Many of you (okay, five or six) have written or called to talk about the Bush order and the Gilchrest bill. I am trying to get answers from both the Congressman and fisheries experts about what these laws will mean. Stay tuned. I'm waiting for return calls.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 11:10 AM | Permalink
                       

You've heard of a green thumb?  Well, the University of Maryland has a green toolbox.  And a big green award for its environmentally-friendly home building.

A group of Maryland students on Friday beat out 17 other teams nationally in a solar house building competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.  In the international competition, Maryland's LEAFHouse (for "Leading Everyone to an Abundant Future") came in second to the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.

Hail to the suntamers!

The solar-powered house was on display last week along with the other competitors on the National Mall. "The Maryland house had led the contest all week after taking second place in the architecture contest (which Darmstadt won), and winning in the lighting and communications contests," the university press release says. "However, the German team entered the final cloudy day with more power in its batteries. It didn't have Maryland's advantage of a unique indoor waterfall, which Maryland students and their professor invented to save help air-condition the house."

Hey, maybe they could build some of those "unique indoor waterfalls" in the College Park dorms?  Now those would be cool rooms.... each student a personal waterfall.

Go here for more on the Maryland LEAFHouse.   

Posted by Tom Pelton at 11:32 AM | Permalink
                       

After years of doing nothing on global warming, Congress may now be on the verge of a serious, bipartisan effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

You might think environmentalists would be elated.  You would be wrong.  The problem is this: the "America's Climate Security Act"  bill unveiled on Thursday (10/18) by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Independent from Connecticut, and Sen. John Warner, Republian from Virginia, uses a pollution credit trading system to achieve relatively modest reductions. And it allows carbon "offsets" -- in other words, it allows companies to pay cash instead of reducing their pollution.

Europe tried a pollution credit trading system to curb carbon dioxide emissions after it passed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and power companies worked the system to make billions in profits.  Electricity customers paid higher bills, thinking they were contributing to a cooler planet.  But their money just went into the pockets of the electric companies, which didn't end up actually cutting down on their carbon dioxide emissions.

These free-market based "cap and trade" systems -- which swap pollution credits like stock -- can work.  For example, the U.S. government successfully reduced acid rain during the 1990's by instituting a sulfur dioxide pollution credit trading system. But they are so complex, sophisticated players can make big money out of the fine print.

So it matters what the fine print says.

During a press conference, Lieberman and colleagues announced that the "America's Climate Security Act" would cut total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 19% below the 2005 level in 2020 and by as much as 63% below the 2005 level in 2050.

"With all the irrefutable evidence we now have corroborating that climate change is real, dangerous, and proceeding faster than many scientists predicted, this is the year for Congress to move this critical legislation," said Lieberman.

Joining Lieberman and Warner in co-sponsoring the act are Maryland's Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D), Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

Some environmental groups, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, and corporations -- like the Exelon power company -- have endorsed the bill.

But Brad Heavner, director of Environment Maryland, is among those concerned that the bill doesn't go far enough and could allow companies to make a big profit without doing much to cut their pollution. "The bill allows unlimited offsets.  Companies can forego all reductions
and buy their way out," Heavner said in an email. "Offsets can be an important part of a cap and
trade system, but they should be a small part."

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network today praised Lieberman and John Warner, but faulted the bill as "falling short of what is demanded by the science and the public to meet the challenge of global warming." 
 

The activist group said: "current scientific projections show that the United States must reduce its global warming pollution by at least 15% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The pollution caps in the bill aim to reduce total U.S. global warming emissions by about 11% by 2020 and by just over 50% by 2050." 

On Oct. 30, Friends of the Earth went even further, denouncing the Lieberman/Warner bill as "obscene" in its corporate giveaways.  This organization asserted: "Corporate polluters will hit the jackpot if global warming legislation proposed by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) becomes law.

'The Lieberman-Warner bill will reward corporate polluters by handing them pollution permits worth almost half a trillion dollars,' said Friends of the Earth’s Erich Pica, one of the authors of the analysis.  'And that’s just one part of this bill.  The bill also includes hundreds of billions of dollars of other mind-boggling giveaways.   The levels of pollution-rewarding giveaways in this bill are truly obscene.'

In particular, Friends of the Earth’s analysis found that the bill:

 1) Provides the coal industry and other fossil fuel industries pollution permits worth $436 billion over the life of the legislation; 58 percent of this amount goes to coal;

2) Returns revenue raised through auctions directly to polluters—for example, an additional $324 billion would subsidize the coal industry’s efforts to develop carbon capture and storage mechanisms;

3) Directs another $522 billion of auction revenue to low or zero-emissions technologies, which could result in handouts to the nuclear power, big hydro and coal industries, which are not clean (these funds could also be directed toward important clean technologies, such as wind and solar—the legislation is not specific) 

Here is the analysis by Friends of the Earth.

Here is the press release from Sen. Joe Lieberman's office. 

Here is the home page of Environment Maryland.

Here is the home page of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)
                       

President George W. Bush is coming to St. Michaels this weekend. And it's not to have dinner with the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds. No, he's expected to make a major announcement about striped bass, with Rep. Gilchrest at his side.

What's he gonna say? A North Carolina paper is reporting that he will either declare the species a gamefish or direct fisheries managers to do so.

That, according to news reports, would make the species off-limits to commercial fishermen. And it would, by my reckoning, have a major impact on bay fishermen, many of whom have turned to striped bass fishing as other bay resources (crabs, oysters) have become unreliable.

The Sun will cover the event, and I will try to figure out how to blog from home so I can put something up here and let everyone know. (I am a bit of a technophobe -- a wonderful characteristic for a blogger.)

I just had smoked rockfish for lunch today in Annapolis, and was reminded that the recovery of the species is one of the Chesapeake Bay's few success stories, along with fish-passage goals. So this development kinda surprises me, and I'm not just saying that because smoked rockfish is such a darned good thing. I'm saying it because I figured this was an area where we were doing fairly well. If a moratorium were to come down the pike, so to speak, I'd expect it for one of the species that is nowhere near recovery (and I'm not naming names here).

Speaking of Gilchrest, he has had fish on the mind lately. He just introduced a bill that would put a moratorium on the harvest of menhaden form both state and federal waters. If passed, that could end what is left of the Omega protein fishery in Reedville.

(This post was written by Rona Kobell.) 

Posted by Mary Hartney at 5:05 PM in fisheries | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

I had a feature in today's paper about the most recent invasive species in Maryland: the king crawdaddy....aka the rusty crayfish.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is warning fishermen to stop dumping bait buckets with crayfish into streams, because this spreads the big-clawed mud bug. Biologists worry the rusty crayfish will multiply rapidly, eat native crayfish, gobble up fish eggs, and mow down aquatic vegetation that helps clean streams.

Alert reader Hank Green of Sebastian, Florida, wrote to let me know that some folks in Michigan -- which has also been invaded by king crawdaddy -- figured out a solution to the problem.  EAT THE ALIEN INVADERS!  Apparently, they're good in jambalaya. "Once people figure out how good they taste then will become extinct in no time," Green wrote.

Here's the article. Thanks, Hank!

Posted by Tom Pelton at 12:09 PM | Permalink
                       

A new poll by 1000 Friends of Maryland suggests Marylanders overwhelmingly support stronger state action to steer development to existing communities.  In a telephone survey in June of 1,000 registered voters, the poll finds most Marylanders believe that development and growth are occurring too rapidly and are affecting their communities negatively.

The Sun reported the poll in a story today by colleague Nick Madigan.

Though the poll was commissioned by an advocacy group for more compact development, it echoes findings of a survey done two years ago by The Sun, which also found most residents unhappy with the pace of growth in their communities.  Respondents asked to list their most serious concerns ranked traffic congestion near the top, trailing crime, drugs and gangs and pollution of Chesapeake Bay.  Lack of affordable housing, loss of farmland and poorly planned growth and development also ranked high on the list of concerns.

