and other businesses were planned.  It limited housing density in nearly two-thirds of the stream's watershed, required wider "conservation areas" along stream valleys east of the highway and designated the creek watershed a "special protection area."

But the "boomtown" effect of Clarksburg's rapid growth has apparently taken its toll, before the community is even half built out.  Overall, Ten-Mile Creek's health ranged from good to excellent, based on stream monitoring done by the county since 1994.  But since development began in the "special protection area," conditions in a portion of the headwaters east of I-270 have declined to just "fair," according to a 2009 county report. 

Continue reading "In MD's "boomtown," Smart Growth still pollutes" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The trash and pollution that get into Baltimore's Inner Harbor tend to stay there because there's relatively little fresh-water flow to flush them out into the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay.

But contrary to what a lot of people may think, the harbor's degraded condition isn't solely the result of littering and poor housekeeping by the city's residents and businesses.

In fact, according to data presented last weekend at the Waterfront Partnership's conference on the state of the harbor, a lot of the trash in the water comes from far upstream -- in the suburbs.

More than 400 pounds of detritus has been collected in a single day at various points in the Jones Falls and Gwynns Falls in Baltimore County, according to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which is preparing a report card assessing the harbor's condition.

That's why Baltimore County residents as well as city dwellers are going to be put on the spot by state environmental regulators to help clean up the harbor.   The Maryland Department of the Environment is expected to issue orders next year to the city and county to get - and keep - the debris out of the water. 

And another order is in the works to reduce unsafe levels of bacteria in the water, believed to be primarily from sewage leaks and pet waste washing into streams and storm drains in both the city and the county. As with trash, bacteria levels in the streams that flow into the harbor are often so high that anyone coming in contact with the water risks illness or infection.

The Waterfront Partnsership is working on a plan for making the harbor swimmable and fishable by 2020.  To learn more about it, go here.  Do you think it's do-able?  What would you like to see done?  And what would you be willing to do?

(Image courtesy University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News, Urban Issues
        

Do Marylanders want their government to focus for now on creating jobs over cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay? Or do they think water pollution is a serious problem that will need more government regulation - and maybe some more of taxpayers' money - to reduce?

Those are the seemingly conflicting messages that emerge from a pair of public opinion surveys done in recent weeks - one at the behest of the state's builders, the other at the bidding of a state-funded environmental grant-making group.

More than four out of five Maryland voters want the O'Malley administration to put a higher priority on creating jobs than on restoring the bay, according to the poll done in January by Gonzales Research & Marketing Inc. of Annapolis for the Maryland State Builders Association.

According to the same telephone survey of 802 registered voters, more than half - 57 percent - say economic growth should be the state's main focus, even if it means the environment suffers in the process.  And a slim majority - 53 percent - say they're not willing to pay a penny more for bay cleanup and restoration.

On the other hand, in a late December telephone poll of 1,005 Marylanders, 64 percent rated water pollution in rivers, streams and the bay as a very serious problem.  The survey was done by OpinionWorks, also of Annapolis, on behalf of the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

In that poll, nearly three-quarters, or 71 percent, said they think government regulation will be needed to address it.   Seventy-three percent back the concept, at least, of the "pollution diet" that the Environmental Protection Agency has imposed on bay states.

Continue reading "Dueling polls: 'Stick to jobs,' or 'save the Bay'?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Maryland's state and local governments are not spending enough money to control storm-water pollution and aren't doing enough either to keep up public water and wastewater systems, according to a new report card.

The Maryland section of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the whole state a D for its generally anemic storm-water cleanup efforts, a C-minus to the Baltimore area for inadequate drinking-water reservoirs and aging water distribution pipes, and a C for the region's aging, leaking and overflowing sewer system.

Harsh as those grades seem, each of them was at least a little better than the average grade the engineers' group gave for the nation as a whole. The report card rated all kinds of infrastructure, including transit, roads, bridges and dams. Overall, the state got a C-minus.

(Man on porch watches flooding of Baltimore's Argonne Drive from broken 42-inch water main.  2009 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is pulling the plug on gill-netting for rockfish, The Sun's outdoors writer Candy Thomson reports, after finding 10 tons of the prized fish in illegally set nets off Kent Island this week. 

The state's also offering a reward of at least $6,000 for tips leading to the arrest and conviction of the poachers who set the nets, Candy reports.

Natural Resources police have recovered a series of untended, anchored nets, which are illegal, in the past few days.  Properly set gill nets must float and be marked and monitored by fishermen.

The early shutdown of the commercial gill-net season, which was supposed to run all month, was supported by Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association. Candy quotes him saying it's "the safest thing to do" to ensure that the illegal haul of rockfish doesn't put the state over the limit on how many can be caught sustainably.

(Natural Resources police unloading illegally caught rockfish.  DNR photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Maryland farmers planted a record amount of pollution-absorbing cover crops last fall, state officials announced this week, sowing nearly 400,000 acres with rye, barley, wheat and other grains.  While it's indisputably good news for the Chesapeake Bay that so many fields got covered, official ballyhoo about the planting surpassing the state's bay cleanup goal needs needs a little perspective.

The state, it must be remembered, reduced its target for cover crop plantings last year after a disappointing response by farmers in fall 2009 to efforts by the state to get them to sign up for the government-funded, voluntary pollution control effort.

Runoff from farm fields is one of the major sources of the nitrogen and phosphorus that spur algae blooms every spring in the bay, forming a vast "dead zone" on the bottom where fish and crabs can't enough oxygen from the water to survive long.   Research has found that planting "cover crops" in the fall after harvesting corn and soybeans is one of the most effective things farmers can do to keep excess fertilizer from washing off their fields.  So the state offers to pay farmers to put in crops that will overwinter, and consume those leftover plant nutrients in the soil. 

Officials originally had set their sights on getting 460,000 acres covered by this fall, nearly double what farmers had put in in 2008 and roughly half of all the state's croplands.  But plantings actually declined in the fall of 2009, a drop attributed mainly to rainy weather keeping farmers out of their fields until it was too late to get cover crops in the ground before winter.

Continue reading "Maryland farmers set cover crop record - with an asterisk" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

After decades - no, centuries - of abuse and neglect, Baltimore's ailing harbor may finally be getting the attention it needs.

Concerned citizens, scientists and community and business leaders have come together to take a hard look at how to heal the northwest and middle branches of the Patapsco River, the most degraded tributary in the Chesapeake Bay.

It won't be easy. As I report in today's Baltimore Sun, the harbor is continually assaulted by torrents of trash, sewage leaks, pet manure and other pollution washing off streets and parking lots whenever it rains. Its sediments also are contaminated in many places, largely a legacy of the city's industrial and shipping past.

There's still plenty of life in the water - crabs, rockfish, white perch, even a roving Florida manatee apparently camped out here last summer. It's just not that hospitable to people, littered with flotsam and jetsam and with "shockingly high" levels of potentially disease-causing bacteria, particularly after heavy rains but nearly all the time in some places.   To see where the harbor's funy (and relatively clean), check out this interactive map.  People also are warned to limit their consumption of crabs and certain fish caught there because they may harbor low levels of toxic contaminants. 

The stuff fouling the water didn't get there overnight, and it didn't just come from waterfront neighborhoods. It's washing into the harbor from the Gwynns Falls and Jones Falls, which drain most of the city and much of suburban Baltimore County as well. Those streams are degraded as well, and the city has even posted some signs along them warning folks not to touch the water.

Watershed activists have been working for years to repair the Gwynns and Jones falls, and Herring Run as well, which drains northeast Baltimore into Back River - another of the bay's sickest tributaries, for much of the same reasons. They've made some progress, and in the past year have merged to form a new, unified watershed group, Blue Water Baltimore, that aims to be an even stronger force for cleaning and greening the area.

They've been joined by business leaders, in the form of the Waterfront Partnership, who've drawn new attention to the harbor's ills and launched a campaign to make it swimmable and fishable by 2020.  The partnership is working on a plan for achieving that, and it's holding a one-day conference on the state of the harbor Saturday (full to capacity, as of late last week - another sign of public engagement)

Given the magnitude of what needs fixing, advocates acknowledge it's ambitious, and probably overly optimistic to think all the harbor could ever be safe to swim in, much less in a decade.  But even if it's a stretch, it's clear there's some momentum now for restoring Baltimore's watery heart that wasn't there before. Partnership chairman Michael Hankin says "the time is now to do this."

What do you think? What'll it take to make the harbor swimmable and fishable?  What are you doing to help? What would you be willing to do?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Hundreds of environmental activists rallied in Annapolis yesterday evening to show their support for green legislative action in the General Assembly.  There'll be plenty of bills to keep them busy, from boosting offshore wind to clamping down on lawn fertilizer, banning arsenic in chicken feed and taxing plastic shopping bags. But a key legislative leader suggested out of activists' hearing that the "big ticket" - and most contentious - measures likely will have to wait until next year.

Enhancing offshore wind energy prospects, requiring communities to address polluted runoff and protecting state environmental programs from budget cuts are the top priorities of the state's green groups.  Buoyed by yesterday's turnout - and the presence of green-leaning elected leaders in the governor's office and General Assembly - activists vowed to make their voices heard.

"We are the faces no longer of tomorrow. We are the faces of today," Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker said.  Politicians who ignore envirionmentalists "do so at their peril,"  he concluded, to applause.

Adding to the greens' sense of optimism was the appearance before them of Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, who's promoted recycling, renewable energy and other environmental programs in his affluent, suburban county.  Ulman is  president this year of the Maryland Association of Counties, a group that's often opposed environmentalists  in Annapolis, especially in their push for tougher "smart growth" legislation to curb suburban sprawl.  Ulman told the group he personally supports their goals, though he can't guarantee that most other county officials will go along with him.

"You have a friend," he told the activists. But he cautioned, "you don't have a miracle worker."  

Continue reading "Green hopes in Annapolis ride on offshore wind" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As farmers sue and local officials complain (so far) over what's being asked of them to help finally restore the Chesapeake Bay, we keep hearing the refrain that the "real" answer to cleaning up the bay is getting more oysters back in it to filter out the nutrients causing water-quality problems.

Instead of squeezing more pollution reductions out of farmers, developers and municipalities, it is asked, why not do more to promote oyster aquaculture? Could oyster farming be the answer to a cleaner bay?  Now comes a federally funded study that puts the idea in perspective.

It's well-established that oysters are good filter feeders. Scientists have estimated that in their heyday more than a century ago, the bay's bivalves were so abundent they could process all the water in the Chesapeake in a matter of days.  The bay has lost 99 percent of its native oyster population, however, to overharvesting, habitat loss and disease. 

Biologists at Virginia Commonwealth University took up the question.  They measured the nutrient removal capacity of the native Eastern oyster at two aquaculture facilities raising the bivalves in floating rafts. In their study, published in the current issue of Journal of Environmental Quality, researchers calculate that eight large-scale oyster farms, each harvesting one million oysters three inches in diameter, could remove one ton of nitrogen from the bay.  The project was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, and administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

"In terms of nutrients removed per unit area," the study abstract concludes, "oyster harvest is an effective means of nutrient removal compared with other nonpoint source reduction strategies." 

Perhaps, but there's a certain matter of scale.  The EPA estimates that to improve the bay's water quality, Maryland and all the other bay watershed states need to reduce the amounts of nitrogen getting into the bay from their sewage plants, farms, lawns and streets by some 63 million pounds annually.  That's 31,500 tons, if my math is correct.  Eight large-scale oyster farms per ton means we need more than 240,000 of them to do the trick.

Continue reading "Shell game: Study finds oysters could help clean Bay" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Is Baltimore a throwaway community?   There's a ranking out of the least wasteful cities in the US of A, and good ol' Baltimore comes in 16th. We're behind the usually crunchy places like San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, but also trailing New York and Pittsburgh, even Dallas and Orlando.

The ranking - which I saw on Mother Nature Network - is the second done by Nalgene, the reusable drink bottle maker, and Baltimore actually dropped four places since 2009, when we were judged 12th least wasteful.  Guess we're getting worse.

Or rather, should I say, when we judged ourselves - because the rankings are based on a survey in which about 150 residents from each of the 25 cities rated were asked to score themselves on 23 different behaviors and practices that are either wasteful or frugal.

Here's some of the things our city's participants in the survey say we don't do:

- hanging clothes out to dry when possible

- limiting showers to five minutes

- composting fruit and veggie scraps

- turning off the water when brushing teeth.

Of course, some of the top cities have a head start on establishing social norms around some of these behaviors.  San Francisco, for instance, has the nation's strictest recycling law, it seems, which has sparked a big jump in residents composting their food scraps.

Continue reading "How wasteful are we, really?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Perdue plans to harness the sun to help run its Delmarva-based poultry and grain empire.

The company announced Wednesday that it would install more than 11,000 solar panels - covering the equivalent of 10 football fields - at its corporate headquarters in Salisbury and at its feed mill in Bridgeville, Del.

The company, one of the largest in the chicken business, says its solar play will be one of the biggest on the East Coast.

The panels, made by Standard Solar based in Rockville, will actually be owned and operated by Washington Gas Energy Services Inc.

Perdue signed a 15-year agreement to buy the electricity produced by the panels - 3,700 megawatt hours of electricity a year, on average, the company says, which it estimates is roughly what it takes to power 340 homes. Of course, since the sun doesn't shine all the time, the amount generated at any one time will vary.

Steve Schwalb, Perdue’s vice president of environmental sustainability, estimated the electricity from the solar panels will reduce Perdue’s carbon footprint by 3,000 tons per year. 

(Stock photo, Standard Solar) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is crying foul over a new state regulation supposedly requiring all Maryland high school students to learn about the environment.

The Annapolis-based environmental group says the state Department of Education has left a "giant loophole" in the rule it proposed earlier this month that would allow school districts to avoid doing anything more or different to educate their students about the environment.

"In September, the Maryland State Board of Education voted unanimously to make environmental literacy part of the curriculum," my colleague Liz Bowie reported today in The Baltimore Sun. "However, it is not clear whether the vote made it a graduation requirement."

The board's vote, which came at the urging of a task force appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, left it up to local public school systems to decide how to make sure their students learn about environmental science and policy, but required each district to report on what it's doing every five years.  

The new regulation, published Jan. 3, says students can fulfill the environmental literacy requirement by taking social studies or science courses or an AP Environmental Science course.  Or, it says, they could take a locally developed environmental science course. It does not specifically state that environmental topics must be included in the social studies or science courses.

Continue reading "State backtracking on environmental education?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Maryland's congressional delegation intends to take another run at getting new federal legislation to strengthen the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, said this week, but he cautions that advocates may have to settle for smaller "short-term" gains in Congress instead of the controversial measure that died there last year.

Speaking to the Choose Clean Water conference in Washington on Tuesday night, Van Hollen, co-chairman of the congressional Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force , said, "We know it's going to be a big fight" and acknowledged that with Republicans seizing the majority in the House in the November elections, "the fight got a little harder."

The bay bill introduced by Maryland Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last summer.  But despite compromises Cardin agreed to to win over Republican critics of expanding federal authority over water quality - changes that some environmentalists contended weakened the measure - farming lobbies continued to oppose it, and it never came to the Senate floor for a debate and vote.  A similar House bill spearheaded by Baltimore Rep. Elijah E. Cummings never got out of committee. 

Cardin has already said he intends to reintroduce the legislation and still hopes for its ultimate passage.  But Van Hollen told activists at the clean-water conference that if resistance by Republicans and even some Democrats to last year's bay bill remains unabated, a "short-term" approach may be to push for some elements of the original measure, such as the portion meant to encourage farmers to participate in programs states are setting up to trade nutrient pollution credits.

(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Environmentalists often get uncomfortable when asked if people - and their growing numbers - aren't the underlying problem in the Chesapeake Bay's decline.

Now comes a report that'll make everyone even more skittish, because it calculates that immigrants and their children accounted for two-thirds of the population growth in the bay's six-state watershed in the past decade.  And in Maryland, they represented 98 percent - nearly all - of the state's increase in residents.

"The leading environmental groups dedicated (to) cleaning up the Bay recognize the harmful effects of population growth on the Bay but do not acknowledge that immigration is driving population growth in the watershed," says the report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The Washington-based group says it's drawing a bead on the Chesapeake because the Bay's woes are "symptomatic of the impact that immigration-driven population growth is having across the United States. The difference is that the population in the Bay's watershed has already grown beyond the carrying capacity of that ecosystem. 

"The question is not whether the Bay is going to suffer the consequences of excessive growth," it goes on.  "The question is whether the Bay can recover from the immense damage already inflicted upon it."

There's no question that people - and their demands for food, energy, housing and transportation - are at the heart of the Bay's woes.  The chemical fertilizer and manure fouling the waters are produced by or for people.  The bay cleanup effort to date has managed to make only patchy gains in the face of an ever-increasing population - 17 million now, with 150,000 more every year. Longtime author and journalist Tom Horton has written an Abell Foundation report looking at the impact growth has had on the Bay.

FAIR is using the Bay to push its national advocacy for a stricter crackdown on illegal immigration, and for reduced levels of legal immigration as well. It's an emotional issue, because many American families can trace their lineage to foreign shores, and the United States has a long tradition of drawing people here from other countries in search of greater freedom or economic opportunity.

Environmental activists, while acknowledging population's impact, often say there are other things, more in the control of the region's residents, for reducing the impacts the current and future residents that could be done before tackling the thorny issue of immigration reform.  Such as Smart growth, for example, getting everyone to reduce their individual environmental footprint.

What do you think?  Is immigration a problem for the Bay, much less THE problem?  Would limiting entry to this country, legally or illegally, help repair the Chesapeake?  Even if you think it might, would wading into the political minefield of national immigration policy tear apart the already fragile coalition of people and groups working on the current cleanup effort?

(Chesapeake Bay Bridge walk, 2007 Baltimore Sun photo by Jerry Jackson)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Hoping to do something about arguably the most degraded water body in the Chesapeake Bay, a coalition of waterfront businesses, environmental activists and others is holding a conference Feb. 5 on the state of Baltimore's harbor and what's needed to make it swimmable and fishable.

Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of the famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, will be the keynote speaker for the day-long session. Other luminaries expected include Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-MD.

But the published agenda indicates the session will go beyond glitz to plumb the reasons for the dismal condition of the lower Patapsco River and hear about efforts to restore other urban waters, in places like Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. There'll also be discussions of what it'll take to reduce trash and pollution here, and how to pay for it.

The conference is hosted by the Waterfront Partnership, which along with the National Aquarium put tiny floating wetlands in the Inner Harbor last summer to see if they can help restore fish habitat and water quality. The man-made marsh was the first tangible, if token, step in a campaign the partnership announced in the spring to make Baltimore's harbor fishable and swimmable by 2020.

