Bay Daily

Penny Wise and Bay Foolish

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are proposing to slash funding needed to reduce runoff pollution from farms into the Chesapeake Bay.
 
The House Agriculture Committee released released a draft 2013 Farm Bill that would cut money for conservation programs that help farmers pay for the cost of fencing cattle out of streams, plant trees along waterways, and take other steps to create green filters to absorb pollutants.

Today (May 20, 2013) the Senate is scheduled to start debating its own version of the Farm Bill -- which also contains cuts, but not as deep as the House version.
 
“Bay area farmers throughout the six-state watershed have demonstrated their desire to continue to do their part for clean water,” said Will Baker, President of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “But to do so, they need the federal government’s commitment to provide adequate resources. Any loss of funding will shortchange our farmers and increase costs for local citizens and governments.”

Small Town Solving a Big Problem

The little town of Ashland, Va., is trying to do its part to reduce pollution going to the Chesapeake Bay -- by building a better parking lot.

Last month, the town celebrated the completion of a new municipal parking lot with a ribbon cutting, dignitaries, and speeches. As the local newspaper, the Herald-Progress, said, “Call it a watershed moment.”

That’s because the town went the extra mile and spent the extra dollar to create a “soft,” low-impact parking lot that absorbs water and pollution rather than allowing them to run off hard pavement and into nearby Stony Run, a Chesapeake Bay tributary.

The runoff of rain and snow in cities and towns is among the most serious pollution problems plaguing the Chesapeake Bay and its many streams and rivers. The rain and snow aren’t the problem – it’s the dirt, fertilizers, oil, and grease that get washed off the land and dumped into nearby waterways. The culprit isn’t Mother Nature; it’s man and our inattentiveness to the impacts we have on the natural world.

Chesapeake Bay Needs Speedy Confirmation of EPA Administrator

After repeated delays and political grandstanding, a Senate hearing has been scheduled for noon today on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to become EPA Administrator.
 
McCarthy, currently EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, is a former Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and an environmental advisor to five Massachusetts governors (including Mitt Romney).  But after being nominated by President Obama for EPA’s top post, she drew fire from some conservatives for her efforts at EPA to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

UPDATE at 5:20 p.m.:  The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today voted 10-8 in favor of approving Gina McCarthy's nomination to head U.S. EPA, sending the nomination to the Senate floor.  

The position of EPA Administrator is critically important for the future of the Chesapeake Bay. The federal agency over the next 12 years must hold Bay region states accountable for meeting pollution limits for the Chesapeake established by the administration in December 2010.

CBF Forum Explores Perplexing Problems with Smallmouth Bass

A packed house greeted the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s recent public forum about the causes of dieseases and die-offs of smallmouth bass in the Susquehanna River and other Bay tributaries. 
 
Scientists, activists, anglers, reporters, and representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission turned out on May 8 to for the forum at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to discuss a new Chesapeake Bay Foundation report, called “Angling for Healthier Rivers.”  The report describes the "perfect storm" of pollution, parasites, warming temperatures, and bacteia that are combining to kill the popular sport fish.
 
The state’s fisheries management agency and CBF have joined in calling on EPA to designate the Susquehanna River as “impaired” with pollution under the federal Clean Water Act, a move that would focus more attention on cleaning up the waterway. But Pennsylvania’s environmental agency has declined, saying more research is needed to determine the causes of the fish deaths.  The day after the forum, EPA announced there is "insufficient water quality data to make an impairment determination." 

Want to Make a Difference? Look No Further

People often ask what they can do to make a real, tangible difference in restoring the Chesapeake Bay. If you’re a Bay Daily reader in Virginia (or beyond), here are three suggestions.

Help build one of the world’s greenest, most environmentally sustainable buildings to serve as a model for living responsibly near sensitive environmental resources such as the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is raising money to construct the Brock Environmental Center at Pleasure House Point in Virginia Beach, Va. This cutting-edge facility is designed to be so in tune with the environment that it will have “net zero” impact on surrounding air, land, and water.

The unique building will house CBF’s Hampton Roads staff and that of Lynnhaven River Now, a partner watershed group; be home base for CBF’s award-winning outdoor education programs for Hampton Roads students and teachers; restore native habitat and wildlife; provide community meeting space; and serve as a national model for sustainable building.