This poll, aimed at nudging the O'Malley administration to follow through on its pledge to reinvigorate Smart Growth, finds large majorities favor state government stepping in to coordinate growth decisions by municipalities and counties. The respondents also favored spending more on transit to ease their greatest concern, traffic congestion, even if it meant spending less on upgrading roads.

You can read the summary of the poll here.

What do you think? Is growth a major concern for you? Up there with the budget deficit, as this poll suggests?  What, if anything, do you think should be done?

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:06 AM in growth/land use | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

Probably no surprise to many Marylanders, but an article just published on Forbes.com ranks our state as among the "greenest" in the country.  The piece, "America's Greenest States," which you can read here, rates the states according to various environmental measures, including consumption patterns, air and water quality, and waste, as well as government policy.

"America in Miniature" weighs in at No. 5 on the business publication's ranking, after such environmental meccas as Vermont, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.  Though Maryland was the highest-ranking Eastern state, it was followed closely by Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York.

California, often considered a leader in environmental policy and advocacy, only came in 14th.  In fact, the West, with its wide-open spaces, didn't do as well as a region.  The worst five, by Forbes' reckoning, were Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana and West Virginia (ouch! my home state!)

The writers, Brian Wingfield and Miriam Marcus, said Maryland's high ranking on their green-o-meter might seem surprising, since the state has some of the worst smog and ozone pollution in the country. But, they added:

Only 10 states have a lower carbon footprint per capita than Maryland, and the state has a relatively low instance of water facilities exceeding their Clean Water Act permits, according to PIRG. In addition, Maryland ranks 40th in total energy consumption nationwide, and it managed less toxic waste per capita than all but six states in 2005. And earlier this year it joined a group of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to cap greenhouse gas emissions and trade emissions credits.

What do you think?  Is Maryland greener than most, including California? Too green, or not green enough? 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:19 PM in Environmental advocacy | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

I saw your blog entry about the library’s distribution method for Free Fall tickets to the Aquarium and thought that your readers may like to know a couple of easy-to-access ways to visit the Aquarium on the cheap:

- Fridays After Five (Sept through March 14) tickets to the Aquarium are $8 after 5 pm – great for a date, and good access for workers like us who keep a 9 to 5 schedule. Plus you can avoid weekend crowds!

Saturday, December 8th and Sunday, December 9th we’ll have our annual Dollar Days weekend when admission is $1.

As well, since we opened in 1981 Maryland school groups and their teachers have been admitted free when they come on field trips. These teachers receive special advance training to make the most of their visit, and can get supplemental materials to augment their in-class lessons about the aquatic world and Chesapeake watershed health.

I hope your readers can hear about and take advantage of these other ways to visit.

Best,

Molly

Posted by Rona Kobell at 12:37 PM | Permalink
                       

I saw on a recent list of Free Fall events in Baltimore that the National Aquarium was having a night of reading among the sea creatures. It's tomorrow night at 6, and it's free, and I thought blog readers with kids would enjoy it. I was thinking of going, too -- or at least asking my husband to take our daughter, as it would be hard to make it on time with my reporter's hours.

So, for about a week, I have been trying to get information on the event so I could post it here. But the spokeswoman at the aquarium never got back to me- she was out with the flu. Finally, I reached her today and she said that, in order to get tickets, your child has to participate in the "Mother Goose on the Loose" reading program at the Pratt library. Call the library, she said.

So I called the Mother Goose coordinator, who told me to call the PR person for the library, who told me that if you go to ANY children's program at ANY Pratt library between now and Wednesday, you can get the tickets. And what about for those of us who work? Well, we're out of luck. I guess they figure, we work, we can pay to go to the aquarium.

Too bad. It sounded like a lot of fun. Here's hoping next time the aquarium offers this free, educational event to all Marylanders.

Really, is there a better way to encourage children to love the creatures of the sea? The last time I went to the aquarium, I had free tickets, and it STILL cost me about $45 (that would be for parking and lunch for a family of four at the cheapo burrito place next to the aquarium.) With the tickets, we would have been looking at more than $100.

C'mon, aquarium. Throw us a bone, or a fin, or whatever you've got...surely you can make it easier, and cheaper, to visit....and therefore encourage children to link the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the ecosystems around us to those really cool yellow striped fish. Make Free Fall free for all...you could even make tickets available at the front desk of libraries.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 1:18 PM | Permalink
                       

This weekend marks the fourth annual DC Environmental Conference, and the folks from Safelawns.org will be on hand to talk about how to make your lawn green without using chemicals. It involves organic practices, and you can get more info on their site.

In the meantime, if they're dispensing free advice, I'm all ears. I'm wondering: How do you solve a problem like an overgrown yard without killing every living thing with chemicals, but still keep the peace with your well-manicured neighbors? And how do you do it without spending a fortune?

I want my lawn to look like these pictures.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 10:57 AM | Permalink
                       

Bob Pechie has an idea to be both environmentally friendly and keep the neighbors at bay: build smaller wind turbines that you can put away when you don't need them.

The former Frito-Lay engineer has spent his life focused on building a better wind turbine. A smaller, more flexible one that can power a half-dozen homes instead of a whole city.

If the turbines are also kind to the birds, the Connecticut inventor may be on to something. Indeed, it would be the same idea that Thomas Edison had way back when -- he believed that wind power could work. Whole interesting article courtesy of Baltimore's Urbanite magazine, a free glossy that often has random gems like this in its pages.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

Posted by Rona Kobell at 10:18 AM | Permalink
                       

Last week, Wicomico County opened the Lower Eastern Shore's first methane-fueled power plant. It will use a by-product of landfill waste and methane gas to generate electricity, and it will be called the Newland Park Gas-To Energy Plant.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

I published a story in yesterday's paper about the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay from the billion pounds of manure produced annually by Maryland's poultry industry. 

Overall, about 10 percent of the pollution that causes algae blooms and low-oxygen dead zones in the bay comes from chickens.  That may or may not sound like a lot. But it's more than all the pollution that comes from leaky septic tanks in Maryland. And it's almost as much as all the gunk that pours out of stormwater drains in urban and suburban areas, or all the pollution from cars and trucks.

The question is: what should Maryland do about big chicken?  Readers, let me know what you think.

Should the Maryland Department of the Environment require the same kind of inspections and oversight for large poultry farms -- industrial-style permits, annual inspections, long lists of waste handling rules, fines of up to $32,500 per day -- that the state mandates for factories?  This is what Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration is considering, following the lead of Pennsylvania and at least a dozen other states have tried to cut down on poultry pollution.

Advocates for this approach argue that, because some chicken houses produce as much waste as small cities, they should be regulated and inspected like municipal sewage treatment plants.  Perhaps like human waste, animal waste that is not needed for crop fertilizer should be treated, just as human waste is treated. Some suggest that the state should force Perdue Farms and the other big poultry companies to pay for waste treatment plants.

Or, as an alternative, perhaps Perdue and the other poultry companies -- not the small family farmers -- should pay to construct enough waste-to-energy plants (electricity generators that burn chicken litter as fuel) to get rid of the extra manure and make clean power.  (Although small waste-to-energy pilot projects aren't going to make much difference.)

On the other side of the spectrum, farmers complain that they're already overburdened with government regulations.  Too much Big Brother putting a heavy hand on Big Chicken could force the poultry industry out of the state, leaving 16,000 people without jobs.  And, of course, every dollar spent on pollution controls means higher food prices, which hit the poorest hardest. 

Historically, little has ever been achieved in terms of pollution cleanup through voluntary measures.  A largely voluntary "nutrient management" law passed by the state in 1998 after the Pfiesteria algae blooms on the Pocomoke River has yet to show any reductions in pollution in the river, or the bay itself.  More than 95 percent of the farmers statewide now have these nutrient management plans. And the amount of fertilizer pollution flowing into the bay from its major tributaries has been rising since the late 1990's -- hardly an encouraging sign.