It's no understatement to say it will be a huge challenge. The Patapsco and Back rivers earned a failing grade in the latest report card on the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.  The harbor itself is trash strewn and often unsanitary, with long-standing warnings against eating bottom-feeding fish caught there because of toxic contaminants in the muck on the harbor floor.  But undaunted advocates hope to change all that.

The conference runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Legg Mason building in Harbor East. It's open to the public, though advance registration is required. Go here to do that or for more info.

(Ducks swim amid floating trash near Canton, 2005 Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Today's the opening day of Maryland's General Assembly, and supporters of developing offshore wind power plan to "swarm" the State House to press legislators to make it a priority, even as they are preoccupied with closing a massive budget gap.   Lawmakers gather at noon to launch the 90-day session.

Environmental activists and union leaders have joined forces this year to seek legislation that would require power companies to sign long-term contracts with developers of offshore wind projects. They contend that's needed to overcome the financing hurdles the fledgling industry faces.

Winds off the Atlantic coast are much stronger and more reliable than they are over land, where all industrial wind turbines have been placed so far.   Not everyone agrees, though, that offshore wind deserves another push from government.

Professor Benjamin F. Hobbs, director of the Environment, Energy, Sustainability & Health Institute at Johns Hopkins University, contends that mandating development of offshore wind in that way would do little for the environment while boosting energy costs consumers must pay.   Better, he says, to let the market decide which forms of renewable energy are the most economical.

"Offshore wind power plants are slightly more productive than onshore wind plants but not enough to make up for the much greater construction and transmission costs (as much as double onshore costs)," Hobbs wrote in a letter published last week in The Baltimore Sun. He said he'd concluded that after conducting a study comparing the costs of offshore wind development versus onshore in Great Britain.

(Wind turbines off Germany, AFP/Getty 2010)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Dead fish washing up in the Chesapeake Bay, birds falling from the sky in Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky, plus assorted other wildlife dropping in places like Brazil, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

What in the world is going on?

Maybe nothing more than some unusually nasty weather. But that hasn't stopped some anxious and even alarmed folk from speculating about a wildlife holocaust triggered by, you name it: pesticides ("what are they spraying?" one emailer asked), lingering poisons from the Gulf oil spill or "the end," as in of time.

The dead blackbirds and grackles really are puzzling to me, though wildlife biologists have suggested fierce night-time storms, lightning and possibly even some New Year's Eve fireworks or gunfire - or a combination of those and other factors - might've led to their demise.

That probably wouldn't explain the dead fish reported in Arkansas, but authorities there are investigating the possibility of disease - again, not an unknown phenomenon.

As for the bay fish kill, turns out it's mainly juvenile spot and some croaker, and biologists suspect the unusually sudden and severe drop in water temperatures in late December did them in. It's not unheard of - there've been other, even bigger winter fish kills in the bay in similar circumstances. And there's been no immediate indication of any pollution or other water-quality problem that might've put the fish in harm's way.

Authorities are investigating, though they caution that the bay fish may be too decomposed to really determine what killed them.

Is there anything connecting these disparate events? I kind of like my colleague Frank Roylance's suggestion, made on his weather blog, that the Internet's to blame.  Not for the wildlife deaths, but for enabling folks to rapidly connect so many disparate dots and see an alarming pattern.

As journalists, we're in the business of connecting dots, so I understand the tendency. We live for unmasking previously unnoticed, slowly developing trends and hidden, nefarious plots. But sometimes, a series of similar events is just a coincidence, not conspiracy.

We may - or may not - ultimately find out what killed these critters. I'll be waiting for the final reports. Meanwhile, I'm not ready to stock up just yet, on food, ammo or even toilet paper.

(Dead fish in Northwest Creek, MD Dept of Environment; dead birds in Pointe Coupee Parish, La.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)
        

The Maryland Department of the Environment has formally threatened to sue the operator of three coal-fired power plants in the state for allegedly polluting ground and surface water with coal ash it's dumping in two unlined landfills.

MDE issued notices of intent to sue Mirant Mid-Atlantic, LLC and Mirant Maryland Ash Management, LLC in federal court over ash disposal at Westland or Dickerson in Montgomery County and Faulkner in Charles County.

The action comes after a federal lawsuit filed by the state last year against Mirant over ash disposal at a third landfill in Brandywine in Prince George's County. The agency also has a pending lawsuit in state court over the Faulkner ash landfill, but said in a news release it now plans to consolidate all the cases in federal court.

The state contends that the company continues to dump its coal combustion byproducts in unlined landfills, despite 2008 state regulations requiring liners for ash disposal facilities.   State officcials said toxic substances in the ash are leaching into ground water and nearby surface waters, though they add that levels of contamination so far seem to pose no health risk to nearby residents.

Atlanta-based Mirant merged last year with GenOn Energy, a Houston power company. Spokeswoman Misty Allen emailed that the company disagrees with MDE's interpretation of the federal Clean Water Act and would litigate the matter if the state does file suit.  GenOn has proposed a new ash recycling plant in Charles County to replace its landfills, though regulators have yet to approve it.

Continue reading "MD threatens lawsuits over coal ash pollution" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As we start a new year, it's worth looking back at the big news of the past year - if only because many of those developments will resonate through 2011 and for years to come.

So here's my list of the top 10 green stories of 2010:

1)  Gulf oil spill: The catastrophic explosion, fire and blowout of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana's coast took 11 lives and earned a spot in history as the nation's worst oil spill, gushing from April 20 until mid-July. Short-term, the impacts were not as bad as many had feared, as much of the oil dispersed, but the long-term ecological effects won't be known for some time. The disaster also prompted the Obama administration to reverse course and drop plans to expand offshore oil drilling in the Gulf and elsewhere - something that's likely to be challenged with the Republican takeover of the House in Congress.

2) Congress shuns climate action, EPA steps in:  While inaction rarely gets the same headlines, the decision last summer by the Senate's leaders to pull the plug on climate and energy legislation ranks, if not outranks, the Gulf oil spill in significance.  Where politicians feared to tread, however, the Environmental Protection Agency plunged ahead.  EPA at year's end announced initial requirements for limiting emissions from power plants.  Efforts are brewing in Congress, though, from Republicans and some Democrats to strip EPA of its authority - or funding - to follow through.

3) Bay gets pollution diet, crabs rebound:  The Environmental Protection Agency finished the year by putting the Chesapeake Bay on a "pollution diet," requiring 20 to 25 percent reductions in the amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment getting into the estuary from its 64,000-square-mile watershed.  It remains to be seen, though, how much state and local governments will do in the coming year, as they struggle with budget gaps and sluggish economies.  Meanwhile, the bay's iconic crustaceans staged a second straight year of strong recovery from near collapse, with the annual winter survey showing a 60 percent increase in the crab population over the previous year, to a level not seen since the late 1990s. 

4) Wind gets a push offshore, and lawsuits on land:  The prospects for giant turbines eventually catching the sea breezes off the US East Coast grew last year, with pushes from the Obama administration and from states like Maryland.  The Interior Department set up a "fast track" approval for offshore wind leases, and in November invited bids for placing turbines a dozen or more miles off Ocean City.  The state's first two industrial wind projects got built on Backbone Mountain in Garrett County, but conservationists filed suit alleging the turbines would harm endangered bats.

5) Baltimore greens up, slowly:  The city took steps last year - however haltingly - to make itself a greener, more sustainable place.  After years of debate over plastic shopping bags, City Council acted to curb their littering by imposing a "partial ban" - allowing supermarkets and other stores to keep using the flimsy throwaway sacks as long as they encouraged their customers to recycle or shop with re-usable bags.  The city got its first food "czar," Holly Freishtat, to encourage more healthful eating among city dwellers.   And municipal officials also quietly issued green building standards last summer, after sitting on them for a year to mull over developers' concerns that they'd stifle urban revitalization.  Stuart Kaplow, president of the local chapter of the US Green Building Council, calls the city's 2007 green building law, nor fully in effect, a "game changer." 

Continue reading "Looking back - and ahead" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Just in time for New Year's -- the time when many of us resolve to give up bad habits -- the Environmental Protection Agency has put the Chesaepeake Bay on a "pollution diet."  Will this resolution stick better than most of our morning-after vows?

This massive reducing plan - 200 pages, 800 pages of appendices and 3,100 pages of responses to public comments - calls for Maryland, the District of Columbia and the other five states in the bay's 64,000-mile watershed to cut back by 20 to 25 percent on the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment getting into the water.  

Though they're often called pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorus are really nutrients, essential for plants to grow and thrive.  The bay would be practically lifeless if it was totally devoid of any nutrients.  But like a person who eats too much, a water body gorging on nutrients gets out of whack, with massive algae blooms and "dead zones" in the water where oxygen levels have dropped below what fish and shellfish need to survive. 

Ergo, the diet.  EPA gives the states 15 years to do what's needed to make those reductions, though Maryland, vowing to lead the way, has pledged to do its share by 2020.

A decade or more may seem like a long lead time, but these pollution reductions won't be easy, because they'll require costly upgrades of sewage treatment plants, replacement of household septic systems and determined efforts to cut back on the amounts of animal manure and fertilizer washing into local streams, rivers and ultimately the bay.  Maryland alone estimates it could be required to spend upwards of $10 billion more over the next decade.

Even with the long lead time, the task seems daunting, unrealistic, even preposterous to some.  Farmers, developers and some local and state officials are restive, particularly in upstream states far from the bay.  Members of New York's congressional delegation, many of them Democrats, had appealed to EPA to hold off on requiring pollution reductions their constituents weren't sold on.

But this day has been a long time coming.  Ann Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, reminded me that the state, local and federal "partners" in the long-running bay cleanup effort agreed more than a decade ago to go with a legally enforceable EPA-imposed pollution diet if their mostly voluntary and cooperative efforts to that point failed to reduce nutrients enough by this year.  They didn't come close, just as most goals and deadlines have been missed since the bay restoration effort began 27 years ago.

Continue reading "Bay goes on a diet - will it stick?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

With its crab population rebounding and water quality slightly better, the Chesapeake Bay is showing signs of improvement, the region's leading environmental group says, but the estuary remains seriously impaired and needs a strict pollution "diet" to ensure its restoration.

The Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Foundation upped the estuary's overall health score by three points in its latest "state of the bay" report, while warning that it remains in critical condtion, barely above a failing grade.

"That the bay is getting better is a huge development, but sadly not the whole story," William C. Baker, the foundation's president, said in a release accompanying the report. "Dead zones, fish kills and water contact advisories are constant reminders of how far we still must go."

The report comes as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to release its final "pollution diet" for the bay, requiring Maryland and the rest of the six-state region to curtail the nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment getting into the water from sewage plants, farms and urban and suburban lands. The EPA's draft "total maximum daily load," as the diet is known, has stirred anxiety and anger among farmers, developers and some state and local officials, who fear the costs of cleanup may stifle growth.

The foundation's report says the EPA's action occurs at a watershed, as eight of 13 indicators of the bay's health have improved since 2008, with the dramatic recovery of the Chesapeake's blue crab population leading the way. Other significant gains came in planting of trees along water ways to buffer pollution, and in the continued flourishing of underwater grasses, vital habitat for fish and crabs.

Water clarity, dissolved oxygen and oysters also improved slightly, but remained marginal at best, the foundation's report notes.

"We are at a tipping point," the foundation's Baker said.  "If EPA stands firm, and the states deliver on their commitments, the bay will become resilient and beautiful."

(Aerial view of Chesapeake tidal marsh, creek, forest and farmlands. Photo by Jane Hawkey, IAN Image Library ian.umces.edu/imagelibrary)

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Maryland Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin may have lost one big fish - his Chesapeake Bay cleanup bill - amid partisan wrangling as Congress wraps up for the year. But he did succeed with another, less sweeping environmental measure he sponsored that will require the federal government to pay local fees for controlling storm-water pollution.

The bill, which now heads to the president's desk, was prompted by recent legal decisions that failed to require federal agencies to pay for efforts to reduce pollution washing off the roofs and pavement of their facilities.   Courts have routinely held that federal property is exempt from state and local taxation.

But Cardin noted that communities across the country are being stuck with the costs of treating pollution from civilian and military federal buildings and land.   The biggest dispute is in Washington, D.C., seat of the federal government, where unpaid local storm-water fees have piled up to $2.4 million.

The Maryland Democrat's bill drew bipartisan support, and one of its cosponsors was Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-OK, with whom Cardin had sparred early on over his Chesapeake bill.  In this case, though, Democrats and Republicans alike seemed to agree.

"At stake has been a fundamental issue of equity," Cardin said in a statement, which went on. "polluters should be financialy responsible for the pollution that they cause, including the federal government."

(Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Chesapeake Bay bill supported by environmentalists and opposed by farmers and developers apparently has missed its last chance of passage this year - and maybe for some time, if ever.

Bay Daily blogger Tom Pelton reports that Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has given up on seeking a vote on an omnibus lands and waterways bill that included the Chesapeake legislation pushed by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md. An aide to Reid told Pelton that the measure failed to garner the 60 votes needed to override a threatened filibuster by Republican senators.

The measure would have held bay states legally accountable for their cleanup plans and offered more federal money to control storm-water pollution. It had the ardent support of some environmental groups, notably Pelton's Chesapeake Bay Foundation, though other activists contended the bill had been watered down to appease opponents.

Agriculture interests were not mollilfied, however, and lobbied hard to block the measure, warning senators from other regions that the bay measure would expand federal regulatory power and impose economic hardship on their states' farmers.

UPDATE:  Cardin said in a telephone interview that he intends to try again next year, though he acknowledges the Republican takeover of the House makes it much less likely any legislation will pass boosting the federal government's regulatory authority.

Continue reading "Bay bill falters in lame-duck Senate" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Talk about good news-bad news: A new study finds that sea level isn't rising in the Chesapeake Bay as fast as it is elsewhere, but the region's land is sinking so rapidly it more than makes up for it.

After reviewing satellite measurements and tide gauge data, researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science concluded that absolute sea level is rising only about 1.8 millimeters a year in the bay - less than a tenth of an inch. That's just a little more than half the annual average sea-level rise of 3.1 millimeters that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figured is happening globally.

But tide gauges from Baltimore to Norfolk show relative sea-level rise of 2.9 to 5.8 millimeters a year - more than is seen anywhere else along the East Coast. The difference must reflect local land subsidence, the VIMS scientists say. The bay region is gradually sinking because of shifts in land resulting from the melting of polar ice caps after the last Ice Age, a comet striking near the mouth of the bay millions of years ago, recent local ground-water withdrawals and other factors.

Overall, the study confirms what scientists have been saying for some time, that land subsidence accounts for about half the sea level rise seen in the Chesapeake.   The research, lead by VIMS' John Boon, was underwritten by the Army Corps of Engineers Norfolk District and reviewed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and by the Maryland Geological Survey.

The scientists say from the data they analyzed they couldn't tell for sure whether sea level rise in the bay is accelerating, as global-warming models predict it will worldwide. But the bad news, they note, is that the bay's already rapid relative sea-level rise shows no signs of letting up.

(Bay Bridge from Sandy Point State Park.  2009 Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Ever wonder where's the justice in how environmental protections are applied?  Here's your chance to ask.  Obama administration officials and environmental leaders plan to convene the first-ever White House forum on environmental justice Wednesday, and the public is invited to tune in and participate online.

"Green" jobs, "clean" energy and adaptation to climate change will be among the topics covered at the day-long session, which will generally focus on ensuring a clean, healthy environment for all, including poor communities.  Top administration officials slated to speak include Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The proceedings will be streamed online live at http://www.whitehouse.gov/live  And there'll be a live question-and-answer session at 12:50 p.m. EST. Members of the public can pose queries via the White House Facebook page, http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive

For more on environmental justice, in Maryland and elsewhere, go here.

(EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announcing her agency's finding that climate-altering greenhouse gases are a threat to human health, December 2009.  AFP photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

As giant wind turbines start generating power atop the highest ridge in western Maryland, they raise questions anew about what price we're paying, environmentally, for our energy choices.

The towering windmills, visible for miles around, represent "green," renewable energy of the future to many.  But they've become lightning rods for debate about their impact on wildlife and on scenic mountain vistas.

Increasingly visible, too, is the extraction of coal, one of Appalachia's oldest energy sources. We get half or more of our electricity from coal-burning power plants, but the fossil fuel is a major contributor to climate change, and the ash left over from burning it poses disposal challenges.  Though mining is down from historic levels in western Maryland, surface mines have grown in the past decade and crept closer to towns such as Frostburg.   A new underground mine near Grantsville also prepares to tunnel under the Casselman River, home to such remarkable but rare species as the hellbender salamander.  Many of the region's streams still suffer from acidic water draining from old abandoned mines.

The biggest buzz these days, though, is coming over prospects for tapping previously unexploited natural gas reserves locked in Marcellus shale deposits underlying Garrett and western Allegany counties.  Hoping to cash in on a boom that's already under way in neighboring Pennsylvania and West Virginia, landowners in Garrett have leased or sold rights to drill beneath 124,000 acres, more than a quarter of the county.

But the extraction method, called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," has proven controversial, with critics saying it's responsible for gas leaking into nearby residents' wells and for contaminating streams and ground water. Industry officials say problems have been overblown but they've tightened up operations anyway.

Regulators say they're seeing to it that current mining operations aren't adding to the region's water quality woes, and they vow to require "state of the art" environmental controls on drilling for for gas in Maryland's Marcellus shale - if any at all is permitted. 

That's not enough for some, who want legislation to ban any shale gas drilling until the state overhauls its regulations to impose safeguards.  Some also want to put a hold on any more utility-scale wind projects in Garrett - a third is in planning - until the county establishes some requirements there for buffering them from homes and decommissioning them when they're shut down. 

Read more about the state's conflicted energy frontier in The Baltimore Sun.  And check out the video of the wind turbines, some of them already spinning.

(Constellation Energy's Criterion wind project in Garrett County, Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston; aerial photo western Maryland surface mine by Jim Dougherty for Chesapeake Climate Action Network)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

By now, it seems, a lot of workplaces have gotten into recycling, at least of paper. One office in West Baltimore, though, has taken the plunge into composting - turning coffee grounds, food scraps, paper and other biodegradable refuse into plant food.

A handfull of workers at the Bon Secours of Maryland Foundation started this summer by collecting office paper and old grounds from their West Fulton Street building and combining them with grass clippings and leaves in a compost bin at a nearby community garden run by Operation Reachout-Southwest, a resident-led grassroots organization.

But before long, the initiative of the "Clean and Green" crew spread.  Other staffers began bringing in scraps from the previous night's dinner, old produce and paper and other refuse from home.   Some say they're now composting at home as well.

"Co-workers who at first thought we were crazy started saying, 'I didn't know it was that easy,'" says Erika McClammy, the foundation's director of housing and neighborhood revitalization and head of the effort to raise employees' green awareness.

"I was surprised at how man things we use can go back to the earth,'' says Latera Wallace, a Bon Secours employee.  "I spend so much money every year buying topsoil and mulch for my mother who gardens, when I could have saved money by creating compost just from things around the house."

