It's About Time

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finally doing some enforcement work to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. The EPA has told poultry farmers on Maryland's Eastern Shore that they must now apply for a permit if any of their manure is running off into local waterways.

The federal requirements are even stiffer than what Maryland state officials have proposed. Poultry growers will be required to submit comprehensive reports on how they handle and store the manure produced by their flocks, and list how much they're using as fertilizer on crops and what precautions they're taking to keep it from getting into nearby streams.

The federal regulations also could require many to change their farming practices. The rules sharply restrict the amount of time they can stockpile manure in their fields before working it into the soil and require them to leave much larger swaths of land uncultivated along drainage ditches and waterways.

Agriculture is the largest source of the nutrients degrading the bay's water quality, with runoff of manure and chemical fertilizers responsible for 42 percent of the nitrogen and 46 percent of the phosphorus. Nitrogen and phosphorus runoff each summer results in huge "dead zones" in the bay where fish and other wildlife are unable to survive because of algae blooms that deplete the water's oxygen.

Go here for a full report in the Baltimore Sun.

Why We Stopped Eating Crabs

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation recently published a report that for the first time links the decline of Blue Crabs in Maryland and Virginia waters to poor water quality.

The state of the blue crab has been declared a disaster, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Environmental Protection agency after decades of empty promises from state and federal officials who claim to support cleaning up the Bay even while it collapses.

Among the report's findings:

* Pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous create large "dead zones" in the bay that annually wipe out 75,000 tons of clams and worms at the bottom of the Bay where crabs would otherwise feed. That's enough food to support 60 million blue crabs, or about half the Bay's commercial crab harvest.

* Sediment from runoff and algal blooms from pollutants kill the underwater grasses that baby crabs need to hide from predators. More than half the Bay's eelgrass has died since the 1970s.

* Because the Bay supports fewer crabs, overfishing has become an even greater problem. Watermen have caught an average 62 percent of the total blue crab population in the Bay every year for the last decade, far more than the 46 percent that scientists say is sustainable.

"In 2007, watermen suffered the worst crab harvest since Bay-wide record keeping began in 1945," the report states. "2008 was even worse in Virginia, and only slightly better in Maryland. Maryland and Virginia have endured more than $640 million in losses over the last decade because of the crab's decline. The states are taking immediate steps to prevent a potential collapse of the fishery. On October 23, 2008, Maryland banned the commercial harvest of female crabs until spring, and Virginia imposed the same prohibitions on October 27."

Now there's something to think about next time you reach for that bag of Scott's Turf Builder (40 percent nitrogen) to beef up your lawn. Better idea: turn your lawn into a vegetable garden and feed it with compost.

Cleaning the Bay: They Lied

An expose in today's Washington Post tells how federal and state officials for years have failed to gather the political will to save the Chesapeake Bay, instead feeding the public false information about "progress" in the cleanup effort in order to maintain their funding, to the tune of $6 billion so far.

Officials have long known how rampant shoreline development and runoff from farms, storm drains and industry were destroying the Bay. They've even had the science to solve the problem. But they just never had the guts to tackle the issue head-on. Goals for curbing pollution have never been met. Instead, state environmental agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were painting a rosy picture of the Bay's health using phony computer models rather than actual data. The truth was, the EPA didn't even have the equipment in place to actually monitor what was happening in the Bay.

Recently Maryland and Virginia officials asked the Bush administration to declare the Bay's crab industry a disaster in order to scare up federal funds to help out-of-work watermen. The Bay's once thriving oyster population has long been in shambles, almost non-existent. Each summer pollution spawns huge "dead zones" in the Bay where the water is starved of oxygen and lifeless.

"It'll always be beautiful," said Bernie Fowler, 84, a former waterman, county commissioner and state senator from Calvert County, who has argued for cleaning the bay since 1970. "But there's nothing out there living."

Environmentalists and watermen have threatened to take the EPA to court to enforce cleanup goals. Otherwise, it's business as usual.

Breaking News: Chesapeake Bay Foundation to Sue EPA

Blue crabs qualify as a "disaster." Oysters have all but disappeared. Each year the Chesapeake Bay spawns gigantic "dead zones" where nothing can live.

