The one constant in life is change, it seems.  Here at The Sun, that means I'm moving to a new blog.  Today marks the debut of "B'more Green," devoted to showcasing some of the efforts of Marylanders to live more gently on the land. 

This marks farewell for Bay & Environment, a blog I shared for years with now-former colleagues Rona Kobell and Tom Pelton.  For nearly a year now, I've held down the B&E fort solo, and I appreciate your patience and dedication.  Now I'll be joining Meredith Cohn and Christy Zuccarini at the new blog, where we'll be highlighting green issues around Baltimore while still sharing news and views about the Chesapeake Bay and our environment.   So come on over, please! 

You can find it by going directly to this link: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/features/green/  Or go to www.baltimoresun.com and look it up in the blogs.  Those of you who've been getting RSS feeds of blog posts will need to subscribe to the new blog.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

About nine months ago in this space, I said goodbye. I was embarking on a journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan, where I would spend the year studying economic approaches to environmental sustainability.  I promised I would come back, though, and continue to report on the health of the Chesapeake Bay.

I'd called the movers, packed the house, talked to my new bosses about how they want me to cover my beat in the brave new world of Facebook and Twitter.  I was working on story ideas, calling sources and looking forward to deadlines again.

Then last week, I heard that two colleagues - both older than I am, both with families to support - were about to get laid off.  So I volunteered to be laid off instead, so one of them would be spared.  The company will provide me with a severance package that gives me some breathing room to figure out what to do next.  I hope the next thing includes environmental reporting, but my next gig isn't lined up yet.

It was a quick decision, and yet one that had been marinating in my mind for months. In a year when we were challenged to figure out what our heart's desires were and to follow them, I realized, for the first time in 16 years, that some of mine lay outside the newsroom walls.

This year, I wrote a screenplay.  I read good books.  I put more miles on my bike than I did on my car. I picked up my daughter early from school and took her out for ice cream and to the library. I went out with my husband.  I cooked dinner occasionally.  I traveled - to Russia and Argentina and Northern Michigan and New York.   I had time - a luxury foreign to journalists and working mothers - to think about what I want.  And what I want is to keep doing all of those things.  The two journalists in danger of losing their jobs want to keep them; to the extent that I can make that happen, I want to do that, too.

When I got the Bay beat in 2004, I felt like the luckiest person in the newsroom.  I had a job where I got to be out on boats all the time, where I interviewed fascinating people, and where I learned something new every day.  To tell you the truth, I never stopped feeling that way - even when I had the worst seasickness you can imagine, it still beat a day sitting at my desk.  My mother worked at the same job for two decades and was miserable nearly the whole time, so I knew how rare it was to get to do something I loved and get a bit of a suntan in the process.

My heart may not be in the newspaper anymore, but it will always be with my current and former colleagues - terrific journalists, and great people.

I'll be back in Baltimore at the end of May.  Feel free to send any correspondence, love letters, hate mail, life coaching, lunch invitations, freelance work or job offers to rkobell2002@yahoo.com I'll answer.  Seems I'll have some time on my hands.

Sincerely,

Rona Kobell

Chesapeake Bay reporter

The Baltimore Sun  

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                       

There apparently is an answer - or at least an estimate - of how many derelict crab pots there are bumping around the bottom of Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay.

A few days ago, I posted here about the results of an effort last winter by Virginia watermen to retrieve lost aka "ghost" pots in their waters.  They pulled up more than 8,600.  At the time, I wondered how many more there might be north of the Old Dominion, still catching and killing crabs and other fish and animals in Maryland waters.

Kim Couranz of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay office reports that her people have been hard at work studying the impact of ghost pots in Maryland's portion of the bay.  A couple years back, in collaboration with the state Department of Natural Resources, they did a survey and determined there are about 42,000 "ghost" pots loose in Maryland waters.

Next question is, what if anything is to be done about them?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:50 AM in crabs | Permalink | Comments (4)
                       

You may not fix every problem by throwing money at it, but it sure can help.  Maryland is getting $1.73 million in economic stimulus funds to spend on reducing harmful diesel emissions from buses, trucks, ships and construction equipment like the crane pictured above at the Port of Baltimore.

Diesel exhaust contains soot, or fine particulates, and other toxic air pollutants, which research has shown can aggravate asthma, contribute to cardiovascular disease and even cause premature death.  Millions of Americans live downwind of places where lots of diesel engines are at work, such as rail yards and ports.

Here in Maryland, the state is working on reducing those unhealthy exposures, with federal help.  The Department of the Environment will distribute the funds it's receiving from the Environmental Protection Agency to retrofit existing diesel engines.

The funds were authorized under the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to provide grants and loans for retrofitting diesel engines.  It hasn't been decided yet precisely how the new funds will be spent, but an EPA spokeswoman said they'll generally go to reduce emissions from ships, construction equipment, school buses and trucks.