Continue reading "Composting takes root in West B'more" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

For those who love oysters - and if we want to save the Chesapeake Bay, we should all care about these shellfish with their gooey grey insides - the Bay Journal has published a terrific series about the push to bring them back by "farming" them.

Time was when folks the world over associated the Chesapeake with oysters. Watermen in Maryland and Virginia hauled in millions upon millions of bushels of the bivalves every year, and eateries across the nation featured what was then the bay's signature seafood on their menus.

Oysters have fallen on hard times since then, as has the bay. Overharvesting in those seeming days of plenty, habitat loss and now diseases peculiar to the bivalves have ravaged the Chesapeake's population and decimated a once-thriving fishing industry. Their decline has hurt the bay, because oysters filter the water and helped keep it clean.  Many believe replenishing the bay's oysters, with their filtering capacity, is key to restoring the bay.

So now, after a decades-long slump, Maryland is trying to reverse the oyster's fortunes.  Breaking from a longstanding focus on sustaining the state's traditional wild fishery, officials have set aside large areas of the bay and its rivers as sanctuaries, putting them off limits to commercial harvest and replanting them with hatchery-reared oysters.  The hope is they'll survive the lingering diseases and thrive - and help clean up the bay's water quality. 

At the same time, the state is offering to help the state's watermen shift into raising their own bivalves, rather than continuing to rely on the remaining public waters to make a living. Aquaculture is a brave new world for them, fraught with challenges and risks, but not a completely untested path, as neighboring Virginia has long encouraged private oyster cultivation in its portion of the bay.

A handfull of pioneers have taken the plunge, and the Journal series just completed by Rona Kobell recounts the struggles and successes they've had.   To read the first two parts, go here and here.

As someone who lives for eating oysters, I'm grateful she's told their tales - and just a little jealous that she found a way to spend so much time around my favorite food.   Her series is well worth the read, and food for thought, even if oysters are not your idea of a tasty meal.  Perhaps the efforts of hardy individuals like these, when enough follow their lead, can make a difference in bringing back oysters - and the bay.

(Oysters grow in floats at Choptank Oyster Co. in Cambridge.  2007 Baltimore Sun photo by Glenn Fawcett) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Most of the "final" Chesapeake Bay cleanup plans due from watershed states are in, and one of them already is drawing mixed reviews about whether it's filled the gaping holes seen three months ago in an earlier draft.

Two key states, though, remain to be heard from - Maryland, whose officials claimed they had submitted the best of all the states' draft cleanup plans in September, and New York, whose officials questioned the legal and scientific basis for requiring that state to join in the push to accelerate the bay restoration effort. 

The "watershed implementation plans" due from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, West Virginia, New York and the District of Columbia are to be used by the Environmental Protection Agency in setting a "pollution diet" for the bay that's supposed to restore the estuary's degraded waters over the next 15 years or so.  EPA found serious deficiencies in most of the draft plans submitted in September.

Virginia submitted on Monday what its natural resources secretary called a "good, amended plan" for reducing bay pollution that he contended averts the need for a federal crackdown on sewage plants and farms in the Old Dominion.  Secretary Douglas W. Domenech estimated the accelerated cleanup effort would cost more than $7 billion over the next 15 years.

But environmentalists don't think it goes far enough, while farmers and builders are worried it's demanding too much of them.

Virginia's latest plan calls for more reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus from sewage treatment plants, but still relies heavily on voluntary incentives for farmers to curb pollution washing off their fields.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said it was encouraged by the state's proposal to upgrade sewage treatment in the James River, but said the farm runoff provisions were still weak.

"Unlike the clear commitments to reductions from the wastewater sector, Virginia has not provided the same reasonable assurances from the agriculture sector," Ann F. Jennings, the foundation's Virginia executive director, said in a statement.

Continue reading "Do 'new, improved' Bay cleanup plans measure up?" »

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Talk about racing for the green! It seems 83 Ellicott City residents jumped at the chance to win a free rain garden this fall, and 20 lucky winners saw them installed rapid-fire - not in 80 seconds, as the time-lapse video above depicts, but in just 10 days.

As Erica Goldman explains in Chesapeake Quarterly's BayBlog, the "win a rain garden" contest was staged by Howard County as part of a larger effort to demonstrate that doing a lot of stormwater retrofits, bioretention cells (aka rain gardens), and stream restoration projects in one small watershed could have a noticeable effect on water quality. All the entrants lived around Red Hill Branch, which drains into the Patuxent River.

Funding for the contest came from the county and the state's Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays 2010 Trust Fund. The rain garden installations were overseen by Amanda Rockler of the Maryland Sea Grant extension program, with help from county engineers and experts from the nonprofit Center for Watershed Protection in Ellicott City.

Twenty rain gardens are a start, but thousands upon thousands are needed to help the Chesapeake Bay.  It'll be interesting to see if this contest spurs a new suburban lawn ethic, with homeowners vying to outdo each other in putting in the biggest, greenest rain garden on the cul de sac.

Video by Joe King, by permission Maryland Sea Grant.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

So the dog didn't exactly eat Maryland's Chesapeake Bay homework, but he's holding onto it and won't let go just yet. 

As I reported today, state officials have notified the Environmental Protection Agency that they won't be turning in their final bay cleanup plan today, as the federal agency ordered.  They say they need "a few extra days" to mull hundreds of public comments on what the state should do to accelerate its efforts to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution fouling the estuary.

Maryland evidently isn't alone in telling EPA it's blowing the deadline, but EPA's not pointing any fingers. Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia and the District of Columbia also were to submit final plans to EPA today outlining how they expected to increase their bay cleanup efforts. Some of them, though, were struggling amid an outpouring of complaints and criticism from their farmers, developers and others about the costs and fairness of what was being asked of them.

"We’ve heard from some jurisdictions that they may be submitting their plans late,” said David Sternberg, spokesman for EPA’s mid-Atlantic regional office. He wouldn't identify any, though. J. Charles Fox, senior EPA advisor on the bay, said some of the ambiguity stems from the fact that federal officials worked through the weekend with their state counterparts, so some may still make the deadline.

There's evidently no penalty if states do miss the deadline, but it puts added pressure on EPA, which only has a month to finalize its "pollution diet" specifying how much each state must reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment in its waters.

The agency hopes to rely on the states' plans as the recipe for its own, but had found shortcoming in all the drafts submitted on Sept. 1 and "serious" flaws in all but Maryland's and the District's. Maryland's plan had laid out various pollution control measures for upgrading sewage plants and household septic systems, retrofitting urban storm drains and curbing fertilizer use on farms and lawns. But it did not endorse any, saying state officials would await public comment before choosing among them.

Dawn Stoltzfus, spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said the state received 113 sets of comments from 750 people on the draft plan it submitted Sept. 1, plus two petitions with 1,000 signatures and 100 emails signed by multiple people. She said the final plan would be ready “definitely by the end of this week.”

Let's hope the state gets it homework back soon from that stubborn dog (neither of them the cheerful looking hounds above.  They're my family's, and they'll gladly bring you the ball to throw, rather than play keepaway or tug-of-war, so don't blame them).

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Environmental groups have organized a daylong "Maryland Citizen's Conference" this Saturday (12/4) in Annapolis to press for more rapid development of wind energy projects off the state's Atlantic coast.

Anxious to break what they see as a logjam in developing wind energy in Maryland, activists want the next General Assembly to pass legislation requiring the state's electricity providers to sign long-term contracts agreeing to buy power from offshore projects.  They believe that the lack of such commitments are preventing developers from getting the financing they need to move ahead with putting turbines a dozen or so miles off Ocean City.

The conference comes as two land-based industrial wind projects in western Maryland are about to begin generating electricity.  But most proponents see the Outer Continental Shelf as a much more promising locale for generating significant amounts of electricity from steady offshore winds - not to mention possibly avoiding some of the nagging controversies over the impacts of mountaintop turbines on migratory bats and birds.

The conference is meant to build political pressure on the legislature a month before it convenes.  Scheduled speakers include leading green lawmakers, a wind developer, a union leader and a CEO from the Google-linked partnership that proposes to build transmission lines to bring mid-Atlantic offshore power to land.  Activists plan to march on the State House at the end. 

The session runs from 10 a.m. to 3:30 pm at the Westin Hotel, 100 Westgate Circle, Annapolis.  Admission is $15, $10 for students. For more, go here.

(Wind turbines off northern German island of Borkum, April 2010.  David Hecker/AFP/Getty Images)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Accelerating the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay could generate thousands of jobs and yield hundreds of millions of dollars in income, revenue, property values and other benefits, says a new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

"The Chesapeake Bay can be a fertile source of jobs as well as crabs and rockfish," contends Kim Coble, Maryland executive director for the Annapolis-based environmental group.  On the other hand, she adds, the estuary's long decline already has cost the region economically, and could cost still more if left unaddressed.

The report comes on the day that Maryland, the District of Columbia and other bay watershed states are supposed to submit their final plans to the Environmental Protection Agency for boosting their bay cleanup efforts.  The EPA hopes to use those plans in finalizing its "pollution diet" for restoring the Chesapeake's water quality by year's end.

But it also comes amid a chorus of complaints from farmers, developers and local and state officials across the six-state region that increasing bay cleanup efforts will cost untold billions they can ill afford to pay in this recession.  Critics warn the EPA's pollution diet will bust strained budgets, require tax increases and generally cause economic devastation.  Lawsuits challenging federal authority to order states to boost bay cleanup efforts appear likely.

Continue reading "Report says cleaning Bay can help economy" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Maryland's environment secretary, Shari T. Wilson, has announced she is leaving after just shy of four years leading the agency. She said in a brief interview that the decision to depart was her own and that she'd been mulling stepping down for the past year.

It's been a bruising year, filled with controversies over the Maryland Department of the Environment's enforcement diligence, particularly with regard to farm pollution, and over the agency's moves to strengthen controls on polluted runoff from new development.

About this time last year, the Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of water-quality watchdogs, petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to strip her agency of its authority to regulate water pollution, contending that MDE was lax. Barely a month later, the alliance also publicly accused an Eastern Shore poultry farm of polluting a tributary of the Pocomoke River and got into a testy back-and-forth with MDE over its handling of the case.

As if that wasn't enough, builders and local officials revolted against new regulations MDE had issued earlier in the year that required them to do more to curb polluted runoff from new development and redevelopment projects. With lawmakers threatening to delay or roll back the rules, MDE forged a compromise with opponents that pleased some environmentalists but outraged others.

Wilson's agency also was a target of scorn in the past year from former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who vowed to make MDE more helpful to business in his unsuccessful Republican bid to recapture the State House from Democrat Martin O'Malley. 

Still, Wilson said yesterday she thought her tenure at MDE had been productive as well as eventful.  She pointed to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan that she and other O'Malley administration officials crafted this fall that EPA officials deemed the most thorough and realistic of any of the bay state's efforts.

Earlier, her agency also clamped down on disposal of coal ash from power plants after the waste was found to have contaminated drinking-water wells and streams - taking action in that case ahead of the nationwide furor over coal ash. 

And she was instrumental in getting Maryland to take action to fight global climate change by limiting carbon dioxide emissions in the state.  Maryland joined with other Northeast states in a regional auction of carbon emission permits for power plants, and state lawmakers in 2009 also enacted legislation requiring reductions in other carbon-dioxide emissions over time.

Though criticized by some environmentalists as not tough enough, the storm-water regulations are widely seen as more stringent in many aspects than what had been on the books before. 

And though hamstrung by lack of staff and funds that limited its ability to check up on potential polluters, MDE did step up overall enforcement of environmental laws from what it had been in the more business-favorable Ehrlich administration.  The news release announcing Wilson's departure pointed to a $1 million penalty for water pollution resulting from Constellation Energy's fly ash disposal in Gambrills and a $4 million penalty against Exxon for the 2006 spill in Jacksonville, Maryland.

Wilson's own take on the controversies: 

“The best compliment would be to have been judged to be a fair regulator,” she said, but added that “when you’re successful at it, no one’s happy.”

Continue reading "Changing of the guard" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Federal environmental officials say they're not backing away from the Chesapeake Bay pollution "diet" they've proposed for Maryland, the District of Columbia and the five other states in the bay watershed, despite being peppered with complaints about it from local and state officials, farmers and developers.

Environmental Protection Agency officials say they've received 7,980 written comments about the plan they floated Sept. 24 for imposing a "total maximum daily load," or TMDL, (aka the pollution diet) on the amount of nutrients and sediment that would be allowed to flow from the six-state region's cities, towns, suburbs and rural areas into the bay.  The vast majority of them were in support, but were form-letter type comments evidently generated by environmental groups supporting a federal bay pollution crackdown.

The agency also received about 700 more detailed complaints from "stakeholder groups," as officials call them, who are likely to be required to pay to upgrade sewage treatment plants, retrofit storm drains and curb runoff from their farms.  Some states, particularly New York and Virginia, and farm and development groups throughout the region have questioned the science and legal authority behind EPA's bay diet, as well as its timing and potential economic impact.

"There are some folks opposed to the TMDL," said Jon Capacasa, chief of the water protection division of EPA's Mid-Atlantic regional office.  "They don't think it's necessary ... they don't want us to complete it."  But Capacasa said the pollution diet is "not optional," that EPA has the responsibility and the legal authority under the Clean Water Act and federal court settlements to do what's needed to restore the Chesapeake's water quality so it might sustain more fish and shellfish.

Officials stressed that whatever cleanup measures EPA winds up requiring will depend on how much the states and DC say they'll do in final pollution-reduction plans to be submitted to the agency on Monday.

Continue reading "EPA standing firm on Bay pollution "diet"" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Workers for the Parks & People Foundation and volunteers pitched in Thursday to remove invasive vines and brush along Gwynns Falls Trail in Westport.

The shore along the northern edge of the south Baltimore neighborhood has been badly overgrown for years, making it hard to know there's even a stream there, much less get to it. 

This cleanup project is one of a number lately in Westport, where a massive mixed-use development is planned near where the Gwynns Falls empties into the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River.  Others involved in the project were Enterprise Holdings (the rental car company) and Westport Community Partnerships, an initiative backed in part by Turner Development Group.

(Spoon Smith, 34, left, from Baltimore, and Kevin Alexander, 55, from Brooklyn, members of Parks & People's Green Up, Clean Up team clear out invasive vines along the Gwynns Falls Trail in Westport. Baltimore Sun photo by Gabe Dinsmoor.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Can developers and environmentalists find common ground over how this region can grow without adding to the Chesapeake Bay's woes?

It remains to be seen. Feelings are still raw after last winter's donnybrook in Annapolis over tightening state curbs on runoff from new development and redevelopment. And home builders and environmentalists are at odds over legislation hung up in Congress that would strengthen the federal government's hand in the bay restoration effort.

But the Home Builders Association of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation have agreed, at least, to meet in a neutral corner and talk about it. The two are sponsoring a forum Wednesday (Nov. 17) entitled: "Where Do We Grow From Here? Bay Friendly Development in the 21st Century."

The subtitle of the forum promises a "civil but frank discourse on development, environment and the Bay."   One session will look at whether "nutrient neutral" development is possible.  Another talks about how to pay for the pollution controls and public infrastructure needed to encourage "smart" growth.

From the agenda, it looks like this is a session designed to find that common ground and forge agreement on how and where to grow.  I imagine the tone of this will be far different from a population "summit" held recently by Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future.

"The big question is can we truly restore the Chesapeake Bay given the population projections for future growth?" asked Environment Maryland's Brad Heavner.  He said we have the scientific knowledge to do it, but it would take a lot of money and political will to reduce impacts of new development enough to offset the growing number of people.

Tom Horton, longtime bay writer and former Sun colleague, was even less hopeful.  He called it a "tall order" to think people would do what it takes to reduce the environmental impact of 17 million people in the six-state watershed by enough to restore the Chesapeake's water quality to what it was in the 1950s or '60s and to maintain it while the region grows.

Tough questions those, that lack easy answers.  At least folks are talking about them, while the real estate slump eases development pressure some. 

Wednesday's growth forum is from 8:15 a.m .to 3 p.m. at Martin's West, 6817 Dogwood Road.   Registration is $95, though discounts are available.  For more, go here or call 410-265-7400.

(Development along South Branch of the Patapsco River, 200 Baltimore Sun photo by David Hobby)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

First a manatee, now a seal?  What's going on in the Patapsco River?  An Anne Arundel County resident who lives on Stony Creek reports she saw an animal rolling around on her pier last night that looked for all the world like the critter pictured above.

Mary Sharp, who lives in Orchard Beach, said she saw a "black thing" bobbing back and forth in the light shining on the deck of her pier around 7 p.m. She said she watched the animal through binoculars for about 5 to 10 minutes, and even went outside to the crest of the hill leading down to her dock to get a better look before it apparently went back in the water.  

Unfortunately, she didn't get a picture of the animal, but she said she was sure it wasn't the manatee that was last sighted a few weeks ago in the river near Harbor Hospital.  This was darker, weighed maybe 80 pounds and was out of the water.  Sharp said she initially thought it was a seal or a sea lion; a call to the National Aquarium this morning informed her it was most likely a harbor seal - not unheard of, but not commonly seen this far up the Chesapeake Bay.  

Whatever it was, the animal apparently was able to climb out of the water onto her pier.  She said the steps leading up from the water were wet, and she found a partially eaten fish on the deck where it had been.

"I left that fish that was flopping around on the pier, just in case he came back," Sharp said. 

So far, no luck. But if you spy something in the water that looks like a seal - or the elusive manatee - give a call to the Aquarium's 24-hour pager to report your sighting, 410-373-0083.   Let us know, too, and we'll share it here.

UPDATE (11/16):  Jennifer Dittmar, the aquarium's marine mammal stranding coordinator, emails that based on Mary's description, it sounds like a "healthy seal that happened to stop for a meal."  Most likely it was a harbor or harp seal, she adds, since they're the two species that have been seen around here before.

"It's not unheard of for a seal to travel this far up the bay, but it's also not a common occurrence," Dittmar explains. "In the last 12 years or so, we have at least three documented seal sightings north of the Bay Bridge."

(Harbor seal swimming near Boston Harbor, October 2010, New England Aquarium photo via AP)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Today is the deadline for the public to comment on plans drafted by Maryand, the District of Columbia and the other Chesapeake Bay watershed states for accelerating their efforts to clean up the degraded estuary.  Monday, Nov. 8 is also the last chance to comment on the Environmental Protection Agency's first cut at a baywide "pollution diet," which in many cases goes beyond what the states have pledged so far to do.