After the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 mandated that states start regulating large chicken farms like factories, Former Gov. Robert Ehrlich's environmental agency proposed an industrial-style permitting process in 2004 -- but then quietly dropped the idea in 2005 when farmers complained about excessive government regulations.

Former Governor Parris Glendening, a Democrat, tried to make large poultry companies like Maryland-based Perdue Farms responsible for the manure generated by small farmer contractors who raise Perdue's Chickens.  But then Ehrlich, a Republican, backed away from that idea after the poultry industry sued.  Ehrlich said he didn't want to over burden farmers with excessive regulations.

Now O'Malley, a Democrat, is considering more pollution regulations for big chicken farms.

One thorny issue is how to measure pollution from farms.  It's easy to measure and regulate pollution from factories -- you just go and put a meter on the pipes that spew the liquids into the nearby river.  But chicken farms have no pipes you can monitor.  If you check nitrate levels in the streams near the chicken farms (which I did as part of my research for this story), that leave the question: how do you know which farms the nitrates are coming from?  Maybe the fertilizer pollution in the stream is from a farmer who used chicken manure a century ago.  Sometimes it takes many years for the nitrates to be washed from the farmland, through the groundwater into the nearby streams.  How do you assign liability for that?

Some states get around this question by imposing long lists of manure management rules, instead of even trying to measure the amount of waste running off farm fields into streams.  For example, the states issue permits that forbid the outdoor storage of manure for more than 14 days. The idea is that if you keep the manure in a storage shed, rain won't wash over it, and foul the nearby creeks.  Maryland advises farmers to build these storage sheds today, and provides 87 percent state financial assistance to build them.  But the state doesn't require them -- and it doesn't bar farmers from storing heaps of manure outside for as long as they'd like.

And the state today doesn't inspect large chicken growing operations, as the state agency does inspect large hog and dairy farms.

Former state senate environmental committee chairman Gerald Winegrad makes an interesting point.  He notes that the state and environmental groups are lobbying Congress for millions more in federal dollars for Maryland farms, to help encourage conservation practices, like the planting of buffer strips between fertilized fields and streams.  The U.S. Farm Bill may be modified to provide more cash to farmers for these pollution-control techniques.

But should they get more taxpayer money without more accountability, in the form of government sampling of their fields and nearby streams? Maybe the increased government money should go hand-in-hand with increased government oversight. 

Any opinions on this question?

READER Jeff Pilchard (who grew up on one of the farms I wrote about in the story) asks: "Why is this article not about chemical fertilizer runoff, which is TWICE as large a component of Bay pollution as "Big Chicken's" share?? Why isn't the state doing more to regulate that source of pollution? The payoff in terms of cleaning up the Bay appears greater."

MY RESPONSE is that Jeff is right -- chemical fertilizer runoff is twice as big a problem as chicken manure, according to the U.S. EPA's Chesapeake Bay program.  And our paper recently published a long, front-page story about efforts to lobby Congress for more money in the Farm Bill to help discourage this pollution, through conservation practices such as buffer strips and cover crops.

I chose to focus on poultry for this article, because right now Maryland is drafting regulations that would for the first time require factory-style permits (called NPDES or "National Pollution Discharge Elimination System" permits) for large chicken farms.  Whether or not these permits are appropriate for chicken farms is a subject of much debate, both in lawsuits nationally and in our state.  So I thought I would focus on this question, because it's being asked right now by Maryland state agencies. 

Posted by Tom Pelton at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
                       

Here's a great story in the New York Times about a man in China and his fight to save one of that country's major lakes, which has been ravaged by algae and toxic waste from chemical plants:

 "The outbreak confirmed the claims of a crusading peasant, Wu Lihong, who protested for more than a decade that the region’s thriving chemical industry, and its powerful friends in the local government, were destroying one of China’s ecological treasures.

"Mr. Wu, however, bore silent witness. Shortly before the algae crisis erupted in May, the authorities here in his hometown arrested him. In mid-August, with a fetid smell still wafting off the lake, a local court sentenced him to three years on an alchemy of charges that smacked of official retribution.

"Pollution has reached epidemic proportions in China, in part because the ruling Communist Party still treats environmental advocates as bigger threats than the degradation of air, water and soil that prompts them to speak out.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 11:32 AM | Permalink
                       

Posted by Rona Kobell at 10:54 AM | Permalink
                       

Developers want to build 150 wind turbines, each 40 stories tall, off the beaches of Ocean City, MD.  The wind mills would be 12 miles out in the Atlantic, but visible to the millions of tourists who stroll the boardwalk. From the beach, they would look small -- about half the height of your thumbnail, according to the firm, Bluewater Wind of New Jersey.

Readers, what do you think about the idea?  On one hand, some Ocean City residents like the idea -- because it would produce enough electricity for about 110,000 homes, without producing any of the carbon dioxide gas that causes global warming and rising sea levels.

On the other hand, Ocean City's entire economy is based on its view of the ocean.  Aesthetics are  what the beach is all about.  If Bluewater Wind moves ahead with its $1.6 billion concept, industrial machines, about as tall as the Statue of Liberty, would be permanently in view of all of the condo owners and beach strollers who value the romantic appearance of the run rising over the ocean.  Now the sun would be rising over turbines.  Granted, Ocean City is already intensely developed -- but that's all on land, not out on the water.  Some beachfront business owners have already raised worries about the change to the view. Others think wind turbines look cool.

Author Mike Tidwell, founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, makes a provocative  point.  He says that Ocean City shouldn't be concerned with trivial alterations to its view when sea level rise driven by global warming and the melting of polar ice -- as well as increasingly powerful storms -- could smash all those condos and destroy the boardwalk.  In Mike's view, Ocean City should be the first to embrace clean energy, because it's most at risk from climate change.

To be fair, of course, 150 turbines won't be enough to stop any storms.  Any change to the global warming trend would take a global effort, over many decades.

Advocates of wind essentially argue that this is an issue of morality vs. aesthetics.  Does Ocean City inconvenience itself with an alteration to its waterfront view, to make a tiny but symbolically powerful step in the fight against global warming?

Or, decades from now, will the millions of Marylanders whose summer memories are enshrined in Ocean City be groaning that they've lost the Atlantic view they treasured as a child?

Let me know what you think.  Send a response to this blog. 

Ron Ohrel, an admistrator at the University of Delaware, wrote a reply and provides some useful links:

"Dear Mr. Pelton: I enjoyed your article that appeared today on baltimoresun.com. As you are aware, a similar proposal is being considered off the coast of Delaware. For your information, University of Delaware researchers have been studying public perceptions of offshore wind.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
                       

Maryland Public Interest Research Group, which launched a campaign in March to try to stop the construction of a third nuclear reactor in Southern Maryland, is holding another protest today.

MaryPIRG says it is planning an 11 a.m. event today (Oct. 11) on the Solomons Boardwalk in Solomons Island with three concerned residents of Calvert County, a Baltimore doctor from the group Physicians for Social Responsibility, and a representative of a group called Beyond Nuclear.

Johanna Neumann, a spokeswoman for MaryPIRG, said her group is concerned that the evacuation routes away from the nuclear reactors at Calvert Cliff, which have been operating for three decades, are not adequate, in part because reactors are on a peninsula and there's only one major route in and out.

Calvert County has strongly endorsed the construction of a third reactor, saying that the plant has proven its safety over many years of operation.   Some supporters of nuclear power argue that reactors are a proven method of generating lots of electricity without producing any of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

But skeptics of an expansion of the nuclear industry worry about the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe, and the issue of where spent fuel rods should be stored.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

During a meeting of the League of Conservation Voters last night in Annapolis, Gov. Martin O'Malley said he felt nauseous while taking a helicopter tour of Western Maryland recently.  It wasn't the wobbling of the chopper that gave him butterflies in the stomach, he said. It was gazing out the window and seeing the endless march of new subdivisions gobbling up the rolling, green landscape.

