Bay Daily

Legislative Summit for Bay

With a state legislative session underway in Maryland that is critically important to meeting new Chesapeake Bay pollution limits, friends of the Bay are holding their annual Legislative Summit at 5 p.m. today in Annapolis.   High on the agenda are much-needed funding for sewage plant upgrades and projects to reduce polluted runoff, as well as legislation that would better regulate construction of large new subdivisions on septic systems in rural areas.

Legislative support is needed to continue progress with cleaning up the Bay through the Maryland’s plan to meet new pollution limits (also called the Bay Total Maxiumum Daily Load, or TMDL).  “Maryland has crafted a good plan to sustain our momentum.  Now lawmakers must do the right thing to ensure the plan goes into action,” said Kim Coble, Vice President for Policy and Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. 

Police Deploy Sonar and Radar to Stop Poaching

It’s a gray and frigid winter morning on the Chesapeake Bay, and a Maryland Natural Resource Police boat is out patrolling for illegal nets, using a new high-tech sonar system in its hunt.

Last winter, police found more than five miles of illegal nets filled with more than 12 tons of striped bass.

“It matters because the striped bass are a protected resource,” said Corporal Roy Rafter, as he stood in the patrol boat, near a screen with electronic images of the Bay’s bottom.  “Striped bass are a migratory fish, and this happens to be their spawning ground.  We have an obligation to make sure that this fish gets safely through this area and into other areas.”

The poaching incidents last January and February sparked heightened vigilance among Maryland officials, who purchased new side-scan sonar systems for police boats to detect illegal nets.  The Maryland General Assembly passed laws last year that increase penalties for poaching to $25,000; allow the state to revoke commercial fishing licenses more easily; and allow officers to search the cabins and compartments of fishing boats without probable cause. New regulations require commercial fishermen to put their license numbers on all nets.

Police are now using these powers for the first time.

Citizens Aren’t Waiting on Politicians for Clean Water

Call it Occupy the Bay if you will, but citizens around the Chesapeake Bay watershed are getting together to take ownership of clean water and Bay restoration.

In Virginia alone, hundreds of clean-water advocates are rolling up their sleeves and volunteering to help clean up local waterways themselves instead of waiting for local, state, or federal officials to decide what to do. It’s almost as if these “can do” citizens are weary of “can’t do” politicians who say the time isn't right to clean up the Bay.

More than 100 volunteers, for example, turned out last weekend to pick up litter and debris swept by stormwater runoff into Richmond’s Bryan Park, a city green space where three urban streams converge to form Upham Brook, a tributary of the Chickahominy River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

Luke Garcia, a sixth-grader at Seven Hills School in Richmond, and his dad, Felix, were among the volunteers who filled scores of bags with trash, plastic bottles, cups, cigarette butts, and other urban flotsam and jetsam. Here’s how Luke described the experience in a school report:

“There are 3 streams that connect…in Bryan Park. I hit the jackpot (a lot of debris) when I was following someone. It was huge, I mean huge. You think you saw a lot of debris in one place (but) this was as big as 1/5th or 1/6th of this room. I have never seen this much debris in one place; everywhere I looked I saw more debris. Even though we thought we cleaned all of it we didn’t; that was how bad it was. It probably took us about 3 hours to clean all this.”

The stream cleanup was a partnership effort by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), the Friends of Bryan Park, and REI Inc. and is part of a larger Upham Brook restoration project that will involve community residents in other cleanups, streambank restorations, tree plantings, and education activities in the coming months. It’s just the kind of whole-community project that can serve as a model for citizen involvement across the Bay watershed.

Another example of a community seizing the initiative for clean water: Given the opportunity to learn more about local Bay restoration plans, more than 70 citizens packed a conference room in downtown Norfolk recently for an early-morning breakfast symposium to discuss ways they can ensure their local waters are cleaned up.

The diverse crowd heard presentations by local experts, asked questions, and left armed with ways they can become directly involved in the clean water decisions being made in their Hampton Roads localities. Many pledged to involve their friends and neighbors and further engage the community.

And hundreds of miles from Hampton Roads in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, 70 volunteers of all ages came out on recent Saturday morning to help plant 1,200 trees on a neighbor’s farm. The objective: provide some old-fashioned stoop-labor to help a local farmer in his efforts to reduce runoff and protect water quality in a local creek, one of the Chesapeake Bay’s headwater streams. See a video of the project here.

These citizen actions send a very different message than one heard from some local, state, and federal politicians about Chesapeake Bay restoration. While most of these officials proclaim they’re for a clean Bay, some are calling to halt or delay further cleanup efforts because Bay restoration (pick one) costs too much, shouldn’t be done in a weak economy, is based on bad science, will kill jobs, or is unconstitutional.

While perhaps not surprising, this pushback is lamentable, given that Virginia and the Bay region have been saying for three decades the Bay must be cleaned up, the Clean Water Act and state law require it, voters consistently demand it, and -- political rhetoric notwithstanding -- Bay cleanup (and environmental restoration generally) boosts jobs and the economy, especially in recessionary times like these.