EPA's draft Total Maximum Daily Load, as the "diet" is known bureaucratically, has come in for heavy criticism from farm and business groups, especially in New York and Virginia, where state and local officials have complained that the pollution reductions demanded by the federal government are unachievable and could cost jobs, raise taxes and halt growth if carried out.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, have noted that the states have the option of revising their cleanup plans to propose a more palatable mix of pollution controls - as long as they reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment to the levels called for by EPA.   The problem is that except for Maryland and DC, none of the other states proposed to do enough.

The Center for Progressive Reform, a pro-environment Washington think tank, found all the states' bay cleanup plans lacking in comments it submitted late last week.  The plans spent most of their ink describing what the states were already doing, the center said, and skimped on specifics about how they'd improve those efforts or what new cleanup steps they'd take.   All but Maryland's plan fail to reduce one or more pollutants to the levels EPA has said are necessary to restore the Chesapeake, it said.

Even Maryland's plan comes in for criticism, despite the fact it lays out enough different options for reducing nutrient and sediment pollution to get them 30 percent below the federal targets.  The problem is, the center said, that the state failed to commit to any of them, and didn't spell out how much each would cost.

Maryland officials have said they wanted to give residents, farmers, local officials and business interests a chance to comment on all the options in writing and at public meetings before choosing among them for a final cleanup plan due to EPA by Nov. 29.

"Public comment and input is undoubtedly valuable, but ultimately Maryland must make the tough decisions that protect the environment and lead to a restored Bay for present and future generations," the center wrote. "By leaving the particulars open to debate, Maryland is likely to receive less focused and helpful comments."

Of course, another effect of waiting to lay out a specific roadmap for reducing pollution in Maryland until Nov. 29 means the O'Malley administration was able to avoid speling out potentially costly and controversial pollution reduction measures until after the election.  It remains to be seen how they'll choose now that the voting is done.

To see and comment on the states' plans, go here, for EPA's, go here.

(Bay Bridge, from Sandy Point State Park, 2009 Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Eastern Shore farmers have organized a fund-raiser Saturday (Nov. 6) for the Worcester County farm couple facing a pollution lawsuit, and the agriculture secretaries of Maryland and Delaware are expected to be on hand to show their support.

Proceeds from the $20-per-person chicken-and-barbecue dinner at the Showell volunteer fire hall are to go to Alan and Kristin Hudson of Berlin to help them pay their legal fees defending against the lawsuit, said Lee Richardson, a poultry farmers from Willards.  Richardson said the top ag officials were expected to attend this, the second fund-raiser held for the Hudsons.

The Hudsons were sued last spring by the Waterkeeper Alliance and a pair of local Shore environmental groups, alleging that waste from the Hudsons' farm had fouled a tributary of the Pocomoke River.  The suit also names Perdue Farms, alleging that the giant poultry company based in Salisbury shares responsiblity because the Hudsons raised Cornish game hens under contract.  Both have denied polluting. 

Richardson said Shore farmers and their supporters consider the lawsuit "ridiculous" because they don't believe chicken manure had anything to do with the high bacteria levels measured in the drainage ditch running through the Hudsons' farm.

"If there had been a pile of chicken manure there, I wouldn't have been involved in this event," Richardson said.

Before filing suit, the Assateague Coastkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance published an aerial photograph of what they said was chicken manure on the farm draining into a ditch, and said water sampled downstream showed high levels of bacteria, nutrients and ammonia.

Inspectors with the Maryland Department of the Environment subsequently identified the pile as sewage sludge from Ocean City, and required it to be moved back from the ditch and covered. 

The state fined the Hudsons $4,000 for improper storage of sewage sludge, but closed its investigation of the ditch pollution without determining the source.  Inspectors confirmed the high bacteria levels in the farm ditch, but not from the pile. 

Activists, who contend the state is cozy with farmers, have faulted inspectors for not examining the pile more thoroughly or for looking for other possible sources.  But state officials contend the high bacteria readings could just as well have come from wildlife droppings in or near the ditch.

A spokeswoman confirmed that Maryland ag secretary Earl "Buddy" Hance would be there. 

Continue reading "Ag officials to attend fundraiser for growers facing pollution suit" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

You read that right. Usually, fisherfolk hold fishing tournaments and such when they want to raise dough for a good cause. Running for them is like, well, fish out of water.

But in a bid to broaden its reach, the Maryland chapter of Trout Unlimited is having a "Restoration Run" on Sunday, Nov. 14 to raise funds for repairing the Jones Falls and other degraded watersheds in the state.

Jay Boynton, the TU chapter's treasurer and a runner himself, said members thought a run would be a great way to bring some different people out and "expose them to something other than just fishing." In other words, anglers aren't the only ones who care about the health of our waters -- and here's a chance to show it.

The 5K race starts out at 8 a.m. at Meadowood Regional Park on Falls Road near its intersection with Greenspring Valley Road.  The course goes down Falls a bit before cutting over to Hillside Road and back north on Greenspring Avenue.   The Jones Falls, the initial object of the fund-raiser, will be just steps away.

Boynton said funds raised by the run are to go to stream restoration projects.  First on the chapter's list is a stretch of the Jones Falls with a channelized stream bank.  The group hopes to reestablish trout habitat there, partly because they like to catch (and release) trout, but also because trout, especially sensitive to pollution and habitat degradation, are a bellwether of stream health.

The run is open to the public.  Registration is $30 until Saturday (Nov. 6), then $35 next week and $40 on the day of the run.  To sign up, or to donate, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

If you restore a stretch of degraded suburban stream, will the fish come back?

That's what students at Park School of Baltimore may find out in coming years. Right now, they're getting a hands-on lesson in what long and laborious work it is - not to mention costly - to remedy the harm done to their neighborhood stream by development along its banks, including the school's own impervious footprint.

The stream in question is Moore's Branch, which flows along the back of the Brooklandville private school's campus on its way to Lake Roland.  The lake drains into the Jones Falls, which ultimately finds its way to Baltimore Harbor, the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay.

The banks of Moore's Branch are badly eroded, explains Daniel Jacoby, who teaches environmental science and advises the Climate Change Committee at Park (known archly by its initials, CCCP, with lots of Soviet Union jokes).  Students who visit the stream repeatedly over the years say they've seen signs it's not in very good shape, with few of the aquatic bugs on which trout and other fish like to feed.

"The kids used to remember seeing substantial fish, crayfish and a lot more life that's not there now," Jacoby says.

The decline of Moore's Branch no doubt started well upstream of Park School, but Jacoby says the campus bears some responsibility, too.   Years ago, to provide parking for faculty and staff, a lot was paved within 20 feet or so of the stream bank.  When it rains, the water runs off the lot into the stream, adding to storm-fed surges that eat away at the creek banks.  Pavement that close to water wouldn't - or certainly shouldn't - be allowed today, at least not without some runoff protections built in.

That's what Park School and its students are providing now, after the fact.  Inspired to act by a staffer with the Center for Watershed Protection in Ellicott City, the students and Jacoby applied for and got a $20,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust to landscape the thin strip of ground between the parking lot and the stream.  The school has chipped in even more funds of its own to cover the restoration project, and handled the logistics of hiring contractors to do the heavy earth-moving work involved. 

Continue reading "A school's hands-on lesson in stream restoration" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Environmental activists are celebrating election returns indicating they still have clout in Annapolis (and California), but the outlook in Washington isn't so green.

The Maryland League of Conservation Voters says that 88 percent of the candidates it endorsed, 119 out of 138, won their races on Tuesday, with two races still too close to call as of mid-day Wednesday.  The most prominent of those, of course, was the reelection of Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, whom the league had endorsed way back in January, even before it was clear Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. would challenge him. 

League executive director Cindy Schwartz said the results show Marylanders are passionate about the Chesapeake Bay and are "growing increasingly concerned about over-development and traffic, and recognize the need to create new clean energy jobs." 

She also claimed the returns confirm that "environmental issues always are top of mind when voters go to the polls."

Hard to dispute the first assertion, as I've not seen any recent poll results on growth and green jobs.  But the second contention about environmental issues being a priority with Maryland voters seems a tad optimistic.  A long series of independent public opinion polls through multiple elections, including this year's, have always found the environment, even the bay, taking a back seat in voters' minds to the economy, education and crime.   Voters care about the environment here, to be sure, but still not as much as other issues.

Perhaps another key to the league's high electoral batting average this year was its teaming up with labor (teachers and service workers) and with another environmental groups, Sierra Club and Environment Maryland, to pool efforts in making phone calls, sending out emails and producing campaign videos.

Overall, Republicans picked up a half-dozen seats in Maryland's House of Delegates, reports The Sun's Julie Bykowicz, while possibly losing two seats in the Senate, depending on the final outcome of close counts.

Locally, Baltimore city voters overwhelmingly approved a charter amendment (Question B) setting up one or more funds to promote sustainability, maintain city parks and improve the urban environment.  That could come in handy for ensuring that revenues can be raised through fees or other means to clean up litter in the harbor or retrofit storm drains.  Anne Arundel voters also put a dedicated environmentalist, West-Rhode Riverkeeper Chris Trumbauer, on the County Council.

California remains firmly green as well, it seems. There, voters defeated a ballot proposition to stall that state's climate-change law.  Proposition 23 had been heavily underwritten by industries opposed to the impending regulations. 

In Washington, though, it appears voters in Maryland and across the nation have made it much tougher for Congress to pass the Chesapeake Bay cleanup or climate-change legislation that have languished on Capitol Hill the past year.

Continue reading "Greens do well in MD, but face 'uphill battle' in DC " »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air Pollution, Chesapeake Bay, Climate change, News
        

A manatee may still be lurking around Baltimore's harbor, according to the National Aquarium, but the wandering sea cow from Florida is in increasing jeopardy as water temperatures drop.

A kayaker reported seeing a manatee late Thursday morning in the upper Patapsco River near Harbor Hospital, the aquarium said.  It's just the latest of several elusive sightings in the past few weeks.  But with only one photograph (seen above) taken at Swann Park in the  Middle Branch in August, biologists have been unable to confirm its continued presence or identify it.

"We have received scattered reports of manatee sightings over the past three weeks, but they are scattered, and no photographic evidence exists," Jennifer Dittmar, stranding coordinator for the aquarium's marine animal rescue program, said in a statement.  She said aquarium staff are working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists from Florida to monitor the animal, but with no pictures or consistent sightings, "we are having trouble tracing its movements and assessing its health."

With water temperatures in the river dipping to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, it's becoming too cold for manatees and their preferrred food source, submerged aquatic grasses.  Aquarium staff think the animal may be swimming in and out of the Middle Branch to find food, movement that they said could be complicating their search for it.  That, and the fact that the slow-moving mammals can be hard to spot from a distance.

Aquarium staff are asking anyone on or around the harbor, especially the Middle Branch, to keep an eye out, looking for the manatee's smooth back or nostrils possibly poking out of the water, or for the telltale smooth "footprint" one creates on the surface as it slowly swims along.  The animals can be nine or 10 feet long and weigh 1,000 pounds.

Anyone who sees what appears to be a manatee is asked to call in the time and location to a hotline, 410-373-0083, or to email recent photos to marp@aqua.org with details of where and when it was seen.  Aquarium staff urge boaters to slow down, especially in shallow waters or inlets, to avoid stsriking the animal.  Also, anyone who spots a manatee is cautioned to stay back, as it's a violation of federal law to harm or harrass marine mammals.

Concerns for the manatee's health in Maryland's frigid winters are all too real.  A dead one was found on the shore of the Patuxent River in April, according to the aquarium, six months after one had been seen swimming in the river.

(Photos courtesy National Aquarium)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Congressional action to beef up the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, stalled for months amid fierce opposition from farmers and developrs, faces increasingly narrow prospects in the weeks after tomorrow's election. 

Environmentalists had hoped a bay restoration reauthorization bill might squeak through the Senate, at least, when Congress returns to Washington after tomorrow's voting.  But national and Maryland farm groups continue to oppose it, and recently sent a letter to all senators contending that the measure sponsored by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md, would be a "breathaking expansion of federal regulatory control"  that could lead to "draconian controls on economic activity and growth in the Chesapeake Bay watershed without assuring that water quality will improve."

The bay bill has been languishing in the Senate since clearing the Environment and Public Works Committee last summer.  Despite concessions made by Cardin meant to ease farmers and developers' concerns, industry continues to oppose it.  (Interestingly, the changes alienated some environmental groups, who contend the bill's been severely weakened - a charge other green supporters deny).

Proponents had hoped to "bundle" the Chesapeake bill with others meant to aid other water bodies, such as the Great Lakes, Gulf of Mexico, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound and Long Island Sound.  But the farm groups call on senators to oppose any bill if it includes the Bay measure.  Groups opposing it include including Delaware Maryland Agribusiness Association, Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., Maryland Pork Producers, Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association and Maryland Grain Producers Association.

The farm groups contend that the Cardin bay bill would essentially rewrite the 1972 Clean Water Act and give to the Environmental Protection Agency authority granted to state and local governments.  The EPA would gain control under the pollution "diet" it is drawing up for the six bay states to regulate water flow and land use, the farm groups contend.  And it would also allow for more lawsuits to be brought by environmental activists, meaning judges could be the final arbiters of such issues. 

Though the bay bill ostensibly applies only to the six-state Chesapeake watershed, the opponents say its impact could be nationwide.  Environmentalists have held up the bay bill as a model for how water pollution should be dealt with, they say.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation countered with a letter of its own to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urging he bring the bay bill to a vote, saying the farm groups' broadside "contains many inaccuracies and misleading statements."

"Pollution from farm runoff remains the biggest problem facing the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries," the Annapolis-based environmental group said.  It also quoted from a new U.S. Department of Agriculture draft report that finds 81 percent of the croplands in the bay watershed need more controls on runoff to curb nutrient pollution of the bay and its tributaries from animal manure and chemicals used to fertilize crops.

"It is alarming that after 25 years of voluntary, cost-assisted federal conservation programs (as well as other state programs) only 19 percent of the more than 4.3 million acres of harvested crop land in the watershed is now adequately managed to control agricultural runoff laden with nitrogen and phosphorus pollution," the foundation said.

For more on the bill, S. 1816, go here; for the opposition, go here; and for info from backers, go here.

(Baltimore Sun photos: Barley on farm near Hillsboro, 2008, by Glenn Fawcett; Chicks on farm near Pocomoke City, 2007, by Doug Kapustin)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Capt. John Smith was the Chesapeake Bay's original tour guide, sailing and paddling with his crew of English settlers over 3,000 miles of water then teeming with forests, fish and wildlife - not to mention native Americans.

Smith's early 17th century travels, recorded by him in maps and writings, are now officially memorialized as the nation's first water trail, authorized by Congress in 2006.  It's still a work in progress, though, and now the National Park Service has drawn up a comprehensive management plan that weighs how to improve public access to the trail and how best to use it to educate people on the bay's natural history and its native culture.

One idea - the park service's "preferred alternative" - is to flesh out a land route complementing Smith's water travels. That would ensure that the trail isn't reserved solely for hardy outdoors types in kayaks and canoes -a  big plus.  But it also could add appreciably to the trail's expense and change the experience, too. 

The plan also talks about placing more historic signs and education centers around the bay and preserving those bits of the landscape that still resemble the wilderness Smith traveled through 400-plus years ago.

Members of the public have until Nov. 5 to share their views about how they'd like to see the trail developed and managed over the next 20 years.  To learn more about the trail, go here and here.  To see the plan and comment on it, go here.

("Smiths Falls" historic marker on Route 222 north of Port Deposit, where explorers paddled up Susquehanna River until stopped by rocks.  2005 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Some rare beetles and some homes may have to go on Calvert County's eroding Chesapeake Bay cliffs, a government panel has suggested.

A "steering committee" made up of federal, state and local agencies has proposed letting some cliffside homeowners shore up their patch of the crumbling bluffs, even if it means killing some legally protected Puritan tiger beetles.  But the plan also calls for moving or buying those homes in imminent danger of falling into the bay, using a combination of federal and state funds.

This Solomonic proposal comes after eight months of talks about how to resolve conflicting concerns over the safety of Calvert's clifftop homeowners and the survival of the tiny beetles, which dwell in the cliffs below the human abodes.  Brownish-bronze on top and blue on their bellies, Puritan tiger beetles are deemed threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and endangered under Maryland's similar species law - meaning they're so close to becoming extinct it's illegal to kill or disrupt them.

It's not clear yet how many homes might be targeted for possible relocation or buyout, or what it would cost taxpayers.   The plan urges Calvert County to seek federal emergency-management funds to complete a risk assessment.   It also talks about tapping Maryland's Program Open Space fund to buy the houses or substitute beetle habitat.  That may concern some, since that fund was originally set up to buy parkland and recreation spaces for Marylanders, and the real estate slump has shrunk the property transfer tax revenues available for preserving land. 

A total of 234 homes are within 100 feet of the cliffs lining the bay in Calvert, and 83 are within 20 feet of the edge.  The cliffs are losing a foot or two feet a year, but 10- to 15-foot chunks have fallen in following a recent storm.   Twenty homes are within 10 feet, 19 within five feet and one house actually is hanging over already.

The plan was presented to the Calvert County commissioners this week.  The Washington Post reported that many homeowners aren't satisfied.  Those closest to the edge fear there won't be time for the county to secure the funds needed to move their homes, since the grant application is to go in by year's end.

Continue reading "State eyes buying homes, killing beetles on eroding Calvert cliffs" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Leaves are falling, the weather's cooling.  Community groups are getting their last licks in on cleaning up local streams before winter sets in.

On Saturday, Oct. 30, from 8:45 a.m. to noon, volunteers are needed in Catonsville to clear litter, tires (where do they all come from?) and other junk from Bull Run, one of the many overlooked and (until now) neglected streams that flows into the Patapsco River, the most ailing tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. 

The Friends of Patapsco Valley and Heritage Greenway, which is organizing the cleanout, urges volunteers to wear waterproof boots, long pants and shirt (to protect from thorns) and bring work gloves, water and sunscreen.  Volunteers are to meet at the Catonsville Armory, 130 Mellor Avenue, before crossing the road to get at Bull Run.  Walk-ups welcome, but to sign up online, go here.

Next weekend, on Nov. 6, the cleanup shovel swings to the other side of Baltimore, as volunteers tackle Bread and Cheese Creek, a colorfully named but trash-strewn tributary of Back River, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

The area to be policed, from Merritt Boulevard to Plainfield Road. was cleaned out last fall (as pictured above), but litter, junk and shopping carts from nearby shopping centers have found their way into it again - necessitating another cleanout.  (This is why some more systemic approaches to litter need to be found - before volunteers burn out on the Sisyphean task of repeatedly removing tons of debris from their neighborhood streams, only to have to do it all over again in a year or two).

For more, go here. 

(Bread and Cheese Creek cleanup, September 2009.  Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Voters are deciding in the coming week who will be governor of Maryland for the next four years. The Chesapeake Bay and the environment are just two of many issues where incumbent Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. differ - if only in some cases in approach and rhetoric.