The diesel-powered dredging equipment shown above at the Port of Baltimore was retrofitted with particulate filters (seen at right) that are supposed to reduce soot emissions by more than 90 percent.  The crane was among the retrofits paid for with a $295,000 "clean diesel" grant EPA awarded the state last year.  The federal grant - and matching state funds - also paid to retroft buses in Rockville and in Prince George's and Washington counties.

Government funds can be spent on cleaning up government-owned diesel emissions, but the privately owned oceangoing vessels that call at ports also are a significant source of harmful air pollutants.  A recent report by the EPA Inspector General's office estimated that commercial marine vessels accounted for 69 percent of the sulfur dioxide emitted at the port, and more than a quarter of the soot, or fine particulates that can get in lungs and cause health problems.

EPA announced earlier this year that it plans to reduce ship pollution within 200 miles of U.S. shores under a new international agreement. U.S. and foreign-flagged ships are to be required to use dramatically cleaner fuel and more effective pollution controls for their engines, the agency said. For more on that, go here.

(Photos supplied by Bill McAllen, Charm City Publishing)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:29 AM in air pollution | Permalink
                       

While the press coverage of the annual Chesapeake Bay summit this week focused on President Obama promising a stronger federal role in the cleanup effort, and state officials pledging to accelerate their pollution reductions, Howard Ernst isn't buying any of it.

The associate professor of political science at the Naval Academy has written one critical book on the shortcomings of the restoration effort, Chesapeake Bay Blues.  He's got a new, updated account heading to the printer now.

"It certainly doesn't seem like a new direction for the bay restoration effort," Ernst said in a telephone interview Wednesday.  "There's nothing new about more deadlines, more promises. What's missing .... is the funding and statutory powers that would make those deadlines accomplishable, make those goals attainable. "

Ernst was similarly dismissive of the new 2025 long-term cleanup "end date." He noted that officials were careful to say that would not be the year when the bay is actually restored but when all the policies and reductions are in place that they believe should restore it.

"It's back to business as usual," he says, "creating a deadline (when) none of these elected officials will hold their positions.  So much for accountability."

As for the executive order issued by Obama, Ernst says it does nothing except delay action by another four months.  It gives the Environmental Protection Agency 120 days to determine what regulatory powers it has or needs to require the bay cleanup, he contends, even though the Clean Water Act outlining those powers was enacted in 1972. The order also sets up a "federal leadership committee" to coordinate the bay cleanup efforts of the various federal agencies and departments - "another layer of bureaucracy," the critic says.

"There's never been a better opportunity for doing something tangible and big right now," Ernst concluded, "and the EPA and the bay states missed that opportunity."

Anyone share Ernst's criticism, or maybe have a different view?  Is this about the best that can be done, perhaps, given our lousy economy and traditional resistance by many to being regulated or taxed to pay for cleanup?  Will new deadlines every two years prod the politicians to do more now, instead of putting off the tough decisions to their successors?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:50 AM in Environmental advocacy | Permalink | Comments (5)
                       

There was a lot of talk at Mount Vernon on Tuesday about "a new day" dawning in the long struggle to restore Chesapeake Bay, with President Obama declaring the bay a national treasure and states agreeing to short-term pollution reduction plans, aka "milestones."  Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, head of the bay Executive Council (pictured at right), called it a "turning point," though he acknowledged there was still a lot of work to do.  The cleanup effort now is being ramped up and is going to be much more accountable, we were told. 

But take a look at those milestones, at least the two-page summaries handed out to the press and now posted online.  They skimp on key details, especially on what the backup plans are in case those measures fall short, and on what the consequences will be if the states blow these new milestones.  We'll have to wait for those information gaps to be filled, we were told.

Next, look at the graphs showing how much nitrogen and phosphorus pollution each state promises to eliminate.  The graphs start at several million or tens of millions of pounds. not at zero.  Had the graphs had a scale that showed how far pollution ultimately has to be reduced by the "end date" of 2025, the divergence between past reductions and future promises would have looked a lot smaller.

Then there's the case of the mysterious missing information on a few of the states' milestone statements. The two-page outlines of cleanup efforts for the entire six-state bay region and for Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia showed graphs with two diverging lines, depicting pollution reductions already in progress and even greater efforts those states were committing to make by 2011.  The graphs projected accelerations of cleanup ranging from 52 to 502 percent. 

But the summaries handed out Tuesday for Delaware, the District of Columbia, New York and West Virginia showed only one line on their graphs.  Each graph depicted the pollution reductions that were being pledged through 2011.   Missing was any line projecting the rate at which pollution would go down based on efforts already under way.

Drafts of the milestone documents circulated only a few days before Tuesday's summit did show current and future rates of cleanup.  The District, New York and West Virginia all were shown  making less progress in the next few years than they had been making up to now.  That's right - negative progress. For New York, the drafts showed a 15 percent backslide on the rate of nitrogen reductions, and for West Virginia a 61 percent slippage in nitrogen and a 45 percent decline in phosphorus removal rates. 