"I almost became ill, because I looked down and saw mile after mile after mile of development," O'Malley said, his voice quavering with emotion.  "It's a wonder that farms and God's natural beauty can even exist" with all the development.  "What a sad irony: because of growth, we are destroying all of the things that attract the growth."

Turning to former Gov. Parris Glendening, a fellow Democrat in the audience at the Westin Hotel, O'Malley said he is reopening the state's anti-sprawl agency, called the "Office of Smart Growth," that was eliminated by former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican. 

O'Malley didn't address the much-debated question of whether Glendening's ballyhooed "Smart Growth" program really did anything to slow exurban construction that bleeds cities and towns of wealth and population.  Some reports, based on U.S. Census figures, have suggested that development in the farthest-flung areas continued roaring along, unabated, after Glendening launched his program in 1997. The program gives the state little power to stop developers, leaving most decisions in the hands of local government.

But O'Malley made the point that he's philosophically opposed to the idea of wasting farmland and forests for housing, when existing towns and cities have plenty of sites available.

"We have seen our population increase by 30 percent and our consumption of land grow by 100 percent," over the last few decades in the state, O'Malley said.

On the subject of global warming,  O'Malley made no promises last night.  He has a commission studying what the state should do to limit carbon dioxide emmissions.  But he said he's at least different from Republicans, which he accused of living in a fantasy land and denying the truth about rising global temperatures. "We acknowledge the fact that there is a climate crisis, and we have to do something about it," O'Malley said.

He was candid that he's had some differences with conservation voters. For example, O'Malley  supports the construction of the Intercounty Connector, a massive highway project in the Washington suburbs.  But O'Malley said at least he's a governor who "feels bad" about the project, which could accelerate sprawl. 

READER Mike Petrie has this opinion of the Governor's stomach:  "Sprawl may cause certain problems, but if one is nauseated by it, perhaps one should not be governor.  :-) "

READER Michael Rubenstein is  angry about O'Malley's "bad feelings." He writes: "When they come and rip out that lovely stretch of trees which runs down the middle of my community to build the ICC, when we have bright lights at night and road noise 24 hours a day in our quiet neighborhood, and when I am choking on pollution from this six lane highway, at least I will have the consolation of knowing that Governor Ehrlich -- um, I mean, O'Malley -- feels bad about it.

And all this for a highway that won't deliver on its promise to reduce traffic congestion.

Mr. O'Malley, if you feel bad about it, then muster the political courage to kill it," Rubinstein writes.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
                       

I had a story in today's paper about the planting of wetlands as a tool to fight climate change.  Maryland in 2009 will start a "cap and trade" system for reducing carbon dioxide pollution from power plants. And both the state and Maryland's biggest power company are interested in the idea of using pollution credits -- essentially fines to power companies for spewing too much carbon dioxide -- to pay for the planting of acres of wetlands, which absorb carbon dioxide.

Whether or not planting more marsh grass in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge will do much to stop global warming is a matter of debate.  Probably, it could play a small role -- when combined with large cuts in actual carbon dioxide emissions.

But pollution credit systems are a hot topic not only in Annapolis, but also in DC and around the world.  For example, Barack Obama yesterday outlined his support of a national pollution credit trading system to limit carbon dioxide pollution.   "No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gases for free,” Mr. Obama said while campaigning Portsmouth, N.H, according to The New York Times. “Businesses don’t own the sky, the public does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on all pollution.”

Constellation Energy, the state's largest owner of power plants, is one of several power companies across the country that support a national cap-and-trade system for cutting down greenhouse gas pollution. In fact, a large coalition of both industrial corporations -- like General Motors and Duke Energy -- and environmental groups -- like the Natural Resources Defense Council -- support a national pollution credit system for attacking climate change.

But the key question is....what kind of pollution credit system?  Europe, in trying to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, discovered that power companies can make huge profits off of these opaque "cap and trade" schemes by jacking up their rates, charging customers extra and not actually reducing their pollution. 

Pollution credit systems can work.  The prime example is the sulfur dioxide pollution credit  trading system created in the U.S. by the 1990's, which cut down on acid rain.

But the crucial component is making the polluters pay, according to Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.  Power companies, for example, should be forced to pay for their carbon dioxide credits up front, so they are essentially fined for polluting, Dorner said.  They should not be given the credits at their current level of emmissions, as happened in Europe and led to vast profits for the power companies and ripoffs for consumers.

"It's important not to give away the right to pollute," Dorner said.

Maryland is still debating exactly how its pollution credit system should function. 

It will be interesting to see how this debate plays out in terms of electricity rates -- always a sensitive subject -- and holding power companies accountable, so they don't take advantage of the new system.

Meanwhile, grass roots activists are turning up the heat. This morning in Baltimore's Federal Hill park, the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club held a rally with college students and the Episcopal Diocese Of Maryland and others to urge "state wide leadership on global warming."

Here is the press release from the student global warming protest held today in Baltimore:

Maryland Students and Sierra Club Unite:
State Wide Action Needed On Global Warming

Baltimore, MD – Today, the newly formed Maryland Student Climate Coalition joined with the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland Committee on the Environment and the Maryland Sierra Club to call on Governor O'Malley to make Maryland a nation-wide leader on global warming. Though Maryland has taken strong steps to reduce pollution in recent years with the Clean Cars Bill and Healthy Air Act, it has not yet taken a comprehensive stand on global warming.

The Maryland Student Climate Coalition (MSCC) is a grassroots coalition of concerned students from across the 11 universities in the University System of Maryland. Towson University Sophomore and MSCC Co-founder Erica Stout said, "Our goal is to achieve carbon neutrality across the University System of Maryland, thereby reducing the impact of global warming at the state level and creating a blueprint for other universities to implement around the globe."

The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has 117 parishes and missions and over 44,000 active members. The Peace and Justice Ministries include the Diocesan Committee on the Environment, which is made up of clergy and laypeople alike. Committee member Sue Chapelle agreed, "Along with students, the Episcopalian community in Maryland is deeply concerned that there be more coordinated state action on global warming. Many congregations have already taken steps to reduce our environmental impact but this will not be enough for Maryland."

Joining with the student coalition was the Maryland Sierra Club, the state's largest environmental organization with over 16,000 members. Lee Walker, Political Chair of the Howard County Sierra Club Group, has been working on the issue of global warming for years. "Maryland has the third most vulnerable coastline to sea level rise in the entire country, after Louisiana and southern Florida," Walker said. "We cannot wait for federal action. Maryland must reduce our global warming pollution at least 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050."

In his statement last week to US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, O'Malley indicated that he is aware that Maryland is and should continue to be a leader on environmental issues. In April of this year O'Malley established the Commission on Climate Change. The Commission has been charged with collectively developing an action plan to address the causes of climate change, prepare for the likely consequences and impacts of climate change to Maryland, and establish firm benchmarks and timetables for implementing the Commission's recommendations. Their preliminary recommendations are due to be released in November.

Andrew Nazdin, a University of Maryland sophomore and co-founder of the MSCC, commented, "We unite here today representing three groups in Maryland, all calling for state-wide action on global warming because we know it's imperative for Maryland to take comprehensive action to fight global warming. Each of our groups is making change as we can, but we can't stop global warming alone. We need leadership in Maryland, and we urge Governor O'Malley to take strong, immediate action on global warming."

###

Posted by Tom Pelton at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

Posted by Rona Kobell at 9:58 AM | Permalink
                       

Lynne Kiesling, a Northwestern professor who blogs at Knowledge Problem, has some thoughts, from an economic prespective, about my previous post on who is to blame for all of the problems in the bay. From her take:

I would claim that the "who's to blame?" question is the wrong question to ask, and precisely for the reason that Rona offers: "we're all to blame". But I'd put it another way: given current policy, the Chesapeake Bay is a common-pool resource with ill-defined property rights. The problem with the "who's to blame" question with respect to CPR use with ill-defined property rights is the same as the problem with the existing federal and state water regulations: they do not treat the problem as a problem of multiple conflicting uses of a scarce CPR. They instead treat it as one type of use imposing costs on all other uses of the CPR, when in fact the problem is that the uses conflict with each other.