The Baltimore Sun's editorial board has posted twin videos of each candidate answering its questions about those issues.  You can see them here.

Also, in case you mssed it, I had an article examining their positions a couple weeks ago, which you can read here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

The Nanticoke River on the Eastern Shore, which many consider to be the Chesapeake Bay's most pristine - or least degraded - river, has earned a B-minus health grade overall on the first report card put together by scientists and water watchdogs.

The report card, released today, finds that while the river's water quality was good enough overall to support fish and shellfish, the upper stretch reaching into Delaware and the creeks feeding into the Nanticoke were plagued by high levels of nitrogen.

"Despite its general health ... it does have issues, nutrients being one of them," EB James, executive director of the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance, said in an email.  "Whereas the Maryland portion of the river is heavily wooded and has lots of marshes, the Delaware portion has a great deal of farmland and a more urban nature- at least at the head of the river in Seaford."

Many consider the Nanticoke the most biologically diverse and healthiest of the Chesapeake Bay's rivers.  Its 30-mile length is free of dams and still supports good fisheries.  It boasts the northernmost stand of bald cypress on the Atlantic coast, and the highest concentration of bald eagles in the Northeast.  At its mouth, where it meets Blackwater and Fishing Bay, is Maryland's largest tidal marsh.  The 725,000-acre watershed is 46 percent forested, 39 percent farmland and only 6 percent developed.

The report card gave the Nanticoke proper and its largest tributary, Marshyhope Creek, B-minus grades, tying the upper Western Shore's Bush and Gunpowder rivers for the highest health ratings earned this year by any Chesapeake Bay waters assessed by University of Maryland scientists.  But Broad Creek and other creeks feeding into the lower river fared worse, and Fishing Bay, which influences water quality in the lower river, scored poorly across the board, earning a D-plus for poor water clarity, high nutrient levels and even potentially unsafe bacteria counts.   Only the Baltimore area's Patapsco and Back rivers have been rated worse, with an 'F' health grade.

The report card says treated wastewater from sewage plants, septic systems and industrial activities, plus over-application of fertilizer on farms and residential lawns, are all sources of the river's elevated nutrient levels. For more, go here.

(Marshyhope Creek, May 1995.  Baltimore Sun photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The poignant tale I reported over the weekend of the last house on Holland Island collapsing into a rising Chesapeake Bay has hit a nerve with some readers, it seems.

Michael F. Young, a friend of Rob Fitzgerald, the Virginia venture capitalist whose foundation recently acquired the island, flew over it this summer and took some aerial pictures - a couple of which you see here.  Young, of McLean, VA., thinks they are among the last images captured of this iconic structure before it collapsed.  

You can see in them how water washes around and under the house at high tide, and how fragmented the island is now.  The image below is looking north to the house, with the broad expanse of green at the bottom the marshy southern portion of the island.

To see all of Young's photos, go here. 

David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post provided another take today on the quixotic struggleto save the house by retired minister Stephen White. More haunting pictures, too.

 And for those who want to see where the island and house are, you can do so via Google maps.  The orange rectangle to the northwest is the barge sunk offshore as a kind of breakwater.  Thanks for this suggestion from Wally Coberg at the Cinema Group in Baltimore.

Richard Scher with the Maryland Port Administration wrote that he wished I'd said a little about the restoration of Poplar Island, an exception to the litany of bay islands vanishing under relentless assault by waves and ice.  Poplar, farther up the bay, also had a colorful history, hosting a cat "fur farm" at one time and as many as 85 residents at one time.  By the 1990s, it was long abandoned and practically washed away altogether, with only a few acres left of the 1,500 that existed when English settlers first landed there in the 17th century. 

But Poplar has been spared by a decision to place there the muck dredged from shipping channels approaching Baltimore harbor.  Today, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the island has been restored to its 1850s size and contour, and plans are to expand it another 500 or so acres.  Though the bay's fading maritime culture won't be restored to the island, it has become a haven for shorebirds and waterfowl, which also have been getting squeezed out by the sprawling development of the bay's eastern and western shores.

The port and Corps are looking to do similar restorations of a couple other vanishing islands, Barren and James.  But like Poplar, they're unlikely to stem the loss of bay fishing communities that began a century ago.  

Smith and Tangier islands, the two still-inhabited isles in the middle of the bay, also are under watery assault, and authorities are working on pricey plans to protect them for at least a while longer. 

But the islands' culture may vanish before their physical abodes do.  As Pete Lesher of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum points out, both islands have been losing population, as young people leave for school and jobs elsewhere.  Fishing has been an increasingly hard way to make a living in recent years.

(Top two photos, aerial views of Holland Island summer 2010, courtesy Michael F. Young; bottom, Holland Island house in water, Oct. 21, 2010, Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, a stunning expanse of marsh and wildlife on the Eastern Shore, is getting a bit bigger.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-MD, announced today that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is buying 766 acres on the eastern portion of the refuge, at a cost of $2.4 million.

The 27,000-acre refuge in Dorchester County holds a third of Maryland's tidal wetlands and provides major habitat for migratory waterfowl, bald eagles and other wildlife.  The 766-acre "Spicer tract" expansion was accomplished in cooperaiotn with the Conservation Fund, which bought the land last year and then sold it to the federal government. 

In geographically related news, plans are taking shape for the Harriet Tubman State Park Visitor Center near the refuge, the state Department of Natural Resources announced.  The center is scheduled to be built by 2013 on the 17.3-acre tract that the state acquired in a swap with the federal wildlife service.  The DC-based Conservation Fund played a role in that deal as well.

The center is to feature interpretive exhibits recounting Tubman's life growing up in slavery on the Shore, her work with the Underground Railroad to free other slaves after she'd escaped at age 27 and her civil rights advocacy.  The park is to include a walking trail, reflecting pond and pavilion.

Cardin, Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Rep. Frank Kratovil, D-MD, have introduced legislation to create a national historical park honoring Tubman.

(Baltimore Sun photos of Blackwater: aerial view, 2005, by Doug Kapustin; bald eagle, 2002, by Jerry Jackson)

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

Aiming to make a dent in the detritus fouling the Middle Branch, more than 2,000 volunteers are scheduled to swarm the neighborhoods bordering this tributary of the Patapsco River on Saturday.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is scheduled to join other city officials and the chairman of the newly formed Baltimore Water Alliance clean streets, alleys and gutters that drain into the Middle Branch.  Organizers report that 2,123 volunteers from 124 neighborhoods have signed up to participate.

Much more is needed, of course, to permanently reduce the torrent of trash littering the harbor.  But it'll be a good demonstration for the uninitiated of how what gets dropped in the streets can wind up in the water.  

The fall cleanup begins at 8 a.m. at the Rowing Club, 3001 Waterview Ave.

(Students and National Aquarium staff plant wetlands grasses along Middle Branch shore at Westport.  2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Watermen and others who want to get in on Maryland's new push for oyster farming can apply for a piece of $2.2 million the state is offering in subsidized aquaculture loans.

The O'Malley administration has put a mix of state and federal funding into a revolving loan fund to be run by Maryland Agricultural and Resource-Based Industry Development Corporation.   The state also is offering training, business planning and other technical support for raising oysters.

Cost of starting out in oyster farming can range from $5,000 to $100,000, depending on the scale of the operation, officials say.  Many watermen and other small businesses may have trouble obtaining adequate credit from traditional lenders, especially since it'll take up to three years before any oysters are ready to harvest and sell.

Maryland Watermen's Association President Larry Simns was quoted in a state press release calling the state loan fund "a good start."

Those wanting to raise oysters next year must apply by Nov. 15 to lease bottom from the state Department of Natural Resources.  Those seeking financial assistance need to apply by Nov. 30.  For details, go here.

(Oysters tonged from private shellfish bed in Patuxent River.  2008 Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News
        

Building commercial wind turbines off Maryland's Atlantic coast could well produce enough electricity to meet the state's goals for generating renewable energy - but significant hurdles must be overcome to realize that potential, a new study says. 

So says a new study by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research.

"Offshore wind is not a slam dunk for Maryland, but the potential remains very strong," says Matthias Ruth, the study's principal investigator and director of the UM center. "It's economically feasible and environmentally advantageous, but will require some tough trade-offs, compromise and collaboration between public and private sectors."

Offshore turbines are increasingly common in Europe and elsewhere, but have yet to be built in the United States.  Various economic, political and technical issues must be resolved the study says.

The recent pullback by Constellation Energy from seeking to build a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs may boost the momentum for offshore wind, the report says. 

Also helping was the recent announcement by a Google-led investment group of its plans to underwrite development of an offshore wind transmission grid along the East Coast.  Maryland has joined with neighboring Mid-Atlantic states in seeking to coordinate its wind development.

Getting electricity from wind turbines off Maryland appears to be much less costly if the transmission lines come ashore on the Delaware coast - an estimated $20 million at Bethany Beach versus $200 million near Ocean City, the report says.

There's also potential for turbines off Maryland's coast to interfere with radar operations at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, and with radar on military ships and planes in the area, the report notes.

To read the full report, go here.

(Thanet offshore wind project southeast coast of England.  Photo via AFP/Getty, supplied by Vattenfall, Swedish state-owned utility operating the turbines.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Could another manatee - or more than one - have found its way up the East Coast this summer, swimming into the Chesapeake Bay all the way to Baltimore?

The National Aquarium staff has been scrambling to confirm reported sightings of a manatee in the Patapsco River in recent days.  Jennifer Dittmar, who coordinates marine mammal stranding efforts for the aquarium, said a fisherman reported seeing a manatee in the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River by Harbor Hospital last Wednesday.

Another sighting was reported Sunday by the crew aboard a city fire boat at Fort McHenry, Dittmar said.  Neither report could be confirmed, though.

The only confirmed sighting was in August, Dittmar said, when Ryan Neal took the above photograph from the railroad bridge at Swan Park near the mouth of the Middle Branch.

Dittmar said she's been working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials in Florida, where manatees normally live, to find and assess the health of this wayward animal. She emailed local marina operators Monday asking them for help in tracking the animals, which are native to Florida.

"The current water temperatures of the Upper Patapsco are quickly becoming too cold to support a manatee and its natural food source, which are submerged grasses," Dittmar wrote.

If anyone spots what they think is a manatee, they're asked to take a picture of it if possible and call 410-373-0083 to report it so authorities can check it out.

Manatees have been wandering up the coast repeatedly over the years.  One that's been given the name Ilya popped up last year around Havre de Grace in late summer and then made its way all the way to New England - possibly swimming through the Chesapeake & Delaware canal to get from the upper bay back to the Atlantic coast.  

Ilya was still in New Jersey waters when the fall chill set in, prompting authorities to capture it and return it to Florida to recuperate.  Sightings this summer have been so fleeting that it's been impossible to tell if Ilya has made a return visit to the bay, or it's another one.

For more on manatees, go here.

(Photo by Ryan Neal, courtesy National Aquarium)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The last house standing on Holland Island, an eroding sliver of land in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, has been claimed by the water.

The two-story frame structure, abandoned and badly damaged by Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003, has been teetering on the brink of collapse for some time.  High winds over the weekend apparently did it in.  The picture here was taken by Shawn Ridgley, an educator at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Karen Noonan Center in southern Dorchester County.

Tip of the Sun visor to former colleague Tom Pelton, now with the Bay Foundation, who first reported this on the foundation's Bay Daily blog.

Once occupied by 2-300 people and more than 60 homes, the island had been eaten away so badly by storms and the bay's rising sea level that it was abandoned in the early 20th century.  It was used as a hunting preserve and a campsite by countless kayakers and boaters in ensuing decades.  An Eastern Shore minister and former waterman bought the island in the 1990s, and set up a foundation intent on preserving it - but ultimately couldn't muster enough resources or help.

For more on this vanishing slice of bay geography and history, go here and here.

(Photo by Shawn Ridgley, Chesapeake Bay Foundation)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Maryland House Speaker Michael E. Busch has been honored by environmentalists as a champion of green causes in Annapolis.

The Maryland League of Conservation Voters bestowed its annual John V. Kabler Memorial Award Monday night on Busch, who's represented Annapolis in the House of Delegates for 23 years - the last seven as speaker. 

Fred Hoover, chairman of the league's board of directors, hailed Busch's "many accomplishments" in promoting legislation to clean up waterways, restore oysters, protect sensitve shoreline and make it easier for citizens to sue to enforce environmental laws.

(2009 Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Builders are looking to delay imposition of a strict pollution "diet" for the Chesapeake Bay, saying more time is needed to study it because of its "national implications, extremely high costs and technical complexity."

The National Association of Home Builders called on the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public 180 days to review and comment on the federal cleanup plan, instead of the 45 days provided.   Federal regulators, who unveiled the draft plan Sept. 24, set an abbreviated comment period because they have pledged to finalize the plan by year's end.

EPA's "Total Maximum Daily Load" would impose limits on how much nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment can be discharge into the bay and its rivers in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, New York, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.  The states have laid out plans to comply with the federal plan by setting limits of their own on farming, on sewage and rain water washing off city and suburban streets and lawns.

"The new TMDL will impose extraordinarily difficult regulatory requirements on the citizens who live in the Bay states," said NAHB Bob Jones, a home builder in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. "EPA has already announced that these plans are a blueprint for the rest of the nation, which is all the more reason to make sure the public has ample time to carefully study these proposals."

UPDATE:  The Chesapeake Bay Foundation issued a statement opposing the builders' request, saying, "This is merely an attempt to delay and derail the clean-up process for short-term profit and narrow interests' benefit."

For more on the plan, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

All paths lead to Linthicum today, as nearly 200 outdoor enthusiasts and officials are expected to convene there for Maryland's first "trails summit."

The daylong event will feature presentations and brainstorming on how to improve - and improve access to - all the trails used by untold thousands of hikers, bikers, pet lovers, horse riders, paddlers and even commuters. It's an outgrowth of four reigonal roundtable discussions held this summer to mull the future of the state's trails system.

"System," though, may be a generous term, as no one seems to have a handle on how many trails there are overall in the state. The state Department of Natural Resources maintains more than 1,000 miles of land-based trails, plus another 600 miles over water, according to John Wilson, DNR's trails coordinator. But there are many more that have been blazed by federal and local governments and by nonprofit groups, he says.

It's too late to register for the summit, but go here to learn more about it and have your say.

(Bicyclists ride beneath Carrollton viaduct on Baltimore's Gwynns Falls Trail. 2008 Baltimore Sun photo by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Maryland's environmental regulators say they took a record 3,099 enforcement actions in the past year, though penalties collected dipped by 23 percent.

In its annual enforcement report, the Maryland Department of the Environment says the number of actions taken for violations of air, land, water and radiation regulations increased by nearly 7 percent overall in the 12 months that ended July 1.  

That's the highest tally since reporting began in 1998, and a 54 percent increase in actions taken since the beginning of the O'Malley administration, the report notes.  But much of that big jump in enforcement actions came largely in one area - checking on X-ray machines used by dentists and doctors.  Not counting radiation safety, the overall increase was 21 percent the past four years.

The agency collected $5.1 million in penalties, down from $6.5 million the previous year, but officials noted the prior total was inflated by the imposition of a single $4 million fine.

Overall, inspections, audits and spot checks of businesses for compliance with environmental regulations increased by nearly 2 percent, the department reports.    

Not everything was up.  The number of inspections, audits and checks for water pollution violations slipped, as did visits to construction sites - perhaps a reflection of the continuing building slump in that case.  The number of actions taken increased, though, as did penalties collected.   The state has come under fire in the past year for its oversight of industries and municipalities discharging to rivers, streams and the Chesapeake Bay; the Waterkeeper Alliance petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to strip Maryland of its delegated authority to enforce water pollution laws unless the state does a better job.

Continue reading "MD environmental "cops" post record year" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Local officials and farmers in the New York portion of the Chesapeake Bay's watershed are complaining that pollution-reduction measures proposed for their area would be exorbitantly costly and still wouldn't clean up the water enough.

They told the Binghamton, NY Press and Sun-Bulletin that the steep reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus called for by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the New York portion of the Susquehanna River drainage would be impossible to reach and cost billions in improvements to sewage plants, retrofits of storm drains and pollution control measures on farms.

"We don't feel the EPA's limits are achievable by any means," said Chip McElwee, executive director of the Broome County Soil & Water Conservation District. "You could take the sewage treatment plants off line, we could go live in the woods, and then eliminate half of our farms; that's how you would have to get there."

"We need to try and do everything we can to try to slow this down and try to change it,"  Dean Norton, president of the New York Farm Bureau, said.

EPA put forward its own regimen for reducing bay-fouling nutrients and sediment from New York after finding serious deficiencies in the cleanup plan the state proposed.  EPA officials have said the pollution reductions called for are based on the latest computer modeling and monitoring of water quality.  They added that they're prepared to work with state officials to come up with alternative remedies that might be more palatable and less costly. 

New York wasn't alone in being found wanting by the EPA - the federal agency said there were  significant gaps in plans put forward by five of the six states in the bay watershed.  Only Maryland came away needing no more than minor adjustments in its strategy, in EPA's judgment.  That doesn't mean farmers and local officials here are going to be let off the hook - the state's plan was more thorough than the rest in identifying potential pollution control measures, though Maryland has yet to actually say which ones it plans to pursue. When it does, expect a few howls closer to home, too.

The states have until Nov. 29 to submit revised cleanup plans, with EPA planning to finalize its overall bay pollution diet by year's end.

For details on EPA's and the states' bay restoration plans, and a listing of public comment opportunities in the next month, go here. 

(Downtown Binghamton, NY, 2005. Special to the Baltimore Sun by Kathryn Deuel.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Yesterday's downpour did more than flood Fells Point and spill sewage into the Jones Falls. It trashed the Inner Harbor.

The top two pics, taken by the folks at the National Aquarium, show the flotsam and jetsam blown by the storm into the narrow channel between Pier 4 and Pier 5. The water's surface was carpeted with plastic drink bottles and foam cups, a ball or two and lots of leaves, branches and other debris.  The bottom pic shows the "trash wheel" set up in Canton to collect debris washing out of a large storm drain there.

It's an object reminder of how littered the harbor is. And it's no longer merely unsightly. Baltimore harbor's water quality has been officially declared by the Environmental Protection Agency to be impaired by trash that's dropped and washed into it from the streams and storm drains that empty into the northwest branch of the Patapsco River.

So in the next few years, the city and Baltimore County will have to work with the Maryland Department of the Environment and EPA to catalogue the amounts and sources of all that trash and come up with a plan for keeeping it out of the water.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore Harbor Watershed Association has come up with its own plan for reducing the pollution and trash washing out of East Baltimore into the harbor at Canton - where the trash wheel below catches some but not all of it.  You can read the plan here.

It's an ambitious undertaking. The federal government just ordered the District of Columbia, plus Prince George's and Montgomery counties in Maryland to make the Anacostia River in Washington "trash free."  That tributary of the Potomac River, like this stretch of the Patapsco, is suffering from a variety of environmental insults - trash being just the most visible.