The graph lines and calculations showing negative progress were missing from the final milestone documents handed out Tuesday at Mount Vernon.  What would George Washington think?

Continue reading "Uh, about those milestones ...." »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:36 PM in Politics, legislation, water quality | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

The roundup last winter by Virginia watermen of derelict crab pots found there are plenty of them lurking in the Chesapeake Bay - and they keep catching and killing crabs, and other aquatic life.

Virginia paid out-of-work crabbers $300 a day plus fuel to scour the bay bottom for the "ghost pots,"as they're known - wire-mesh crab traps that get lost when cut loose from their markers by storms or passing boats.  Using side-imaging sonar, they found and retrieved more than 8,600, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, which set up and supervised the effort.  They also collected 61 abandoned fishing nets, plus assorted other debris, including a baby stroller.

The pots evidently keep catching years after they've been lost. As seen in this photo from VIMS, the recovered pots held almost 5,000 crabs and other animals, including fish, eels, turtles, a duck and a muskrat.  Scientists figure each derelict pot, if still functional, can catch and kill up to 50 crabs a year.

If that many abandoned pots were found in Virginia waters of the bay, how many might there be in Maryland? 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:57 AM in crabs | Permalink | Comments (5)
                       

State, federal and local officials gather at Mount Vernon in Virginia today to chart a new, reputedly more accountable course for jump-starting the long-running effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay.  Gov. Martin O'Malley says he'll lay out a plan for accelerating pollution reductions by 2.5 times the current pace.  He joined scientists Monday for a look at the Bush River near Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, one of a handful of places in the bay where noticeable progress has been made in recent years.  You can read more about it in The Baltimore Sun.

For those who can't make it to George Washington's Potomac River home, much of it will be Webcast live.  Go here, starting around 11 a.m.  You should also be able to get live updates via Twitter  @chesbayprogram  Starting around 12:30 p.m., there'll also be a panel discussion with scientists, an ex-politician (former Maryland Rep. Wayne Gilchrest), activists and a waterman about the economic, cultural and ecological importance of restoring the bay.  Billed as a first, this "Chesapeake Chat" will be moderated by Sheilah Kast, host of public-radio WYPR's "Maryland Morning" show.

Of course, you'll only be able to follow the public proceedings - not the lengthy closed-door huddle of the governors, EPA administrator and others as they chew over what they're going to publicly announce at the end of the shindig, around 2 p.m.  How accountable is that?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:28 AM | Permalink
                       

An effort to slow the loss of forest and farmland in Wicomico County fell short yesterday as the Eastern Shore county's council narrowly defeated a measure that would have tightened rural development rules.

By a 4-3 vote, the council rejected a hotly debated proposal to delete the county's so-called "clustering" rule, which allowed builders to put homes on three-acre lots as long as half the farm is spared from development.  If approved, the measure would have scaled back the number of homes that could be built in rural areas.

The move, which was unanimously recommended by the county's planning commission, was supported by environmental and conservation groups, by residents upset with sprawl and even by some farmers.  But other farmers and real estate interests vehemently opposed the change, saying it would deprive rural landowners of income they could make by selling to developers.

Development of rural land fragments wildlife habitat and increases pollution of streams and the bay.  Wicomico, in the heart of the Shore, has been losing farmland at a rapid clip.  According to an analysis by environmental groups, more home lots were approved outside of the county's designated growth area in 2007 than at any time since the mid-1990s.  USA Today reported that six out of 10 homes in the county are beyond the reach of fire hydrants.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which had backed the downzoning, issued a statement calling  the vote disappointing.  The environmental group noted that the downzoning had been proposed by a group the county council had appointed to study how to preserve more rural land.

"Our current policies put the future of the county's rural lands at risk," said Alan Girard, head of CBF's "Heart of the Chesapeake" office in Salisbury.

The Salisbury Daily Times reported that after the vote, Wicomico County Executive Richard M. Pollitt Jr. said he would form a commission to try again at drafting the "nuts and bolts" of a land preservation scheme.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:14 AM in growth/land use | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

For all the locavores out there, there's a new farmers' market in town.   Every Tuesday from now until October, local farmers will be selling fresh fruits, vegetables, artisan cheese, eggs and more in the park in front of the University of Maryland Medical Center, along the Paca Street sidewalk.

The medical center, University of Maryland Baltimore and the local community have teamed up to bring fresh, locally grown food to the workers, patients, visitors and residents of that busy corner of downtown.  Local food reduces the energy and air pollution caused by long-distance transportation, according to advocates, and the types of food offered are generally pretty healthy.

Ed Fishel, the university spokesman who took the accompanying photo of the market's opening day today, reports that vendors were selling French bread, range-grown chickens, cheese from western Maryland goats' milk, apples and flowers.  Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:35 PM in Agriculture, Food | Permalink