You can read the whole thing here. Looks like an interesting blog.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 5:14 PM | Permalink
                       

Maryland's Smart Growth effort gets a bad rap, according to a former state planner, who argues that one of the much-maligned effort's successes can be seen in Eastern Shore towns looking to grow by annexing neighboring farmland.

So says James Noonan, a former senior manager with the Maryland Department of Planning, who until several months ago helped handle the state's pioneering approach to promoting more compact development. He delivered an at-times provocative defense of Smart Growth during a three-day conference last week reviewing the effectiveness of the state's pioneering growth-management effort. 

Despite its widely publicized shortcomings in curbing the spread of suburbia, the 10-year-old program did help revitalize the state's sleepy downtowns, points out Noonan, now a senior planner with a Hunt Valley consulting firm.

"It wasn't all about sprawl," Noonan said in a brief interview at the end of last week's conference. "And even when they were passing the (Smart Growth) legislation, they didn't think they would do anything about sprawl in a decade."

More than $679 million was pumped into community revitalization through a variety of state programs, Noonan and co-author Jacquelyn Magness Seneschal point out in a paper presented at the conference.  Cities, small towns and unincorporated communities benefited, from Glen Burnie to Cumberland and from Hyattsville to Vienna. Every dollar "invested" in redevelopment by the state drew out $2 in private and local funding, the authors say.

The state needs to do a better job of publicizing these redevelopment efforts, Noonan and Seneschal argue, because the mere perception of success draws out other private investors who can make the revival self-sustaining.  Small towns and communites need even more help in applying for and taking advantage of the varied grants, loans and tax credits that might help breathe new life into their neighborhoods, they say.

The key to curbing sprawl, suggest Noonan and Seneschal, is not blocking all state spending in spread out suburbia, but in making the designated growth areas more attractive places to live, work and play.

Toward that end, they argue that towns like Trappe on the Eastern Shore don't deserve the grief they've gotten from some for proposing to annex enough land to increase the population seven- or eightfold, from the 1,100 souls who lived there in 2000.

Towns making annexation deals with developers are getting builders to invest private money in their downtowns, as well as badly needed public facilities that they cannot afford otherwise, such as fire stations and town halls.  Muncipal annexations have become a lightning rod in growth debates across the state, especially on the Eastern Shore, where many residents rebelled at the loss of the peninsula's rural small-town character. 

But if the growth is going to happen anyway, Noonan said, better for water quality and the Chesapeake Bay to have it clustered around a town than spreading out into the countryside. 

"Whether or not  you think a town has annexed too much," Noonan said, "any house on water and sewer ... is one less house on sprawl."

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:16 AM in growth/land use | Permalink | Comments (2)
                       

More mass transportation would help solve a trinity of horrors rising from our car culture -- global warming, sprawl and obesity.

But if it's so great.... why do so few people take the train or bus, even when they can?

Matt Welch, assitant editorial page editor of the LA times, wrote an essay on the LA Times.com website about his determined efforts to commute to work on the subway and buses.  It should have taken about 10 minutes, but it took almost an hour.

His conclusion:  "People who can take their cars will take their cars, particularly if they're in a hurry or need to make multiple stops. As (Los Angeles) Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa explained his non-transit commuting to The Times in November 2006, 'I'd like to do more, but my problem is I have to go all over the city. It's very tough because of my schedule.' Sure. And it turns out many of us have hectic schedules as well."

Now, to be fair, Los Angeles' mass transit system is inferior to that of other cities, like those in New York, Chicago, Washington or Boston. Los Angeles is more like Baltimore, which had a system of streetcars that was ripped out in the 1950's as part of a conspiracy by GM (yes, conspiracy, it was proven in federal court) to sell buses to cities.  So the inconvenience of mass transit in LA doesn't really mean that mass transit, by its very nature, will be rejected by the public.  It just means that cities that were stupid enough to blow up their rail systems a half century ago still have lousy rail systems.  Buses aren't a replacement for rail, because they get stuck in the same traffic that car commuters hate.

When I lived in Boston, I loved to take the train to get around.  I enjoy reading on the train, looking out the window -- and just wallowing in the peaceful zen feeling of avoiding of fatal car accidents and the nightmare of parking.

But the last point is critical.  The reason trains work so well in Boston is that the streets are hellish to drive, and there is nowhere to park in many neighborhoods.   In Baltimore, by contrast, parking is relatively easy (although some people still grumble about it.)  You can park downtown to watch the St. Patrick's Day Parade, you can park near Patterson Park to watch concerts.  All this easy parking makes mass transit less appealing.  Plus, on top of this, the train lines go from downtown to -- where?  Like two places.  What good is that?

(Memo to Gov. Martin O'Malley: Please, please, PLEASE extend MARC train service from Baltimore to Washington to the weekends.  How are we going to keep attracting Washingtonians to live in our fair city if they can't even hop the train to DC on a Saturday to show the kids the Smithsonian?  Yes, Baltimore's half-century-long population loss has finally ended....kudos.  Now let's keep the momentum going by creating an affordable weekend train service from Baltimore to Washington.)

Baltimore's train system badly needs expansion.   Sure, it would be expensive ....but so is the environmental nightmare of highway construction, like the Intercounty Connector, which keeps roaring along with its multi-billion dollar price tag. But perhaps people won't call out for more train service here until their parking and traffic gets worse.  I know: let's jam up the streets with increasingly huge vehicles.  Wait...we're already doing that. 

Any more bright ideas?

READER JESSE responded by saying that my assertion of a GM streetcar conspiracy was "dubious."  He referred me to an article that argues that many other factors, such as suburbanization, were critical to the demise of streetcars.

MY RESPONSE is that there was, in fact, a conspiracy. The federal courts confirmed this conspiracy, although they declined to fine GM for this violation of the U.S. antitrust laws. In the 1948 court case, United States v. National City Lines Inc., the judge convicted GM of conspiracy to acquire control of transit companies that replaced streetcars with buses built by GM.

Would the street cars have disappeared anyway?  Well, they didn't disappear from Boston, Chicago and New York, for example.  These cities managed to keep their rail mass transit, despite suburbanization.  If Baltimore had resisted the GM bus ploy, I don't see why the trains couldn't still be running down Guilford Avenue behind my office. 

JEESE RESPONDS: Would the streetcar have disappeared anyway? Read the "http://www.btco.net/bthist.htm" of Baltimore's streetcars. Their decline began long before the GM story took place.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                       

Two conversations recently have gotten me thinking recently about the environment and the way we live.

The first one: I was introduced to someone as The Sun's Chesapeake Bay reporter, and the person asked, "Are you a greenie?"

The second one: I was on a panel discussion about the environment, and we were talking about farmers and land development being the largest sources of bay pollution. The person leading the discussion pointed out that farmers are just trying to make a living, and everyone needs a place to live, so who's the bad guy here? Whose fault is the pollution in the bay?

The answer is, it is our fault. Time was when there were factories belching toxic smoke and dumping lots of terrible things into the water, but in the 1970s the Clean Water Act (which turns 35 next year) largely took care of that. You still see the occasional polluter being slapped with fines, but we can't blame the factories for what ails us, in large part because many of them are simply not around anymore.

What is causing our problems is, in large part, our lifestyle. We drive everywhere, in ever-bigger cars. Most of us live in new homes that are largely not energy-efficient, bigger than we really need, not walkable to anything.

We can buy carbon offsets and put a bumper sticker on our SUV telling everyone we have done so and we can use biodegradable toilet paper, but does that really make us green?

Me, I wouldn't consider myself a "greenie."  I drive a hybrid, but it's as much for the great gas mileage as for the environmental benefits. I recycle my newspapers every two weeks, but really, isn't it nice that they pick 'em up at the curb?