According to a story this week in The Washington Post,  the EPA's trash-free order means getting some 600 tons of litter and debris out of the river annually, on top of the 400 tons a year already being removed. The District and suburban counties now spend millions skimming and collecting trash from the water, and will likely have to spend millions more.

Why are the feds ordering local governments to pick up water-borne litter? Because the Clean Water Act passed in 1972 calls for every water way in the nation to be swimmable and fishable. While that normally means dealing with traditional pollutants like oil, sewage, fertilzer and even dirt, regulators consider trash a visual pollutant that renders water uninviting, if not unsafe, for fishing, wading and swimming.

Though a lot of progress has been made in cleaning up some rivers and lakes, urban waters like Baltimore's and Washington's are more contaminated than most - and, frankly, lagging behind. Ergo, the crackdown.

(Top two photos courtesy the National Aquarium)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Today's the beginning of oyster season in Maryland, but not just yet for the handfull of pioneers who've been first to jump on the state's new bandwagon promoting private oyster farming over the traditional wild fishery.

So far, 16 individuals or companies have applied to lease about 3,311 acres of bottom in the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers so they can raise oysters there, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.  They're the first to try their hand since Maryland expanded the area available for leasing, while setting aside other large areas as sanctuaries where no harvest would be permitted - including some areas that until this year had been actively harvested by watermen.

Dorchester County seafood dealer Jay Robinson is one of those.  He's teamed up with Berlin accountant Ryan Bergey to start an oyster aquaculture operation in which they hope to employ watermen working private oyster beds.  They've already begun to build the "setting" facility where they'll have baby oysters, or spat, settle on oyster shells before putting them in open water.

Robinson said they're anxious to start preparing the bottom where they hope to begin planting oysters next spring.  But they're in a holding pattern for now, because the state has yet to act on their application to lease 1,000 acres.  Robnson said he was told it may be up to 60 days before he gets word.

"We have a group of guys that are more than willing, ready to work," Robinson said Thursday. "But untiil we can get this lease ... then our hands are sort of tied at this point."

DNR spokesman Josh Davidsburg said the leases take time to process because state officials have to put the lease applications out for public review, get approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (which must issue permits to put anything on the bottom) and notify nearby landowners of the impending lease.

"It's not just 'Poof!', we approve it, and it happens," Davidsburg said.

Continue reading "New oyster farmers waiting for green light" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Tropical Storm Nicole dumped a ton of rain on Maryland as its remnants blew north today, and in the process it washed tons of sediment and mud into local streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

My colleague, Baltimore Sun columnist and gardening blogger Susan Reimer, spotted a muddy torrent washing off the construction site for the new Germantown elementary school in Annapolis this morning.  You can read her take on it here.  When Sun photographer Kim Hairston got there to document the runoff, Rob Savidge, environmental compliance inspector for the city of Annapolis, was wading through the caremel-colored curbside stream.

"The contractor hasn't done anything wrong," he said.  "The problem is we have had more than five inches of rain within a few hours, and it has overwhelmed the restraints."  The school site had three ponds dug to catch runoff, he noted.  A black plastic silt fence also can be seen lining the street.  

The ponds or sediment traps on the school site are only designed to hold the first inch of rain, and slowly release the water after the sediment settles out, he explained.  With five inches or more, they simply ran over. 

Environmentalists aren't buying that explanation, though.

Continue reading "Storm brings muddy washouts - inevitable?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

As Maryland embarks on an ambitious - and still-controversial - new effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay's depleted oysters, it seems that another of the bay's once-abundant filter feeders - the clam population - has pulled an even more dramatic disappearing act. 

That's the upshot of a sad, troubling report by Karl Blankenship in the current issue of Chesapeake Bay Journal. It's worth a read.  The bay's clams once filled an important niche in the ecosystem - removing silt and nutrients, providing food for cownose rays and blue crabs.  But the populations of larger clams have largely crashed.

Blankenship quotes scientists saying it's not clear what's behind the decline.  It may be a combination of factors - water quality, possibly overfishing, disease, storms even.   

Soft-shell clams weren't as popular a seafood as oysters from the bay, but I can remember when my family first moved to Maryland in the early 1980s, you could still find them on the menu at restaurants, especially on the Eastern Shore where we lived then. I had a few myself.

Now they're gone. There's no parallel effort to restore the bay's clam population yet, but maybe this will help provide a spark.

UPDATE: Former Sun colleague and Chesapeake Bay Foundation writer Tom Pelton reminds me he covered the clams' mysterious disappearance on CBF's Bay Daily blog over a year ago.  Go here to read it.  There's also a link there to a 2008 report to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documenting the soft-shells' demise. 

(Soft-shell clams harvested by dredging bay bottom, 1998 Baltimore Sun photo by Linda Coan)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Terrapin Run, the proposed western Maryland mega-development that became a lightning rod for debates about  the state's "smart growth" laws is back in court - this time in foreclosure proceedings, reports the Cumberland Times-News.

The paper reports that PNC Bank filed in Allegany County Circuit Court on Sept. 16 to foreclose against three business entities based in Columbia that were involved in the project.  The bank claims that the developers defaulted on loans and owed $5.1 million as of July 6.

The developers originally proposed in 2005 to build 4,300 homes and a small shopping center on 900-plus acres near Green Ridge State Forest in eastern Allegany, seen above.  That was eventually scaled back after negotiations with local officials to 360 homes in the first 10 years and no more than 900 in 20, the paper reports.

The approval of the project by the county's board of zoning appeals, though, was fought through the state's appellate courts, with the O'Malley administration joining environmentalists and local opponents in arguing it was counter to the state's Smart Growth laws and the county's own master plan.   The Court of Appeals ruled in 2008 that the county had acted properly, and need not follow its plan strictly - a decision that prompted state lawmakers to tighten the law in 2009.  Meanwhile, the real estate market had virtually collapsed.

The foreclosure isn't the only court action involving Terrapin Run.  The developers filed a $16 million damage suit against the state in 2009, saying state planners and environmental regulators had effectively blocked the project.  That case is pending, with a 2011 trial date, the Times-News reports.

(Michael Carnock, principal in Columbia-based firm planning to develop Terrapin Run, walks the property in 2005.  Baltimore Sun photo by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Environmental activists say they expect hundreds for a Chesapeake Bay cleanup rally Tuesday (9/28) evening at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

With federal and state officials mulling potentially costly and controversial new strategies for accelerating the bay restoration effort, activists hope to demonstrate public support for an aggressive cleanup schedule.  Speakers include city officials, heads of the National Aquarium and Maryland Science Center, the Waterfront Partnership, a business and civic group, as well as leaders of several environmental groups, including the Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice.

About 250 people have responded online that they intend to attend, said Tommy Landers, policy advocate for Environment Maryland, one of the groups sponsoring the rally, which begins at 6 p.m.

And if saving the bay isn't reason alone enough to turn out, there'll be a reception afterward at 7 p.m., featuring free food from Lebanese Taverna. The grub is provided courtesy of the Baltimore Water Alliance, the working name of the newly merged umbrella group for the Baltimore Harbor, Jones Falls, Herring Run and Gwynns Falls watershed associations, plus the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper.

To RSVP, or for directions and parking, go here.

(Rally in Annapolis in June pressing for stronger bay restoration efforts, Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

If you're one of those folks who's having a hard time letting go of summer, then head down to the Inner Harbor and look for the sea nettles hanging out there. Just don't go in the water.

A common summertime sight in the Chesapeake Bay from about Annapolis southwward, some stinging nettles have found their way into the northwest branch of the Patapsco River, where our dry weather has raised salinity of the water enough to make them feel at home.

For more on the harbor jellyfish invasion, check out my story today in The Baltimore Sun.

(Sea nettle in Inner Harbor, with World Trade Center and U.S.S.Constellation reflected on water's surface. Baltimore Sun photo by Karl Merton Ferron)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Old medicines sitting around the house are a health and safety hazard, and flushing them or tossing them in the trash is bad for the environment.

What to do? Take your unused or expired pills to one of 1,700 dropoff sites on Saturday that are primed to take prescription or over-the-counter medications and properly dispose of them.  No liquid meds, just pills or powders.

Getting rid of unused medications prevents intentional misuse or abuse, and it also guards against accidental poisoning of children and pets who may get into them.  Flushing them down the sink or toilet, or throwing them away, merely transfers the risk to the environment, as they may get into streams from wastewater treatment plants or seep out of landfills into ground water.  For more on how pharmaceuticals are showing up in the environment, go here.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is sponsoring the drug take-back, to be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  Most, if not all, of the drop-off sites are police stations.  There are plenty throughout the Baltimore-Washington area.  For one near you, go here and enter your ZIP code (the city-state menu doesn't seem to be working).

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

If you're not a football addict, or can squeeze it in around game time, Baltimore's merging watershed groups are offering residents a chance Sunday to help restore the harbor by buyng - and planting - native trees, shrubs and plants.

The Baltimore Water Alliance, the working name the groups have adopted for now, is having a sale at the Herring Run Nursery, 6131 Hillen Road, 21239, from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday (9/26).  There'll be more than 100 different native trees, shrubs and plants to choose from, plus some perennials.  If you can't make it this weekend, there'll also be sales Oct. 9 and 24.

Proceeds help underwrite the operations of the new alliance, which brings together the Herring Run, Jones Falls and Gwynns Falls watershed associations, plus the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper.  Coupons worth $10 to $25 discounts on trees available.  For information on stock and coupons, go here.

(Black-eyed susan, 2009 Baltimore Sun photo by Karl Merton Ferron)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Buy local, Chesapeake Bay, Events, News, Urban Issues
        

The Waterkeepers' quest to find out how well or poorly Maryland is riding herd on farm pollution is getting  pointed.  

The Assateague Coastkeeper has asked an Anne Arundel County judge to hold Maryland agriculture officials in contempt for not letting the environmental group see records documenting the state's enforcement and oversight of how some Eastern Shore farmers are handling their chicken manure.

In a petition filed Wednesday on behalf of the Worcester group, lawyers and students with the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic contend that Agriculture Secretary Earl "Buddy" Hance and other officials are violating the state's Public Information Act and an earlier ruling on similar issues by Arundel Circuit Court Judge William C. Mulford II.

Earlier in the week, the Waterkeeper Alliance, an umbrella watchdog group to which the coastkeeper belongs, called for Hance to resign, accusing the agriculture secretary of colluding with the Maryland Farm Bureau to prevent the records' release.

At issue is the state's 1997 "nutrient management" law that requires farmers to have and follow plans limiting how much animal manure and chemicals they put on their fields to fertilize their crops.  The law requires state officials to keep farmers' plans confidential, but Mulford ruled in a previous bid for farm pollution information by the keeper organization that the plans themselves could be released to the public, as long as the farmers' names and addresses were removed.

Continue reading "Keeper wants state sanctioned for withholding farm data" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Here's your chance to get back to the beach -- or at least to help keep it clean and safe, wherever you live. 

Saturday (9/25) is the 25th annual International Coastal Cleanup, when hundreds of thousands of volunteers pick up millions of tons of trash and debris that's either on the shore - or destined to wash up there, after it gets dropped in a parking lot, street or vacant lot.

Last year, nearly 500,000 volunteers worldwide collected more than 7 million pounds of trash, according to the Ocean Conservancy, which coordinates the cleanup efforts of local environmental groups.  Here in Maryland, about 45,000 individual pieces of debris got rounded up.

There are about two dozen cleanups planned across Maryland, from Ocean City and Assateague Island to Antietam Creek near Hagerstown.  Ten of them are in the Baltimore area - three in the city, two in Baltimore County, three in the Annapolis area and one each in Harford and Howard counties.  The city cleanups are at Fort McHenry, Fells Point and the Jones Falls trailhead.

Not all are on the waterfront, you say?  That's because the bulk of the trash that winds up on our beaches starts out being dropped or dumped inland, then gets washed into a nearby storm drain or stream and on into the ocean or Chesapeake Bay.

The cleanup by the manmade wetland at Fort McHenry - already has all the volunteers it can handle.  But the rest, I'm told still could use some volunteers.  The weather promises to be fair.  To find and sign up for a cleanup near you, go here.

(Cleanup by Fort McHenry, 2009. Photo by Geri Schlenoff, state coordinator, Int'l Coastal Cleanup)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Events, Parks, Volunteer
        

If you can get to Washington in the next few days, you'll get a chance to catch a striking photo exhibit on Capitol Hill depicting the Chesapeake Bay' s bounty and its troubles.

The International League of Conservation Photographers, in collaboration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, staged a RAVE this summer (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition), dispatching nine of its members across the bay watershed. A selection of their work - just 30 of the many pictures taken - are on display through Friday (Sept. 24).

The exhibit is free and open to the public, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate office building, at Constitution Avenue and 1st Street Northeast.  For those who can't get there, a portion of the exhibit can be seen on the CBF website.

(Photo courtesy Krista Schlyer)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

After discovering wastewater ponding and running off at two Southern Maryland developments using drip irrigation to dispose of their sewage, the state Department of the Environment has put a one-year hold on this alternative to septic tanks.  But activists contend the state's actions don't go far enough to ensure people and the Chesapeake Bay won't be put at risk.

Environment Secretary Shari T. Wilson recently blocked approvals of any more drip irrigation systems until next August to give her staff time to study the waste treatment method and how it should be used. But she balked at calls by 16 environmental and community groups to extend the moratorium for three to five years for more extended monitoring of existing systems' performance - and to include already approved but unconstructed systems.

In a letter earlier this month to Richard Klein, an environmental consultant working with the groups, Wilson said her inspectors had observed treated wastewater ponding on the surface of the ground and running off from Calvert Gateway and Marley Run developments in Calvert County.  

 She wrote that her staff had identified "operational problems," and that in one case the county's public works department was replacing a broken valve.  Operators would be required to keep better control on the flow of wastewater into the ground, which Wilson suggested was responsible for the ponding. 

But Wilson made clear in her letter that the state continued to view drip irrigation as a useful alternative waste treatment method, particularly in low-lying coastal areas where septic systems frequently fail.  The state has pemitted 13 of these systems so far.

Continue reading "MD takes breather on faulty waste systems" »

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

Saturday (Sept. 18) is the third annual "Trash Bash," an afternoon of music, food and drink on the Middle Branch of the Patpapsco River.

It's to benefit the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper , the nonprofit environmental group, in its efforts to improve water quality in Baltimore's harbor.

The party's from noon to 5 p.m. at Nick's Fish House, 2600 Insulator Drive. Tickets are $75 per person, which includes seafood buffet, oyster bar, drinks, music, boat tours and waterfront views galore. There'll also be a silent auction.

For tickets, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has panned Pennsylvania's draft plan for helping to restore the troubled estuary.

The Harrisburg office of the Annapolis-based environmental group issued a brief statement Wednesday criticizing Pennsylvania's "roadmap" for how the state would curb water-fouling nitrogen and phosphorus getting into the Susquehanna River, source of half the fresh water and much of the pollution reaching the bay.

The foundation said the state's plan is "largely a summary of programs and initiatives that already exist."  The state's blueprint "does not clearly articulate the strategy, program,s resources and timing to be employed" to meet Pennsylvania's obligation to share in the cleanup effort, the group said. 

Maryland, Pennsylvania and the other four states that drain into the bay, plus the District of Columbia, submitted "watershed implementation plans" to the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month supposedly spelling out what they would do over the next seven years to help improve the Chesapeake's water quality.  The federal agency plans to use those to draw up by the end of the year a "total maximum daily load" -- a pollution "diet" in less bureaucratic terms -- that would require each state to reduce the amounts of water-fouling nitrogen and phosphorus getting into the bay and its tributaries. 

EPA officials have been officially mum as they review the states' plans, but environmental groups and others have given them less than glowing reviews so far, finding them long on verbiage but short on specifics.   The bay foundation's critique of Pennsylvania's plan is the latest in that vein.

John T. Hines, deputy secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, defended the state's plan as a work in progress when asked last week about earlier criticism of it from the bay foundation.

"Does it solve every issue? Absolutely not," he said at a a meeting of the Chesapeake Bay Commission in Lancaster. "Does it give us the foundation on which to build? Absolutely."

States have until the end of November to refine and finalize their plans, after hearing from EPA and the public. Should EPA deem the states' proposals insufficient to make the needed pollution reductions, the federal government could clamp down on new or existing industries and municipalities in a state. 

(Susquehanna River at Holtwood dam, 2008 Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Three companies and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation have teamed up to offer mid-Atlantic natural gas consumers a way to offset the climate impacts of their energy use while reducing truck traffic and also helping the bay.

The effort, dubbed CleanSteps Carbon Offsets, offers offsets to new and renewing natural gas customers of Washington Gas Energy Services.  The venture, involving Washington Gas Energy Services, Arkansas-based freight shipping firm J.B. Hunt, and Sterling Planet, a Georgia-based clean energy company.

Under the deal announced this morning (Sept. 13) at the bay foundation's Annapolis headquarters, all WGES residential and small business gas customers automatically get 5 percent offsets when they sign up or renew. But they'll also have the option of purchasing up to 100 percent offsets - something that WGES President Harry Warrent estimates would cost $12 per month for the average residential household.

The carbon offsets are to come from "clean air projects that result in greenhouse gas reductions, as well as other local and regional benefits," according to a news release.  Initially, though, the offsets will come via J.B. Hunt. Senior vice president Gary Whicker said the company would switch shipments from tractor-trailers to rail, which he said would reduce the amount of energy consumed and greenhouse gases released for ever ton shipped that way.

As WGES customers get enrolled in the new offset program, the Washington-based energy company and Sterling Planet will contribute to a new Carbon Reduction Fund, which would be managed and used by the bay foundation to plant trees along water ways and help farmers reduce runoff of fertilizer into the bay.  Those contributions are expected to grow to $200,000 a year.

Bay Foundation President William C. Baker called the partnership "exciting and innovative" and said it presents a way to help clean up the air and water regionally while also doing something about global climate change.  Baker predicted that projects underwritten by the fund should reduce the amount of water-fouling nitrogen getting into the bay by 40-60,000 pounds a year.  He had no comparable estimates on carbon reductions, saying "we're going to learn as we go along," but suggested they'd likely be on the order of thousands of tons a year.

For more, go here.  Or to see a streaming video of the annoucement, go here.

(2005 AP photo traffic congestion on Interstate 95 near Aberdeen)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

You won't get them here, but you will if you hustle over to a "growshop" in Baltimore this evening (Sept. 13).

Halle Van der Gaag, director of the Jones Falls Watershed Association and Celeste Amato, director of Baltimore city's Cleaner Greener initiative, will talk about storm-water management and provide the aforementioned top 10 tips on making our streams, harbor and Bay cleaner.