As in other arenas of life, it seems citizens are out in front of many politicians when it comes to environmental protection. It’s encouraging that so many residents are not waiting for our leaders to act (or not act) but in true American fashion are taking responsibility for their own communities and futures.

Are you tired of waiting? Click here to learn ways you can take the initiative for clean water.

Chuck Epes
Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Photo credits (top to bottom): Mandy Yarnell/CBF; Felix Garcia; Mandy Yarnell/CBF; Andrea Moran/CBF.

64 Percent Willing to Pay More "Flush Fee" to Clean Up Bay

Would you be willing to pay a few dollars more every month -– perhaps the price of a Subway sandwich and a soda -- to keep sewage out of the streams where your children play?
 
I would.  And a new poll finds that about two thirds of my neighbors would, too. Sixty-four percent of Marylanders say they are willing to pay more into the state’s Bay Restoration Fund (also known as the “flush-fee”) to finish upgrading sewage treatment plants and reduce stormwater pollution into the Chesapeake, according to a December 11-15 poll of 801 Maryland residents by Opinion Works Research and Communications of Annapolis.
 
Right now, the “flush fee” is $2.50 per household per month. The fund, created by the Maryland General Assembly in 2004, has done a tremendous amount to reduce pollution into the Chesapeake Bay, paying to upgrade 23 sewage treatment plants so far.  But the fund is now facing a future $385 million shortfall if it is going to meet its mission of improving all 67 major sewage treatment plants across the state, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Rays Gobbled Up in "Endangered Species Soup"

A new report describes how manta rays are being decimated worldwide because of a growing market in selling their gills to Chinese markets for their alleged medicinal value.

 “Endangered species soup,” was how one conservationist described it.

The report, by a nonprofit organization called Shark Savers, describes what makes rays -– in the Pacific Ocean or here in the Chesapeake Bay -- so vulnerable to overharvesting:  This primitive shark-like creatures with their kite-shaped bodies reproduce very slowly, with each female only giving birth to a few pups.   Killing manta rays (and their cousins, mobula rays) for their gills is a double tragedy, because there is no evidence that their soup actually has any medicinal value, and because rays are more valuable left in the wild. They are not only ecologically valuable, but also economically valuable, because their beauty is attractive to divers, and helps boost the diving and ecotourism industries, according to the Shark Savers report.

3-Minute Video Packs Big Punch

For a quick and inspiring lesson in how different communities of interests can work together for clean water, take a look at this 3-minute video.

It features a Shenandoah Valley (Virginia) farmer with a problem creek running through his farm, a couple of Chesapeake Bay Foundation conservation experts, and scores of community volunteers pitching in to make a difference.

Like every story, of course, this one is more complex and involves many more players than this video snippet can show, but the basic message is simple: farmers, conservationists, government, and citizens can work together to improve their communities.

Chesapeake News and Events

On Wednesday, both the Virginia and Maryland General Assemblies opened session for 2012.  In Maryland, the top priorities for the Clean Water Healthy Families Coalition include funding for sewage plant upgrades and stormwater system improvements.  In addition, limiting pollution from septic systems is critical.  All these steps will help Maryland meet the new Chesapeake pollution limits, also known as the TMDL.  To learn more, click here.

To read about key issues in Virginia, click here. 

In other Bay news…  

Offshore Wind: Supported by Public, but Undermined by Drilling

Nearly two thirds of Maryland voters polled support the construction of offshore wind power, even if it means paying a dollar or two more per month, according to a new survey released today by advocates of an offshore wind farm east of Maryland's Eastern Shore.

The question of whether Maryland’s utilities should help subsidize the construction of a billion-dollar-plus offshore wind farm will be one of the subjects debated in the General Assembly session that starts today in Annapolis.

Although public support for offshore wind appears strong, the economics of this kind of development  -– which would be the first offshore wind farm in America –- is fragile, in part because of competition from natural gas.

More than 3,000 gas wells have been drilled over the last five years in the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Live Facebook Chat on Jobs and Environmental Regulations

Tune in to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Facebook page tomorrow (Tuesday, January 10) at 12:30 p.m. CBF Senior Writer and Investigative Reporter Tom Pelton will be hosting a live chat on the contentious subject of whether environmental regulations are "job killers."

Reality Check: President Bush Imposed More Regulations Than Obama

Here are two sobering truths for anti-regulatory activists who are in a froth these days, trying to bash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, generally, and pollution limits for the Chesapeake Bay, specifically.

I bring these up as debate heats up in the news media over the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s new report, “Debunking the Job Killer Myth: How Pollution Limits Encourage Jobs in the Chesapeake Bay Region.”

In response to the report, Don Parrish, senior director of government relations at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said: "If regulations created jobs, then the Obama administration would have created an economic tidal wave and we'd have full employment right now. Any time you force people to spend money, the impact new regulations have is going to have a dramatically negative impact on the economy."

Fact One: Despite claims that the Obama Administration has unleashed a “tidal wave” of new regulations, Obama has not introduced an unusual number of new regulations, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News.