I guess the thing that makes me most "environmentally correct" may not sound so "green" at all: my family bought a house in walking distance of everything we need, and we walk all the time. We do it for exercise, to get outside, and because who feels like getting a parking ticket? The fact that it is good for the earth, I suppose, is an ancillary benefit.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 10:09 AM | Permalink
                       

An alert reader tells me that Le Ruota, the Italian place in Chestertown, is gone. My husband will be so disappointed. He really liked their octopus.

In its place is slated to be a Jewish deli. Corned beef on the Chester...who knew? Maybe it's time to go back...have a good weekend, everyone!

Posted by Rona Kobell at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

I thought something smelled fishy about the press releases and news reports this week urging pregnant women to eat more fish.

As it turns out, the "health" advice from the "National Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition," was part of a public relations effort funded in part by the seafood industry, as the Bloomberg news service reports.

"A nonprofit group backed by the seafood industry urged pregnant women and nursing mothers to eat more fish than recommended by U.S. officials concerned that mercury contamination can hurt babies," Bloomberg reports.

"The group, the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, said women who avoid seafood to limit exposure to mercury deprive their babies and themselves of essential nutrients... Child-development and nutrition specialists produced and promoted the report, with $74,000 from the seafood industry's advocacy arm, the National Fisheries Institute."

The fact that the advice was coming in part from an industry that would benefit from the advice was not immediately apparent to the public or to reporters. The Sun didn't publish a story on the report, but The Washington Post did -- and it didn't disclose the fishery industry funding.

This is a growing problem for reporters.  The public relations industry is becoming increasing well funded and sophisticated, as the number of professional journalists declines. Fewer reporters have less time to check things out -- meaning the world is increasingly dominated by "news" that is really just someone's ad.

Several times a week, I receive glossy magazines -- many very slick and authoritative-looking -- or emailed press releases about new "reports" that seem to be coming from environmental groups or health organizations. They frequently want to put global warming "in perspective."  Or they want to tell me the good news about how clean our nation's air is. Or about how the Endangered Species Act is actually hurting endangered species.

The first thing I do is ask these groups who funds them.  But they seldom give a straight answer.  So I try to operate with an excess of caution.  Caveat emptor.

READER GREG CHAMBERS REPLIED: "You know, I'm less worried about $74,000 from the seafood industry, and more worried about $20 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts going to fund anti-fishery green groups. If this is a David & Goliath battle, it's industry that's being outspend. By a mile."

I aksed Chambers if he really thought the environmental groups were "anti-fishery" or genuinely concerned about the effects of mercury on the brains of developing children. Because of pollution from coal-burning plants, fish around the world have mercury in them -- and the government has warned that eating too much can be dangerous for pregnant women and young children.

Chambers replied:  "If they really believe that, they're idiots. (I'm a heavy metals toxicologist.)  I think it's possible that Pew is anti-fishery, since its money is 100% tied up in oil investments, and petroleum companies historically compete with fisheries for offshore "real estate." It's also highly likely that they're against coal-burning for power generation, for a variety of (probably virtuous) reasons. But methylmercury isn't a threat to any people anywhere, and the collateral damage is going to be measurable in IQ points as women stop eating fifsh and deny their babies the omega-3 fats. Just my Ph.D.'s two cents' worth."

Posted by Tom Pelton at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (3)
                       

We'll switch to the northern Shore for this week's postcard: Galena.

Galena used to be not much more than a junction in the road. But then the antique dealers came, and now it's a destination. here's what I said about it in a July 24, 2004 article:

"GALENA - You'd be hard-pressed to find a new pair of shoes, an auto mechanic or a screwdriver in this blink-and-miss-it farming community. But if you want a quaint corner cabinet, some porcelain figurines or a papier-mache rooster, you've come to the right place.

    This Upper Eastern Shore crossroads town of 650 residents has seven antiques shops, and the proprietors say business is booming.Part of the surge in shoppers comes from a weekly furniture auction in nearby Crumpton, where dealers jockey for the best deals amid fields of dressers, mirrors and lawn ornaments.

    But an even bigger boost to the auction and shops is coming from the hot second-home market in the nearby Chestertown area, a popular retirement and summer destination for residents of Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore; and Washington, D.C."

Galena is about 10 miles from Chestertown, which is one of the Shore's prettiest towns and offers greast seafood places and an Italian restaurant. It is also close to the Crumpton antique market.

The Firehouse Antiques Center has a lot of good finds, but I like Vernon Miller's place, Cross Street Station, for reasonably priced pieces. Plus, he's a ncie guy who offered to be my sherpa for a trip to Crumpton, a place where a beginner can easily get lost.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 4:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

Here, again, is the fabulous video of the Whitehaven ferry. (It briefly disappeared earlier today.)

As I said in my earlier post, a visit here and a ferry ride is a fantastic way to spend some time. The ferry gently goes back and forth, and the town, as previously noted, is quite beautiful (I feel like I'm a member of the Whitehaven Chamber of Commerce these days, the way I keep talking it up, and I doubt the place needs my help).

My dental hygienist spent summers in Whitehaven, and she told me that, even as a kid, she knew it was a really special place. At the pretty white church in town, they must thank God for all of the surrounding marsh -- it means the town will never be able to become built up.

This was my first story done with video, and if you're wondering how Karl Ferron got the shots he got, I'll tell you: He mounted the camera on the ferry gate and then also got shots from the Whitehaven Hotel's roof (that's the pretty yellow Victorian).

How he made sure the camera didn't go into the drink, I don't know. I guess that's the mark of a true professional.

Please tune in later today for another Friday postcard.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 5:30 PM | Permalink
                       

Wicomico County, like the rest of the Eastern Shore, is experiencing growth pressure these days. 

It's apparently gotten ugly there, though, as the Salisbury Daily Times reports that the county's environmental health officer was fired recently after builders and real estate agents complained. They charged that she was holding up permits for septic systems to treat sewage from new homes, requiring extra tests and in some cases costly additional precautions to prevent pollution from contaminating ground water - the source of many residents' drinking water.

Homes built out away from cities and towns often have to rely on wells and septic systems, in which residential sewage is collected in an underground tank and bacteria decompose it, letting the treated water seep into the soil.  Such systems if improperly designed or placed, cannot remove pollution as reliably as municipal wastewater treatment plants, and failing septic systems do contribute to the bay's fouling.  The states's Smart Growth policy seeks to encourage development using public utilties because it takes up less land as well, but cannot mandate it.   

The environmental health officer said she was trying to protect the ground water and the bay. But Wicomico real estate interests complaining of arbitrary and unfair treatment, got the ear of local legislators, the Times reports, and the county's environmental health officer got the boot.

Environmental activists now are raising alarm that relaxed handling of septic systems with her gone will taint ground water for drinking and even allow pollution to seep into Chesapeake Bay.  Read the whole article here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:48 PM in growth/land use | Permalink
                       

There's a conference going on now looking at Maryland's 10-year-old Smart Growth law and policy and how effective they've been at curtailing suburban sprawl.  (The short answer: Not a lot, but it's hard to tell for sure). You can read here the article I wrote about it in the Sun.

The opening day was devoted to looking back to see how the law turned out as it did.  Former Gov. Parris N. Glendening recounted how legislative leaders held up the Smart Growth bill, at the behest of county officials fearful of losing their control over land use.  Glendening  said he had to threaten to withhold the state supplemental budget - containng funds for projects which many lawmakers desperately wanted - to get them to vote on it.  Glendening explained that he was driven to attack sprawl by his passion for the environment, and for ensuring a healthy Chesapeake Bay.

Former Sun environmental writer Tom Horton also played a role, it seems, in the law's passage.  Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of the anti-sprawl group 1000 Friends of Maryland, recalled that Tom wrote a column urging readers to call the House leadership and tell them to stop sitting on this badly needed legislation.  He included their phone numbers, too, and the telephones in the State House rang off the hook. The legislators were miffed, but they acted. 

I called Tom to tell him how he got credit for helping pass Smart Growth. Too bad it didn't work, he replied.