The session, from 6 - 8 p.m., is at Puffs & Pastries, 830 W. 36th St. 21211. It's put on by Baltimore Green Works, Parks & People Foundation and the city's Department of Recreation and Parks.   (And thanks to Urbanite for the reminder to this forgetful blogger!)

For more information or to RSVP, contact Abby Cocke at 410.448.5663 x122 or abby.cocke@parksandpeople.org

(Rain barrel installation at St. John's College, Annapolis, 2009 Baltimore Sun photo by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, DIY, Events, News, Tips, Urban Issues, Volunteer
        

As government at all levels girds to increase efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay, one of the biggest challenges to improving water quality is the continuing growth of people living within the six-state watershed.

While many see a growing population as a symbol of economic stability - see my prior post - the newcomers consume more land, drive more and produce more waste and pollution. Indeed, all the bay cleanup efforts to date have done little more than prevent it from getting worse in the face of an expanding population, now 17 million and counting.

So how do we expect to revive the bay's vitality - and maintain it - as long as more and more people flock to its watershed? A forum Friday organized by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future tackles that question.

Speakers include Brad Heavner, state director of Environment Maryland, Dr. Brian Schwartz, professor of environmental health sciences at Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and Tom Horton, author of multiple books on the Chesapeake, former Sun reporter and columnist, and an advocate for a "no-growth" policy to preserve the bay.

The session, open to the public, will be from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Sheldon Hall, Hopkins School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street.  For directions and more, go here.

(2006 Bay Bridge walk, Baltimore Sun photo by Jerry Jackson.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Maryland, the District of Columbia and the other five states that drain into the Chesapeake Bay released drafts last week of their plans for accelerating cleanup of the troubled estuary. 

Reaction to the restoration "roadmaps" has been slow in coming, partly because of the long holiday weekend, but also because those who've plowed into the nearly 900 pages combined have had a hard time making out exactly what the states are pledging to do when.

"It's so overwhelming that no one can decipher it except those whose ox is getting gored," said Rena Steinzor, a University of Maryland environmental law professor who is head of the Center for Progressive Reform, a Washington think tank.

One thing that is clear is that no state has made a firm pledge to spend more to complete the restoration, even though they're clearly talking about doing more.  All, to varying degrees, seem to look to the federal government to provide the needed largess - or, in Maryland's case, simply to say options are being considered for raising additional funds to pay for upgrading sewage treatment plants and for controlling polluted runoff from city and suburban streets.

There are a lot of good ideas," Tommy Landers, policy advocate for Environment Maryland, said of this state's 170-page plan. But, he added, "it needs more detail about how they're going to enforce pretty much everything they're thinking about doing."

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation called Virginia's 117-page plan "stunningly deficient" in laying out how the state would reduce its share of the bay's nutrient polllution, particularly from farms and urban areas.

New York and Virginia, meanwhile, challenge the scientific basis for the pollution-reduction targets they've been given by the Environmental Protection Agency, and even the federal government's legal authority to impose them.  And both say they lack the resources to make the needed reductions anyway, so the federal government will have to pony up if it expects them to be done by 2025, the latest deadline in the dragged-out restoration effort.

It'll be interesting to see how the EPA handles the challenges presented it by the states' plans and comes up with its own draft of a baywide pollution "diet" by Sept. 24.  There'll be a series of public meetings in every state in late September through October, where people who've plowed through the various plans are invited to give their feedback and suggestions.  Go here to find the scehdule.

(AP photo of Katie Blann, 4, being washed by a wave from the Chesapeake Bay at Sandy Point State Park during Labor Day weekend.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

If we all put our heads together, can we save the Bay? What about if we put all our computers together?

Computing giant IBM is committing its "World Community Grid," a network of 1.5 million PCs run by 600,000 volunteers, to help tackle water problems around the world, including the challenge of restoring the Chesapeake Bay.

IBM will lend its grid power to the Bay simulation game that the University of Virginia is developing, which attempts to model the impact on the Chesapeake of decisions by farmers, developers, fishers and others. UVa has tested its Bay Game with groups of students, policy makers and other stakeholders.

IBM spokesman Ari Fishkind said the combined computing power of its grid - driven by PCs tapped when not in use by their owners -  will speed up the number-crunching behind the many scenarios needed to make the Bay game realistic and responsive to the cumulative impact of many different decisions being made at once.

"It's giving them power that's equivalent to a supercomputer, and will help them create the necessary, underlying computer models in months, not decades," Fishkind writes in an email.

The company's also pledging its grid to help Chinese scientists develop techniques for filtering pollutants from water, and to aid Brazilian researchers in finding new treatments for schistosomiasis, a debilitating water-borne disease that kills thousands annually and infects an estimated 200 million worldwide.

Anyone with a PC can join IBM's World Community Grid and contribute to these projects or to others devoted to developing cleaner energy or even curing cancer. For more, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Wonders never cease. As Maryland's primary election looms next week, candidates for local and statewide office are actually talking about the environment in their TV commercials and political mailings.

The latest, most visible example, is the ad from former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. that debuted on Facebook/YouTube on Sunday and will begin airing on local TV stations later this month. The 30-second spot, "Let's Get to Work," doesn't make any specific claims or promises, just flashes through a series of reasons why the Republican candidate says he's running - including the Bay.

The campaign issues Ehrlich has been hammering throughout the summer are mentioned, including fixing the state's budget woes, helping small businesses and ensuring excellent schools for all. But the brief litany ends with what appears to be a waterman saying "Protect the Bay - Finally."

The governor's race isn't the only one where the Bay or the environment are getting some attention. In the Baltimore County executive's race, Democratic Councilman Kevin Kamenetz is hitting his primary rival, Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder, for votes he made years ago as a legislator on pesticides and bayfront develoment. Bartenfelder has responded with his own ad saying Kamenetz is misrepresenting his environmental record.

Such green-themed campaign ads are remarkable because polling routinely shows environmental issues aren't high on most voters' minds, whether in national, state or local races. Other than limited, targeted appeals to devoted greenies, candidates rarely bring up the environment on their own.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did either Ehrlich or his Democratic opponent, Martin O'Malley, talk much about the Bay in campaign ads or literature four years ago? (UPDATE: Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell reminds me that one of the then-incumbent governor's commercials four years ago did indeed talk about the Bay, and the Bay Restoration Fund (aka flush fee) he backed to upgrade sewage plants.) This year, though, seems to be different.

Continue reading "A political first? The Bay as a campaign issue!" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

The state's long-debated Chesapeake Bay oyster restoration effort gets officially under way today, with the Department of Natural Resources accepting applications to lease bay bottom to raise oysters privately.

My colleague, outdoors writer Candy Thomson, reports that the first application arrived at 7:15 a.m., and by 9 a.m., five bids had rolled in. Go here to read the rest of her blog post about the effort, which conservationists embrace and watermen continue to oppose.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Not one, but two big bull sharks turned up this week in the Potomac River - prompting the usual media focus on how dangerous they can be to humans. This time, though, the tables were turned, and the Chesapeake Bay may be the poorer for it.

Willy Dean, a commercial fisherman in St. Mary's County, put a net near the mouth of the Potomac earlier this week to collect some cownose rays for biologists to study, according to The Washington Post. He got more than he bargained for when he found an 8-foot bull shark in the net.

"When I first seen it, it was like 'Jaws' -- we need a bigger boat!" Dean told The Post. He said he spent two hours trying to wrestle the shark (seen above) into his 22-foot boat.  The next day, another St. Mary's fisherman, Thomas Crowder, reported finding another 8-foot bull shark in his net, the Post reported.

Sharks aren't uncommon in the Chesapeake Bay, especially in Virginia waters. But bull sharks have been sighted before - a 420-pound, 8 1/2-footer was caught near the Bay Bridge in 1987, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Bull sharks are said to be among the more aggressive predators of the sea, figuring in many reports of attacks on humans. They're also apparently more wide-ranging than most, capable of tolerating fresh water.  But there've been no reported shark attacks on people in the bay. And in this case, neither shark survived its encounter with humans.

These sharks aren't classified as endangered, so why lament their loss?  As BayDaily blogger Tom Pelton pointed out, there've been sharp declines in shark populations, largely the result of fishing pressure. Biologists in 2007 reported a more than 99 percent drop in numbers of bull sharks, among others.

The loss of such top predators has ripple effects in nature. One scientists have noted is an explosion of cownose rays and other creatures on which sharks feed. The kite-shaped rays feast on the Bay's shellfish.  So, if only for the sake of our struggling clams and oysters, let's hope there are more sharks out there - and that we can steer clear of each other.

(Photo courtesy Buzz's Marina)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The defoliation of a four-mile stretch of roadside along the heavily traveled Jones Falls Expressway connecting the city with the Beltway has highlighted the extent to which exotic, invasive plants have taken over our landscape.

As I reported in The Baltimore Sun, some environmentalists aren't tickled with the State Highway Administration's decision to spray herbicide on the overgrown vines smothering the trees along the JFX, rather than hack them out manually. They aren't all wild, either, about the state's choice of trees to replace the ones it's cutting down.  SHA points out the weed killer it used is "practically non-toxic" and that the trees it's planting are to help screen the highway from nearby homes, not just to recreate a "natural" ecosystem.

But on one thing, everyone agrees: Invasive plants are a widespread problem, crowding out native vegetation and depriving native insects, birds and animals of their customary food and habitat.  The home team needs help, and it's too big a problem for government alone to deal with.

Experts advise that the problem often starts at home - our homes.  Many exotic invasives got their start as plants bought from a nursery to spruce up a yard or garden.  But true to their name, invasives don't stay where originally planted - they spread readily, and are hard to kill or contain once established.  That's why they advise us to be more careful about what we plant and vigilant about rooting out invasives in our midst.

For help in identifying what's native and what's not - and especially, what's invasive -- you can consult the Maryland Invasive Species Council, or the Maryland Native Plant Society (look under "Resources).  Also the Chesapeake Ecology Center in Annapolis and the Adkins Arboretum on the Eastern Shore.  

The Nature Conservancy has a handy "weed-watcher manual."  If you want to consult with a real person, there's always the University of Maryland Extension's Home and Garden Information Center.  And if you want to go native, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a guidebook on native plants for wildlife habitat and conservation landscaping in the Chesapeake Bay region. 

Any other favorite resources on invasives and native plants?  Please share!

(Baltimore Sun photo of defoliated stretch of Jones Falls Expressway (I-83), by Karl Merton Ferron)  

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

It looks like all the cars tearing around the Inner Harbor next Labor Day weekend won't be racing just for the checkered flag - some at least will be trying to outdo each other in hybrid and alternative-fueled road rockets.

The American LeMans Series plans to stage a race here the day before Charm City hosts its first IndyCar Grand Prix race, Don Markus reports today in The Baltimore Sun.

An official announcement is planned on Wednesday, but a spokesman for the racing organization confirmed it would be bringing its act here.

Some may wonder how a bunch of cars burning rubber and fuel can be all that "green." But the American LeMans Series, or ALMS, pits race teams against each other not just for speed, but for fuel efficiency.  Cars use one of five alternative fuels or energy sources, and compete for points on fuel efficiency.  As I reported last year, the US import of European Le Mans style racing went "green" in 2008, meeting criteria set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department.

Of course, that'll be small comfort to those put out by the disruption of downtown traffic for the racing - or, for that matter, the yearlong street repairs already under way to prepare for the three-day event.   But hey, it's another excuse to give B'more's underused public transportation system a try, right?

(American Le Mans Series' 12 Hours of Sebring race March 20 in Sebring, Fla. Photo by Steve Nesius/Associated Press)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Many, maybe most, folks picture shining watery vistas, boats and blue crabs when they think of the Chesapeake Bay. Some talented photographers concerned about the environment have been exploring the bay this summer and zooming in on scenes of the bay's resilient beauty - and its distress at the hands of human abuse and neglect.

The International League of Conservation Photographers, in collaboration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, has been conducting a Bay RAVE since July.  That stands for "rapid assessment visual expedition."  In essence, green-oriented photogs blitz an ecosystem over a short period of time to take its pulse visually and to document the issues or threats facing it. 

Photographers have focused so far on the Anacostia River in Washington, Hampton Roads and the James River in Virginia and eastern Pennsylvania, where acid mine drainage fouls streams that ultimately drain into the bay. They've got a blog, and one Washington photographer, Krista Schlyer, whose pictures on the Anacostia are shown here, has even shot a video explaining her involvement in this RAVE. 

(She produced some striking pictures in a similar multimedia project I blogged about before documenting the collateral impact on wildlife migration of the wall erected along the US-Mexico border to deter illegal human immigrants.)

Working with the foundation, the photographers plan to mount an exhibit in September on Capitol Hill in Washington, where they hope their visual media will garner support for passage of new Bay cleanup legislation.  Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md, has shepherded his bill out of committee, where it awaits a full Senate debate, possibly this fall.  Farmers oppose his bill, though, as do some environmentalists, who contend it was watered down to win Republican support. The foundation, though, still strongly supports the bill.

More on that later.  Whatever the issues with the legislation, the images you can see here and on the website are compelling visual evidence of the vital but troubled relationship between the bay and the people who live around it. 

(Photos by permission Krista Schlyer)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore's Back River is tons cleaner, for now.   A yearlong community cleanup effort has netted 2,000 tires and 170 tons of debris -- including eight massive conduit pipes, Mary Gail Hare reports in The Baltimore Sun.

The pipes, four feet in diameter and weighing hundreds of pounds each, apparently were washed down Herring Run more than three miles from a bridge construction project during a torrential downpour nearly two weeks ago. 

Brian Schilpp, a county teacher who is coordinating the cleanup campaign, sent the above photo of two of them, trapped along with lots of other trash and debris by a boom Baltimore County has strung across the upper reach of the river.

"For people who think a tire can't float, think about the water power that pushed 20-foot-long pipes downstream," Schilpp told Hare.

County officials honored Schilpp and other volunteers, as well as four college students who spent the summer cleaning debris from the river and working to organize the community.  I watched the kids at work one sweltering morning in July, and I can tell you, they earned their minimum wage many times over!  For them, though, it was about more than just the money, but a chance to do some good.

It's a great facelift for one of the most degraded rivers in the Chesapeake Bay, which lately has been showing some signs of life.  But unless something's done to curb the careless littering - and outright dumping - it'll only be a temporary improvement.  Here's hoping this leads to more permanent solutions, and not just another round of trash cleanups.
 

(Photo courtesy Brian Schilpp)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Maryland health officials are warning people to take precautions if they swim or fish in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, saying that the summer's heat and the bay's pollution have made water conditions ripe for growth of dangerous vibrio bacteria.

Naturally occurring, vibrio can cause gastrointestinal distress and nasty skin infections — and they can be deadly for people with compromised immune systems, including those with cancer or diabetes.  The bacteria thrive in warmer waters, which we've had with this record-hot summer, and in waters enriched by nutrients, as the Bay is.

There've been 24 cases of vibrio reported in Maryland so far this year. close to the average annual count of 30.  Though none of the cases this year has been fatal, there have been eight hospitalizations, and there've been seven deaths attributed to vibrio since 2007.  Officials note that the season this year is far from over and many cases likely go unreported.

The state health alert was issued this week after the Patuxent Riverkeeper, Fred Tutman, drew media attention to a handfull of cases in Calvert County.  Those cases were first reported by Rona Kobell, a former Sun reporter, on a new blog produced by The Bay Journal.  (Quite a splash for a  new blog!)  The county health officer, who initially pooh-poohed the number of cases there, now apparently plans to post warnings at local beaches.

Continue reading "Heat, pollution make Bay ripe for dangerous bacteria" »

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Then there were two. Three days after the Waterfront Partnership towed its patchwork floating wetland to a mooring off the World Trade Center (seen below), the National Aquarium put a second one in the Inner Harbor between Piers 3 & 4.

This one looks a bit different.  The aquarium's is almost kidney shaped and solid, compared with the checkerboard array of the earlier floating wetland. Grasses and plants poke out of a floating bed of plastic mesh that looks a bit like a Brillo pad.

But the intent is the same - to see how these small patches of vegetation might soak up some of the nutrients fouling the water, and provide shelter and living space for fish and other aquatic critters.

The platform of the 200-square-foot wetland was made in Utah, of all places, then shipped in pieces across country. 

Aquarium staff assembled it Wednesday morning and then, with the help of local student volunteers, planted a mix of native salt marsh plants: smooth cordgrass, softstem bulrush, common three-square, seaside goldenrod and hibiscus. 

The porous plastic base will allow water to reach the roots, and conversely let the roots grow down and out to the water, explained David Nemerson, a conservation biologist with the aquarium.

Scientists with the University of Maryland plan to monitor the two wetlands to see what impact they may have on water quality and what kind of aquatic life they support.

"We're already learning things we didn't expect," said Dan Terlizzi, a UM water quality specialist who's based at the Columbus Center nearby.  He said tests of the wetland medium have found it quickly "colonizes" with bacteria, algae, worms and other tiny aquatic creatures.  That unseen life below the surface can soak up as much or more nutrients than the wetland vegetation poking out of the top.

These two wetlands are among the first steps of a campaign launched earlier this year by the Waterfront Partnership to make the harbor swimmable and fishable by 2020. 

That's a tall order, especially for these tiny patches of green. Dissolved oxygen readings in the vicinity have been quite low this summer, making it a stressful environment for fish (though aquarium staff say they still see plenty in the water around their facility.) 

No one thinks these tiny swatches of floating wetlands can make much of a dent.  But advocates say the aim of thes wetlands is to try them out, then seek to expand them assuming they've proven themselves. 

And as we noted here earelier, their greater value may lie in getting visitors to the Inner Harbor to look more closely at the water, to look beyond the trash floating in it and maybe think about the harbor in a different way.

Click here to see more photos of the Aquarium's wetland coming together. 

(Top photo courtesy National Aquarium)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, News, Urban Issues
        

B'more's green scene has arrived. Grist, the cheeky online journal of environmental news and commentary, has a piece saying Charm City's become a hotbed of urban agriculture.

"Baltimore's urban agriculture movement has quietly taken off in the past couple of years, with the twin forces of sustainability and economic benefits providing the boost," Christine Chenot writes.

She ticks off a list of initiatives, several of which you may already have read about in The Sun.  There's the Virtual Supermarket project, for instance, a partnership between the city and Santoni's supermarket, in which residents without grocery stores nearby can have healthy food delivered to their neighborhood library branch, where they can pay for it with cash, credit card or food stamps.

The Grist story also spotlights Great Kids Farm, the city schools enterprise in Catonsville that teaches kids how to grow their own healthy foods.  Then there's Real Food Farm, (shown at left) the hoop-greenhouse operation at Clifton Park, and the Hamilton Crop Circle, (pictured at top) the northeast Baltimore initiative planting rooftop gardens on restaurants and stores.  And more.