The Chesapeake Bay is dying. The entire region continues to use it as a dumping ground for pollution. And for years all we've heard is talk about how something needs to be done, about how something will be done.

It never gets better, only worse.

Finally, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation announced today that it is going to federal court to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to act to save the Bay. Here's the announcement from Will Baker, president of the foundation:

"For the better part of the last day and a half, I have been talking with reporters. And, just this morning, we formally announced our “notice of intent” to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force the federal agency to keep its promises to reduce pollution and clean up the Bay. Such a notice is required 60 days before actual litigation is filed.

"We are taking this extreme step because not once, not twice, but three times, the EPA has signed agreements to reduce pollution in the Bay. The latest, the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement signed by the states and feds in June of 2000, would have cut nitrogen and phosphorus pollution enough to remove the Bay and tributary rivers from the federal Impaired Waters List. Eight years later, EPA admits they will miss this goal, and they are discussing moving the deadline back another twelve years!

"We’ve had it with these delays. So we are going to federal court. We are targeting EPA as the lead federal agency responsible for upholding the Clean Water Act. And, we are not going it alone. Watermen, recreational anglers, and former elected officials have joined in this action.
Here is a link http://www.cbf.org/site/R?i=kpftxMJw7xp-SvjJLvcnUQ.. to a lot more information about this action. We are going to need your support. Please sign the petition, send the EPA Administrator an e-mail, and sign up for our rally on November 20th in Washington, DC."

Feds to Chesapeake: Drop Dead!

Only recently the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's annual report showed the health of the bay getting worse, not better.

Water quality is down, crabs are down, oysters are almost gone. It has been all but acknowledged that local states will fail to reach their goal of cleaning up the Cheseapake by 2010.

But the federal government will certainly be spending more to help the bay along, right?

Think again. The federal budget president George Bush signed into law this week includes cuts in critical programs aimed at reducing the flow of sewage into the bay. Specifically, a federal program that provides loans to local communities to upgrade their sewage treatment plants took a $395 million hit, $44 million of that from states in the Chesapeake watershed.

A program aimed at curbing farm runoff into the bay was cut $1.7 million, and research and restoration programs operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were reduced by $3.8 million.

Meanwhile, the money is still flowing to crop subsidies and ethanol, guaranteeing worse times ahead for the Chesapeake.

Chesapeake Bay is Dying

The Chesapeake Bay used to be one of the greatest food sources in the world. It teemed with fish, crabs and oysters.

But the latest "State of the Bay" report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) says conditions on the bay are getting worse, not better. This year the foundation gave the bay's health a score of 28 points out of 100, down a point from the year before. Reasons for the lower score: Increased pollution from phosphorous, worsening water clarity and a continuing decline in the bay's crab population.

States in the Chesapeake watershed in 2000 signed an agreement to clean up the bay by the year 2012. It's pretty clear that won't happen, despite many promises and words spoken by area officials. While there have been some inroads made in combating nitrogen pollution from fertilizers, phosphorous continues to pour in the bay from agriculture and from lawns as millions of new people crowd into the area. The worst phosphorous levels are coming from the Potomac and James rivers, according to the CBF.

The bay's crab population, driven down by overharvesting and pollution, now stands at a level not seen since the 1940s. Crabs also are suffering because of the overfishing of menhaden (used to make fish oil). The rebounding striped bass, which favor menhaden, are now eating more crabs instead. Meanwhile, pollution and murkier water are killing the bottom grasses that crabs depend on. Pullution is feeding enormous algae blooms, which create an aquatic "dead zone" that stretches from the Bay Bridge outside Annapolis all the way to the mouth of the bay in Virginia.

Nitrogen levels, dissolved oxygen, water clarity, underwater grasses, oysters, shad--all are listed as "critical" in the CBF report. Commercial fishing has all but vanished. Now when you order a crab cake at one of our local crab houses you don't know if the crab hasn't been flown in from Southeast Asia.

Is there any previous example of a species other than humans destroying the habitat on which it depends? I wonder if there will be some sort of ceremony if the Chesapeake Bay does, indeed, expire. What words will seem apt when the last fish, the last crab, is pulled from the water?