The track record is mixed.  The conference, organized by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, includes presentations of studies and reports looking at what, if any, impact the policy Glendening launched in 1997 has had on housing availability and affordability, on farmland preservation and on the Chesapeake Bay, among other things. 

One of the papers even keys in on a story I wrote last year pointing out how state efforts to limit nutrient pollution fouling the bay from wastewater treatment plants may actually work against Smart Growth, which favors more compact development connected to public utilities.

For more on the conference, and to read many of the papers, go here to the Resources for the Future Web site. RFF is a cosponsor.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:29 PM in growth/land use | Permalink
                       

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation yesterday released the details of its new "green fund" proposal for raising money to reduce polluted runoff into the nation's largest estuary.

A big difference between this year's version and last year's original "green fund" (see below) is that it is no longer an anti-sprawl tool, with penalties for building subdivisions on farmland.  Now it's a tax on virtually everyone. And, in a turnaround, the Maryland Home Builders Association is praising it as "progressive," instead of fighting it, as they did last year.

The idea this year is to raise $85 million a year by imposing a fee on virtually every homeowner and business in the state. The fee would be 1 cent for every square foot of existing homes larger than 1,000 feet, and 1 cent for every square foot of commercial buildings and parking lots.

Half the money would go to improve stormwater management systems and rebuild urban streams; 40 percent would go to farmers to encourage practices that reduce fertilizer runoff; and 10 percent would go to restoring oysters, wetlands and forests.

Nearly everyone would pay the same rate -- whether they are urban pioneers recycling vacant homes in needy neighborhoods of Baltimore, or businesses renovating historic buildings in downtown Cambridge, or people bulldozing wetlands to build bay-view McMansions.

Last year's original version (before it was watered down), would have raised more money -- about $130 million. And it would have imposed a fee on only NEW construction of parking lots and buildings. Moreover, the fee would have added teeth to the state's ineffectual "Smart Growth" laws by imposing a higher charge on new construction outside designated growth areas selected by local governments. That would have discouraged building in wilderness areas, and encouraged investment in the state's depopulating cities and towns. In other words, it would have given people an incentive to recycle buildings instead of paving forests.

Advocates of the new approach say it's more likely to win support because it's more fair -- people in rural, suburban or urban areas, whether they are building new homes or recycling old ones, all have a role to play in cleaning up the Bay.  The "flush tax" succeeded by taking this approach, and is now improving sewage plants using fees imposed on almost everyone.

On the other hand, the new "green fund" no longer encourages the conservation of land -- long a key goal of the state's environmental community.  

Maybe the compromise bill will win more votes - and therefore make more progress for cleaning up the bay.  A small step forward may be better than no step.  But the central question is: should everyone be equally financially responsible for cleaning up the bay? Or should the polluters pay?

Here's a story about last year's version of the "green fund." 

Headline: BAY CLEANUP FUND WINS ENDORSEMENTS

Friday, February 16, 2007
Page: 1A
Source: Sun reporter
Byline: Tom Pelton
 
 
   House Speaker Michael E. Busch and the O'Malley administration have thrown their support behind legislation that would impose a fee on all new development in Maryland to pay for programs to stop farm runoff pollution from entering the Chesapeake Bay.

    The Chesapeake Bay Green Fund bill also is designed to discourage suburban sprawl by charging a higher fee for projects in rural areas than in designated growth zones.Supporters say the new fee would generate $130 million a year - twice the amount raised annually by former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s "flush tax," which helps finance improvements to sewage treatment plants.

    "This is about saving the greatest estuary in the Western Hemisphere," Busch said at a news conference yesterday, flanked by a dozen lawmakers and environmental activists who support the Green Fund bill.

    "It's not only about us and our children, but future generations," Busch said. "The bay is in dire need."

    The new fee would be collected from developers by local governments and sent to the state to help farmers pay for anti-pollution measures, such as cover crops, buffer strips between fields and waterways, manure sheds and other efforts to prevent runoff into the bay.

    Busch said the fund would strengthen Maryland's 1997 Smart Growth law by adding financial incentives to build within priority areas chosen by local governments.

    Gov. Martin O'Malley's nominee for agriculture secretary, Roger L. Richardson, also attended the event. O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said the new fund would work well with the governor's planned BayStat program, which will analyze data on pollution entering the estuary.

    The Green Fund legislation, proposed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, is opposed by some Republican leaders and homebuilders, who object to what they say would be increased costs for homebuyers.

    Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, asked later for his position, called the bill "laudable" and "very important," and said he supports "finding funds to clean up the bay." But Miller said he's not sure whether the General Assembly will pass the legislation, given that the state needs to raise money to deal with a projected deficit in future years.

    "We are going to be focused on balancing the budget. We are going to have our hands full looking at sales tax increases, lotteries, slot machines," Miller said. "It plays into that situation."

    Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, the House minority leader from Southern Maryland, said the state faces a huge gap between revenues and expenditures next year, and that this bill would do nothing to solve it.

    "My head is spinning," said O'Donnell, a Republican. "How can you create new fees to drive up the cost of construction when we haven't even begun to fix our existing structural deficit?"

    Tom Ballentine, policy director for the Home Builders Association of Maryland, said the fund would place an unfair burden on homebuyers to clean up pollution from farms.

    "I'm not sure that forcing new homebuyers to pay a disproportionate share of cleanup is really equitable," Ballentine said.

    Here's how the Green Fund would work, according to Kim Coble, Maryland executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

    Any developer proposing an "impervious surface" - including parking lots, roofs and sidewalks - would have to pay a fee to local government when he or she applies for a building permit. Hard surfaces like this contribute to pollution in the bay because rain washes contaminants into waterways.

    The fees for blacktop and roofing outside of Smart Growth areas selected by local and state governments would be $2 per square foot. The fee for surfaces inside designated growth zones would be 25 cents per square foot, Coble said. Government projects would not be subject to the fee.

    Developers could reduce the fee by up to 25 percent by taking steps to make parking lots more porous or using other measures to soften the environmental impact.

    If builders pass on the fees to homebuyers, the increase in the cost of a mortgage on an average house on a quarter-acre lot would be $5 per month inside a growth area and $38 per month elsewhere, Coble said.

    The $130 million raised annually would go to the Maryland comptroller's office, in a dedicated fund. Thirty-five percent of the money would go to the state Department of Agriculture and be distributed to farmers to help pay for cover crops that reduce runoff and other programs.

    Smaller portions of the money would go to other conservation initiatives, including incentives for affordable housing in designated growth areas and paying for storm water system improvements and wetlands restoration.

    Since Maryland passed the landmark Smart Growth law in 1997, 75 percent of new subdivisions have been built outside the "priority funding areas" targeted for growth.

    This is in part because of a weakness in the law. The Smart Growth program allows the governor to discourage projects in rural areas by threatening to withhold state money for roads and sewers. But the state cannot stop developers who have enough money to pay for their own roads and sewers.

    Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, chairwoman of the House Environmental Matters Committee, said the Green Fund would add both "teeth" and a "high IQ" to the Smart Growth laws.

    "Development is the last threat to our Chesapeake Bay," McIntosh said. "It doesn't have to be, if we grow properly.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 10:39 AM | Permalink
                       

It's been nonstop oyster news here...

We posted recently that commercial fishermen wanted to add another waterman and a seafood processor to the new oyster commission, which is going to advise the state on what to do about the dismal oyster situation over the next few months.

A few minutes ago, DNR's oyster guy, Tom O'Connell, told me that the commission was going to stay as it is, with no new members. O'Connell pointed out that the commission already has one processor and one watermen, and that all the meetings are public anyway.

I asked him how Maryland Watermen's Association President Larry Simns was taking the news.

Tom's take? "I talked to him and he was fine with it."