Of course, teaching kids to grow and eat healthy foods is no substitute for learning to read and write.  Nor will fresh veggies alone solve the city's crime and poverty.  But advocates say they sure can't hurt, bringing people together and empowering them.  

(Baltimore Sun photos by Kim Hairston and Lloyd Fox)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

People living downwind of cement plants like the one outside Baltimore should breathe easier, as the federal government has ordered major reductions in emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from them.

The Environmental Protection Agency made final Monday rules for cement kilns, imposing the first mercury pollution limits for existing facilities while tightening emission curbs on new plants.  When fully in force by 2013, the EPA's action should result in a 92 percent reduction nationwide in releases of mercury, a widespread fish contaminant that can damage children's developing brains. 

The rules also should lead to similarly large drops in emissions of harmful fine particles, acid gases and other pollutants, EPA projects.

A Portland cement industry group warned that the pollution limits would require US plants to spend "several billion" dollars collectively on controls and could force some older facilities to close.  But EPA estimates the health benefits far outweigh the costs.

The new rules pose no major problems for Lehigh Cement Co.'s plant in Union Bridge, according to plant manager Kent Martin.  Indeed, the Carroll County plant expects to achieve the new mercury limit a year earlier than EPA requires, he said in an email, because of a pollution-reduction accord the company struck last year with the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Continue reading "Cementing cleaner air" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The number of wetlands in Baltimore's Inner Harbor doubled over the weekend, as the Waterfront Partnership installed the first of two small floating marshes.  It was a welcome touch of "good" green in a water body plagued at times by algae blooms. 

As Jamie Smith Hopkins reported in The Baltimore Sun, a batch of 11 rectangular floats holding lush-looking grasses got towed Sunday from their assembly point at the Living Classrooms Foundation to their mooring by the World Trade Center.  The frames got their bouyancy from discarded plastic bottles collected from the harbor and stuffed into mesh tubes by student volunteers. 

Aiding in the design and plantings was Biohabitats Inc. The project was funded with air-pollution settlement funds provided by the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper.

Another floating wetland, this one put together by the National Aquarium, is to take up position  Wednesday. The only other wetland in the Inner Harbor is similarly tiny, a strip of vegetation along the Lancaster Street shoreline at the Living Classrooms Foundation.

Though too small to do much for improving the harbor's water quality, scientists will monitor the floating wetlands over the next year or so to see how they fare.   If they survive and seem to be soaking up at least some of the nutrients feeding the harbor's algae blooms, they're likely to spawn other floating wetlands. 

In the meantime, they're great conversation starters for discussing the harbor's water-quality problems and the partnership's ambitious goal of making the harbor swimmable by 2020.  Stop by and check them out.

(Baltimore Sun photos by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

This summer's blistering heat apparently has left no corner of Maryland untouched, even the coolest one.  A two-week fish kill at Deep Creek Lake is being linked to unusually warm water temperatures stressing the fish, making them vulnerable to infection.

Though the die-off appears to be weather-related, I reported in The Baltimore Sun today (Aug. 6) that it's prompting some residents and others to suggest it's time to take a closer look at how the lake is faring as more vacation and retirement homes pop up along its 65-mile shoreline, and more boats crowd onto its 3,900 acres of water. 

Even those most worried say they still love the place, but are concerned it may be starting to show some wear and tear from too much love.

Friends of Deep Creek Lake has organized a forum from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday (Aug. 7) at Garrett 8 Cinemas on US 219.

Scientists are expected to be on hand to discuss plans to do a "report card" on the lake, similar to the ones done annually for the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. There's also supposed to be a discussion of submerged aquatic grasses in the lake, of possibly dredging some shallow coves and of how much the lake's water is affected by phosphorus from farm and lawn fertilizer, soil erosion and other sources.

What's your take on the lake?  When was the last time you were there?   

(Baltimore Sun photos by Barbara Haddock Taylor)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Chesapeake Stories: Hunter Harris from Chesapeake Bay Program on Vimeo

It's hard to get a grasp of how much the Chesapeake Bay watershed has changed over time, especially from the ground. But aerial photographer Hunter Harris of Easton has documented it as only the birds see it.

Harris, owner of Aloft Aerial Photography, talks about his work and what he's seen from above in this short video filmed by Matt Rath of the Chesapeake Bay Program.   You can get an idea from his pictures, when posted alongside historical shots of the same area, how much the bay landscape has changed - more houses, of course, but also more trees, in some places at least.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels also has a video on its website about an exhibit of Harris' photos that it had on display last year.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Tired of your gas-hog lawn mower? If you move fast, you can trade it in next weekend at Camden Yards for a battery-powered electric grass cutter.

In a "special arrangement" with the Maryland Department of the Environment and Clean Air Partners, Marylanders can buy a deeply discounted Neuton lawn mower.  You could save up to $324 on a 19-inch bagger-mulcher job that lists for $499.

If you bite, you'll do your small bit to reduce summer smog, as the old mowers get scrapped and recycled.  Gas mowers account for 5 percent of all air pollution in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates.  And an hour of mowing with one produces as much smog-forming pollution as driving 350 miles. 

This green mower may not appeal to all lawn lickers, though.  The Neuton CE 6.4 got a so-so review from Consumer Reports.  Ease of use and handling were pluses, but bagging and mulching "only fair."  CR also found the battery on its tested model only lasted 45 minutes - not suitable for a big yard.  There are other cordless electric mowers CR rated more highly, made by the usual major mower manufacturers.  But then again, you probably won't be able to find one new at the prices offered under this deal.

To get in on the "great mower exchange," participants need to register online, then bring their old gas mower (and the $$) to Camden Yards Lot C on Saturday, Aug. 14 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  The company's only selling 1,000 of its mowers, so it's first come first served. 

(Neuton photo) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Last year it was a wandering manatee playing peekaboo in the Chesapeake Bay. This year, a Baltimore teen-ager hooks a caiman in the Patapsco. I know it's been hot enough lately to make a Floridian feel right at home, but really, is this weird, or what?

Erick Hammack Jr., 16, of Pumphrey, told the Sun's Frank Roylance he snagged the 2 1/2 to 3 foot caiman - a cousin of the alligator - on a line baited with chicken wing. The critter turned up in a pond off Belle Grove Road in Patapsco Valley State Park.

Climate scientists have predicted Maryland could eventually warm up enough to rival Daytona for hosting spring break. But this wayward tropical reptile has a more mundane reason for showing up here, most likely. Even though alligators and caimans are illegal to have as pets in Maryland, people bring them in anyway, it seems.  Authorities say they find one or two in the wild practically every year, released (also illegally) after the owner decides the it's grown too big or nasty to keep.

At least it wasn't another snakehead, the toothy Asian fish that sparked a media frenzy several summers ago.

(Photo by Thea Hammack)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

With an attempt expected this week to permanently plug the BP drilling rig oil leak, scientists report that the zone of low-oxygen water that forms off the Louisiana coast every summer is one of the largest ever measured.

More than 7,700 square miles - an area roughly the size of Massachusetts - has too little oxygen to on the bottom to support fishing or shrimping, according to a release today by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.

A larger than usual hypoxic zone had been predicted this year from nutrient pollution washing into the Gulf from the Mississippi River watershed. But researchers were unsure what if any impact the massive oil leak might have.

Instead of the usual continuous band of low-oxygen water along the coast, scientists found a patchwork this summer.  They attributed the pattern to tropical storms stirring the water and mixing in oxygen.

Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the marine consortium and chief scientist aboard the research vessel Pelican that sampled the northern Gulf waters, said low-oxygen waters were mapped all the way west to Galveston, Texas. She said the total hypoxic zone might actually have been the largest ever, had scientists had time to fully map it.

(Hypoxic zone map by LUMCON)

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

Speaking of young people doing good green work, 305 of them "graduated" last week from Maryland's Civic Justice Corps, after five weeks of park restoration work, team building and learning about the natural world.

Five-member crews did trail maintenance, tree planting, beach cleanups and other restoration work at Gunpowder, Patapsco Valley, North Point, Assateague, Seneca Creek and Susquehanna state parks, plus Merkle Wildlife Sanctuary.  It wasn't all chores, as they also got time to hike, camp, canoe and do some artwork.

The program, an offshoot of the Maryland Conservation Corps, provides paid summer work and learning opportunities for at-risk youths from Baltimore city and elsewhere.  Now in its third year, it's nearly tripled in size.  The Sun's outdoors writer, Candus Thomson, highlighted their work recently in a nice feature story. 

(Baltimore Sun photo by Candus Thomson)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

On hot days like we've had this summer, I like to think back to the refreshing dips I've taken over the years in the Chesapeake Bay. I'm older, wiser -- and a little disgusted -- to learn now that some beaches and recreation spots around the Bay are about as safe to swim in after a hard rain as an unflushed toilet.

That's what reporters at the University of Maryland found recently when they sampled seven spots on five rivers that feed the Bay.

Three of the seven had bacteria levels that exceeded Maryland and Virginia standards for safe recreation, they reported, while five were higher than the safe level for swimming.  Two - Savage Park in Howard County and Middle Branch Park in Baltimore - had bacteria counts far worse than an unflushed toilet they also sampled.

The water sampling is part of a multimedia report, Bay on the Brink, being produced by the reporters, who are fellows with News21, a consortium of journalism schools. (Full disclosure: I'm a consultant to News21 and advising the fellows in their reporting.) 

Sally Hornor, a biology professor at Anne Arundel Community College, analyzed water samples taken by the reporters.  She points out that storm-water pollution is the usual culprit when bacteria counts soar in open waters.  A hard rain washes litter and a host of unseen contaminants - animal waste, food scraps, sewage overflows - off streets and parking lots into storm drains and nearby streams.

There are no official swimming beaches on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, and I've never seen anyone taking a dip there.  The city health department advises against swimming anywhere in the harbor or the rivers that feed into it.  But there are crabbers and fishers at Middle Branch park, and the river there is used regularly by members of the Baltimore Rowing Club.

Swimming is off limits at Savage Park on the Middle Patuxent River, too.  But as the photo above shows, it's not enforced, and it's a popular cooling-off spot on hot days.

To be sure, there are officially sanctioned bathing beaches around the Bay, and local health authorities regularly test them.  They're closed when bacteria levels are unsafe - most likely after a heavy rain.   But even if there's no warning sign on the beach, it's a good precaution to stay out of the water for at least several hours after a downpour. 

(Photo by Allison Frick, courtesy of News21)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

Floating wetlands, green roofs, porous pavement and "living" retaining walls.  Those are just some of the environmentally beneficial things engineers and scientists trotted out this week at "Technologies That Can Save the Bay," a one-day seminar in Annapolis put on by the Maryland Technology Development Corp. and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.   The Daily Record published a story about it you can read here.

Several of the ideas presented are already in use or being tried out.  The Inner Harbor, for instance, is getting a pair of small floating wetlands.  It's hoped they'll soak up at least a little of the nutrients that fuel algae blooms there and restore a bit of the long-lost wildlife habitat along the water's walled edge.  In an ironic twist, one of the islands (a piece of which is pictured above) gets its buoyancy from some of the trash that's littering the harbor - discarded plastic bottles that have been collected from a storm drain outfall.

Such ideas alone won't cure what ails the bay - a choking surplus of nutrients and sediment from (treated) sewage discharges, from farm and urban and suburban runoff, and from the fallout of air pollution from power plants and vehicle exhaust.  But they can help, and the bay needs all of that it can get. 

Do you have any bright ideas you think can give the bay a lift?  Here's your chance to exercise your inner inventor.  Send them in, we'll air them here, and let you vote on which you think shine the brightest.  

(Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As of July 1, Maryland stores are no longer supposed be selling dishwasher detergent containing phosphorus.   The ban was enacted three years ago to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay, with the effective date delayed until this month to give detergent manufacturers time to reformulate their products.

But an enterprising Annapolis reporter found more than a week after the ban took effect that half the 10 stores she checked in the capital area still had some of the banned soap on their shelves.  Finish (formerly Electra-Sol) Powerballs containing phosphorus were found at Giant, Safeway and Shoppers stores there, and one Safeway had old Cascade products containing phosphorus.

Hats off to Pamela Wood of the Annapolis Capital for watchdogging this.   

Store managers contacted were quoted saying they'd promptly remove the banned items.  Businesses could be fined up to $1,000 for selling, distributing or making a detergent containing phosphorus.  There's also apparently a fine of up to $100 for using the wrong detergent, though the Maryland Department of the Environment isn't about to demand to check what's under your sink. 

Continue reading "MD stores still carrying banned dish soap?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Environmentalists mostly still seem to be backing Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin's watered-down Chesapeake Bay cleanup bill, despite the concessions he made to get it out of committee a little over a week ago.

One who takes a dimmer view - or who is perhaps less shy about voicing it publicly - is Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Steinzor, in a post to the center's blog, contends that Cardin gave away too much in haggling with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to gain concessions for farmers in the bay watershed. She calls the resulting compromise "deeply flawed" and "an inexplicable throwback" that gives the Environmental Protection Agency no stronger authority to impose "total maximum daily loads," commonly known as "pollution diets," on the states and communities that drain into the bay and its tributaries.

Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky countered that the legislation still "explicitly recognizes" EPA's authority to set pollution diets for the bay and all the tributaries.  And among other things, it also imposes for the first time a drop-dead deadline on having all the needed cleanup actions in place by 2025.  Even with revisions, Walitsky contends the bill "represents a huge step forwrard for restoration efforts." 

"If indiividuals take the time to review the reported bill carefully, we think that they will agree," Cardin's spokeswoman concluded.

Of course, strong or not, to do anything the bill has to pass both Senate and  House. That remains very much up in the air this election year.  To follow the bill, and see the revised text when it's available, go here.

(AP photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Talk about a nasty job that somebody's got to do! Four area college students who may have dreamed earlier of spending their summers in other ways are pulling tires and debris out of Back River instead - and finding it satisfying, if a bit mucky.

"I wanted to feel like I was making a difference," said Molly Williams, 21, of Cockeysville.

The difference is a huge pile of tires and garbage bags full of other debris that they've collected, with the help of some old-timers (aka age 30 and above) and Baltimore County, waiting on the bank for removal and proper disposal.  Read my story about their efforts in The Baltimore Sun.  And check out the video, shot by The Sun's Algerina Perna to see what a difference they've made in how one stretch of the Chesapeake Bay tributary has been cleaned up. 

As much debris as the kids have pulled from Back River in the past 2 1/2 weeks, there's plenty more to do.  The banks are still littered with trash.  The Back River Restoration Committee, an energetic newcomer on the community action scene, has a big cleanup planned Saturday, 9 am to 2 pm.   The kids will be there, but they could use plenty of help.  Volunteers should meet at the Essex Park & Ridge on Eastern Boulevard by the Back River bridge.   p>

It'll take a lot more to restore this river, of course.  But the collegiate cleanup crew has shown what the river can look like if only Baltimore city and county residents in the 55-square-mile Back River watershed can be persuaded to stop littering and clean up their streets and neighborhoods.  Otherwise, the labors of these hard-working, idealistic kids will be buried under another torrent of trash washed down the storm drains and creeks the next time it rains.

Impaired as it still is, Back River boasts some beautiful natural vistas, and some signs of life.  Not all of them are welcome, as I reported last week on the midges swarming there, bedeviling boat owners and waterfront residents.  Those, ironically enough, may also be a sign of life returning to the river.  A Towson University biologists suggests that the nonbiting flies can be pretty hardy, so may be among the first things to flourish in an ecosystem still lacking the fish and other bug predators that could keep their numbers in check.  So they're possibly a hopeful sign, one that can lead to others with still more work on the river and on the land throughout the watershed.

;(Baltimore Sun photo and video by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Fewer oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are dying from the diseases that have devastated the bivalve population in recent decades, leading some to believe they may be developing a natural resistance, says a new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Dermo and MSX, the two parasites that have been killing oysters, still afflict them throughout the bay - but scientists are seeing more of them surviving, the Annapolis-based environmental group reports.   

Citing data from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the report says that disease-related oyster mortality in the upper bay declined from 2005 through 2009 to 17 percent a year, down from 29 percent on average from 1985 through 2004.

Both parasites seem to spread and kill more readily in saltier water, as is generally found in Virginia's portion of the bay, but Dermo is more tolerant of low salinity and is the greater problem in Maryland waters.

A scientist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Ryan Carnegie, has seen marked declines both in disease prevalence and death among oysters in that state.  In the York River, for instance, fewer than 5 percent are dying from MSX now, compared with more than 50 percent a decade ago, the report says. In the lower James River, only about 24 percent of oysters were infected with MSX in 2009, down from 80 percent in 1995. 

Dermo continues to plague Virginia oysters, but the foundation report says mortality appears to have moderated in the Lynnhaven and Great Wicomico rivers, where oyster reefs have been built up using old shell dredged from the bay bottom.

The environmental group says the improved survival of bay oysters supports Maryland's new oyster restoration strategy.  State officials are moving to ease commercial harvest pressure on the bivalves by expanding sanctuaries and encouraging watermen to move into private aquaculture, as is already being done in Virginia.

Continue reading "Report: More oysters surviving diseases" »

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

A day after politicians haggled over how to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, the regulators are taking their turn at bat. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to hand out today the Chesapeake Bay nutrient pollution limits that Maryland, the five other bay states and the District of Columbia will have to meet in coming years.

(Update: Full story here.)

It's the beginning of a bureaucratic ballet the EPA and bay states will act out over the next six months, but a dance with serious consequences.

Federal regulators have laid out a series of steps to be taken in coming weeks and months to finish putting the Chesapeake on a "pollution diet," known bureaucratically as a "total maximum daily load."   Today is for the distribution of limits for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution - from sewage, air pollution and runoff from farms and urban and suburban lands - that stimulate algae blooms and trigger the bay's summer "dead zone."  On Aug. 15, the states will get similar limits to achieve on sediment, the silt that clouds the water and prevents fish-harboring underwater grasses from growing.

Today's limits come on the heels of approval in Washington by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee of a compromise bill meant to strengthen the lagging 26-year restoration effort.   Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., agreed to drop any reference to the "pollution diet" in the bill he'd introduced to appease Republicans concerned about a broadening of federal authority to regulate water pollution, especially runoff from farms and urban and suburban lands.   That provision had been seen by some as needed to buttress the EPA's legal right to impose sanctions on states if they fail to do their part to clean up the bay.  Even with that and other concessions, it's far from certain this or any bay bill will pass Congress this year. 

Legislative backing or no, the EPA is committed to going forward.  It has to under the settlement of a federal lawsuit brought years ago by environmental groups accusing the federal government of failing to impose a pollution diet on the bay, as called for in the Clean Water Act when pollution impairs the use and enjoyment of a water body.   Even so, regulators say this is the largest and most complex pollution diet the federal government has ever drafted,  spread across six states encompassing 17 million people, nearly 500 major sewage plants and some 88,000 farms.

Continue reading "EPA to issue Bay pollution limits today" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)