Public Invited to Discussion of Plight of Smallmouth Bass

Sport fishermen and women, clean water activists, and everyone who cares about the health and future of the Chesapeake Bay’s largest tributary -– the Susquehanna River -– are invited to a public forum tomorrow evening (May 8) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to discuss the plight of smallmouth bass. 

The event, hosted  by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, 1302 N. Third Street in Harrisburg. The forum will feature one of America’s leading research fisheries biologists, Dr. Vicki Blazer of the U.S. Geological Survey.  Dr. Blazer and colleagues discovered the existence of sexual abnormalities (called “intersex”) among smallmouth bass about a decade ago. And since then, she and her fellow scientists have been pioneering further investigations into the interaction of water pollution, parasites, and other factors in the death and disease of smallmouth bass, one of the region’s most  popular sport fish.

A recent Chesapeake Bay Foundation report, Angling for Healthy Rivers, described how a “perfect storm” of pollution, parasites, bacteria, and warming water temperatures are combining to cause fish kills and illnesses in five Chesapeake Bay tributaries, including the Susquehanna, Shenandoah, and South Branch Potomac rivers.

Study: Restored Oyster Reefs Better at Absorbing Pollution

It’s a shell of a wastewater treatment system.

As it turns out, oysters remove nitrogen pollution from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and other bodies of waters at rates that are higher than previously known, according to a new report by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Restored oyster reefs in the Bay can absorb up to 10 times more nitrogen –- which feeds algal blooms and low-oxygen “dead zones” –- than areas of the estuary without healthy reefs, providing new evidence that replanting and rebuilding oyster reefs can clean up the nation’s largest estuary, according to the study, “Denitrification and Nutrient Assimilation on a Restored Oyster Reef.”

“Our study showed that a successfully restored oyster reef can remove significant levels of nutrients from the water column,” said Lisa Kellogg, a researcher at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “We found that annual denitrification rates at the restored site were enhanced by an order of magnitude and that rates in August were among the highest ever recorded for an aquatic system.”

Veto of Bay Cleanup Bill is Overturned by Anne Arundel County Council

Anne Arundel County, Maryland, is moving forward with cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

The county council voted 5-2 this afternoon to override last week’s veto by County Executive Laura Neuman of a stormwater pollution control fee. The fee is currently scheduled to start on July 1, and is now set at $85 per year for an average home in the county. (However, a proposed new bill was also introduced today by a majority of council members to phase in the fees, and lower bills for some businesses.)

The money to be raised by the fee will be used to hire contractors and construction workers.  They will build wetlands, stormwater ditches and ponds, and other projects to catch and filter rainwater polluted with fertilizer, oil, antifreeze, and other toxic chemicals running off the land into the Chesapeake Bay.

The Anne Arundel County Council voted 4-3 last month to approve the fee. The investments in clean water are required by a 2012 Maryland law for the state’s 10 largest jurisdictions. The fees will help the counties and Baltimore meet EPA pollution limits for the nation’s largest estuary and follow a cleanup plan called the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint.

“Polluted runoff is the Bay’s growing pollution source, threatening not only crabs, fish, and other aquatic life, but also human health," said Alison Prost, Maryland Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Oh Oysters, Oh Volunteers, Oh Shenandoah!

Some great things happening around the Chesapeake Bay watershed this week, and Bay Daily gives a shout-out to a few of them today.

This week, a pair of Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) oyster restoration boats placed hundreds of
concrete reef balls in the Lafayette River in Norfolk, Va., part of a partnership effort to help restore native oysters to this historic river near the mouth of the Bay.

While the Bay’s oyster population generally remains seriously depressed, earlier surveys in the Lafayette indicate a relatively robust oyster population there, despite the river’s overall troubled health. Harvesting oysters has been banned in the Lafayette since the 1920s due to contamination associated with industrial activities and stormwater runoff.

But in 2011, CBF, the Elizabeth River Project, and more than 100 community partners announced a plan to bring the Lafayette back to health, including opening the river to safe shellfish harvesting by 2020.

To help nurture the river’s oyster population, CBF this week placed 275 reef balls on state-protected sanctuary reefs and along designated shorelines. The reef balls, domed concrete structures full of nooks and crannies, are designed to attract baby oysters and help protect them from natural predators. To tackle the reef ball job, CBF called upon its two uniquely designed oyster restoration vessels, the Patricia Campbell from Maryland and Chesapeake Gold from Gloucester, Va.

Video Describes Problems of Smallmouth Bass, and Offers Solutions