Posted by Rona Kobell at 4:09 PM | Permalink
                       

On Friday, a group of Maryland area climate activists protested what they called President Bush's "phony" summit on global warming. The meeting ended with the U.S., China, India and other participants still opposing mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

Unfortunatlely, I wasn't able to make it. But here is an account of the protest from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network: "Folks from all over the DC region came together outside the State Department last Friday... There were speeches from local climate and social justice leaders such as Van Jones, Ted Glick, Jamie Henn and Mike Tidwell.... The media were there in force. A polar bear even showed up. Together, we sent Bush a strong message: that his criminal negligence on climate change is no longer acceptable."

Posted by Tom Pelton at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

This spring, Maryland outlawed the trapping of diamondback terrapins. The state's iconic reptile was threatened in part by a growing market in China for Chesapeake turtle soup. The leader of the save-the-turtle movement - the liberator of the terrapins - was Willem Roosenburg.

Roosenburg is a biologist and terrapin scholar at Ohio University. But he grew up in Southern Maryland. And back when he was a kid, his mind was shaped in the muck of the Patuxent River behind his home. He was fascinated by marine life in part because his father studied oysters at the Chesapeake Biological Lab.

One lazy summer morning when Willem was about 12, he and a friend were fishing on a shallow, sandy flat. The river was calm and glassy, the air hazy. In the stultifying heat they began to see things - odd little leaves that bobbed to the surface all around their rowboat. Mystified, they rowed toward one. But as soon as they got close, it disappeared. So they paddled toward another, but it also slipped into the murk. They tried again and again, but they couldn't get close enough to make out what the baffling objects were. Finally, one popped up right beside their boat. They saw pinpoint nostrils, a beak curved into a sly smile - and realized it was the head of a swimming turtle. They had drifted into a colony of hundreds of rare and elusive diamondback terrapins.

Something about that moment of discovery changed Willem. It was perhaps the wonder of seeing for the first time creatures that had been around him for years - but which he had never noticed, because he wasn't paying attention.

Years later, when he was studying for a Ph.D. in ecology at the University of Pennsylvania, he decided to devote himself to finding out more about the reptiles. So he returned to the Patuxent River and spent two decades watching, trapping, tagging, measuring and releasing diamondbacks. He learned that they protect wetlands, by eating periwinkles and keeping the numbers of snails in check so they don't devour too much marsh grass. He discovered that slight temperature variations in the spring -- a few degrees warmer or cooler as the turtles develop - alters their sex, making them all male or all female.

He had seen vast fleets of terrapins as a child. But as an adult he realized their numbers were suddenly and steeply declining. From 1996 through last year, he documented a 75 percent drop in females in the Patuxent River - a trend that echoed anecdotal reports from elsewhere in the bay. Roosenburg learned that watermen were increasingly trapping terrapins for a growing market in Asia, where consumers had eaten almost all of their native turtles.

Nobody knows how many terrapin are left in the Chesapeake Bay. But the number reported caught in Maryland topped 10,000 last year, a more than 20 fold increase from the year before. The trapping frenzy seemed like an ominous replay of the Victorian era, when a craze for turtle soup nearly drove the species to extinction.

On top of the soup menace, there were also other problems hounding the diamondbacks. The sandy beaches they need for nesting are disappearing, as developers heap boulders along the water to protect new homes. Crab traps also snag many terrapins. And then there are the raccoons. As subdivisions have sprawled into rural areas, the number of trash cans has multiplied - and with the trash has come an explosion of raccoons with a taste for tender terrapin eggs.

Roosenburg was determined to do something to save the turtles. So he worked with other conservationists to form an advocacy group, backed by turtle lobbyists and reptilian lawyers, and supported by the National Aquarium in Baltimore. During hearings in Annapolis, Roosenburg used his decades of research data to convince lawmakers to outlaw trapping.

Watermen aren't the only threat to the terrapins. But the increase in trapping was a growing threat to the slow-reproducing species, and perhaps the easiest to control.

Now, if the terrapins are to survive, the save-the-turtle movement may have to evolve into a save-the-beach movement. That may sound like a popular goal. But preserving sandy areas will require confronting developers and waterfront homeowners, who have more political clout than watermen.

It may take decades before anyone knows if Roosenburg saved the state mascot. But he's hopeful. Perhaps his great-granddaughter will be fishing on the Patuxent River on a lazy summer morning someday, when she, too, will be surrounded by hundreds of those mysterious, disappearing faces.

Posted by Tom Pelton at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

The Phillips electronics company is boasting that it has a "green" flat screen TV, which you can read about in this post on the blog Treehugger.

Apparently this fancy new giant television -- with the catchy handle 37PFL9732D -- uses 40 percent less electricity of a regular giant new flat-screen TV.  Phillips has launched a big ad campaign extolling the virtues of their environmentally friendly mega-screens.

They reminds me of GM's ads for hybrid SUV's.  Or, for that matter, the catalogues I get for "earth friendly" clothes, belts, shoes and jewelry.

All of it raises the question: Can we have "green consumerism?" Or is it an oxymoron, like low-fat cookies?  I mean, if you want to lose weight, don't eat low-fat cookies -- just stop eating cookies.

If you want to reduce your electricity usage, just turn off the damn TV -- don't go out and buy a new flat screen TV. The picture will look so crystal clear, you'll probably watch it 40 percent more often.

I'm not suggesting that people stop buying anything, and just root around in their back yards for acorns to grind to make hummus.  But when it comes to optional things -- like TV's -- wouldn't it be more "earth friendly" just to resist the impulse to buy?  Isn't it this buy, buy, buy  mentality that is at the core of America's headaches?

Be a conservationist -- conserve your own money.

Or maybe I'm wrong -- maybe our world would benefit somehow if a "green" economy flourished, with all kinds of eco-friendly shoes, computers, jet-skiis, earrings, hotdogs etc.  Any thoughts?

Posted by Tom Pelton at 11:24 AM | Permalink
                       

Under Gov. Ehrlich, officials with the Department of Natural Resources always said they would let the science dictate whether the state moved to introduce an Asian oyster. But it was not exactly a secret that many on the governor's staff and in the agency were bullish on Ariakensis, the species that was to be the savior of the bay.

A few years ago, at a meeting, former DNR secretary Ron Franks told me it was amazing what these things could do...and I heard from more than one political person that the native oyster was "toast." Former fisheries director Pete Jensen liked to say the Asian oyster was from Oregon even when scientists knew it wasn't, in hopes of making the foreign species more palatable to a nervous public. Scientists, meanwhile, urged caution, saying we didn't know enough about the Asian osyter to make a decision.

Now comes Kenny Keen, waterman and deputy director of fisheries under Ehrlich, telling us what he really thinks about the Asian oyster:

"It is time to seriously think about Crassostrea ariakensis, nonnative oyster restoration. I realize this is not politically correct, but enough is enough !

"We are wasting taxpayer money on redundant studies and native oyster restoration techniques that always seem to generate the same results: Disease is the driver in native oyster restoration. It is obvious we are not going to solve the disease problems."

You can read the whole thing here. It's in the new ediiton of the Bay Journal.

The new administraiton does not appear to share Keen's enthusiasm for the foreign species. Itr rarely is mentioned anymore, and Gov. O'Malley himself said a few months ago that he would not draw any conclusions about it until they finished their environmental impact study, which is expected to come out next year.

Posted by Rona Kobell at 10:23 AM | Permalink
                       

An enterprising group of University of Maryland studies has built a solar-powered house.  And they're entering their pad in an alternative energy contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

They call it the "LEAFhouse," after the world's most efficient solar panels -- those green things that protrude from those brown objects outside.

But this is the kind of science project that's difficult to just pop into mom's minivan.  So, they're lifting their homie onto a giant truck tomorrow afternoon (Oct. 2) on campus, and trucking it to the the National Mall.  Let's hope their road trip ends with a big green victory.

But, dudes: don't stop along the way for gas.  I don't think a green house would fit very well under that ExxonMobil gas station canopy.

Trucking UM Students’ Solar House to National Mall for U.S. Competition

Posted by Tom Pelton at 11:17 AM | Permalink