Bay Daily

Poultry Farmer Blames Builder, Who Blames Farmer... as the Bay Dies Between Them

A central tragedy of the Chesapeake Bay is that everyone loves it, but everyone also refuses to see how they’re killing it. It’s a shared resource. But it’s always someone else’s responsibility to give something up to make sure it’s not exploited.

The Bay is like a beautiful neighborhood park that’s being overrun with traffic, litter and pet waste. The dog walkers get so overheated yelling at the litter bugs and Sunday drivers that they pay no attention to their own pollution.

I urge you to listen to Joel McCord’s excellent series of public radio programs on WYPR to get a sense for the round-robin of responsibility avoidance that’s happening right now as federal government considers increasing action to clean up the Cheapeake Bay.

"A Last, Best Hope" for the Chesapeake Bay

The Annapolis Capital has endorsed new legislation to save the Bay, called the Chesapeake Clean Water Act. “The Bay needs both the legislation's concrete standards and its commitment of federal aid money.”

The Baltimore Sun also editorializes today about the bill, writing: “The Chesapeake's plight has become so desperate that this amounts to, if not a last stand, then perhaps a last, best hope for a turnaround.”

The Fairfax Times endorses the Chesapeake Clean Water Act, saying: "EPA officials have been going to battle with a squirt gun in their pocket. Giving them the tools to penalize states and municipalities for inaction would be a win for the Chesapeake Bay and the millions of people who count on it every day."

With 2010 Cleanup Deadline Blown, EPA Asks for More Power

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said today that the Obama Administration supports the passage of new federal clean water laws that would give the federal agency more power to stop pollution and hold states accountable for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

“We believe additional legislation (to accelerate the Bay cleanup) is a very good thing and have endorsed that idea,” Jackson (pictured at right) said during a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, of Bay area government officials called the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council. "We believe legislation has to include additional authorities for the federal government."

Despite the general support, the EPA Administrator said that the Obama Administration has not yet taken a position on the specific language of a landmark Bay cleanup bill pending before Congress, called the Chesapeake Clean Water Act.

The legislation is the most important clean water bill in a generation for the Chesapeake region. 

Wildlife Agency Raises Stop Sign For Sprawl Highway

Here’s a gift of good news for the New Year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is opposing the approval of a permit that would allow the paving of wetlands in Southern Maryland for the construction of the Sprawl Highway.

A recent letter from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Army Corps of Engineers says the Chesapeake region’s “most productive nursery” for several species of fish, the Mattawoman Creek,  would be hurt if Charles County is permitted to build the seven mile roadway, called the Cross County Connector.

"The Service recommends denial of the Section 404 wetland permit until a more complete assessment . . . of the proposed highway is completed in addition to a more comprehensive evaluation of alternatives, and a detailed mitigation and compensation plan," wrote Leopoldo Miranda, a supervisor with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Huge Sewage Spill Pollutes Bay Tributary

A massive sewage spill from a Baltimore County, Maryland, pumping station into the Patapsco River has triggered warnings from local health departments. The spill of 22 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Chesapeake Bay tributary was one of the worst in the last five years in Maryland, the Annapolis Capital is reporting.

EPA's New Bay Cleanup Plan Called Too Weak

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and several other environmental organizations criticized EPA's new Bay cleanup proposal as too weak and vague during a press conference yesterday.

CBF Senior Scientist Beth McGee said that a letter EPA released on Monday proposing consequences for states that fail to meet their cleanup obligations "lacks specifics about when EPA will impose those consequences. The letter lacks concrete standards that will ensure when EPA will act."

The EPA letter is available here.

My Guitar Jam With A Legendary Coal-Country Crusader

I took a road trip out to West Virginia recently to hear and see firsthand the impact of mountaintop removal coal-mining. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is fighting the construction of a huge new coal-fired power plant in Surry County, Virginia, which would add hazardous and illegal amounts of mercury and nitrogen pollution to the Chesapeake Bay and nearby rivers.

But I also wondered: What about the pollution all the way up at the beginning of the coal production line?

And what about the impact on human lives?

I'm a musician, and I've always thought the best way to tell a story is through song. So I visited legendary West Virginia songwriter Mike Morningstar. He writes folk songs about strip mining and performs them as a form of protest.

But to find him, I had to drive six hours into the mountains, ending up on a long gravel road that tiptoed beside a cliff.

Is It Scrooge-Like to Send E-Cards For X-Mas?

Would Scrooge & Marley send an E-Card blast for Christmas?  After all, electronic holiday greetings are cheaper -- and we all know how Scrooge loved to save money (for example, by not heating his office, and by refusing to give his employee Bob Cratchet a decent wage or time off for the Holidays).

A silly question, obviously.  Scrooge would probably send his clients registered letters on Christmas Eve, threatening to foreclose on their properties if they didn't pay up in full by New Year's.

But I ask the question because I sent my first Christmas E-Cards this year. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation also distributed E-Cards this year (pictured above). You, too, can send  Chesapeake Bay Foundation holiday e-cards, by clicking here.

At first I felt awful -- positively Scrooge-like -- about my family's E-Cards. 

What Is In This Photo? Looks Like A Heaping Pollution Problem

A picture is worth a thousand lobbyists.

An environmental group called Assateague Coastkeeper took this photograph of a huge pile of manure leaking pollution from an Eastern Shore farm into a tributary to the Pocomoke River, which flushes into the Chesapeake Bay.

The Assateague Coastkeeper thought it was chicken litter.  After the group filed a complaint, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) investigated and determined it was, in fact, not poultry waste but human waste.  MDE spokeswoman Dawn Stoltzfus said that the pile was sewage sludge, produced by composting human waste from a sewage treatment plant and often used as fertilizer.

The Assateague Coastkeeper reports that it performed water testing in a ditch downstream from this Berlin, Maryland, poultry farm, and found very high levels of fecal coliform, phosphorus and nitrogen that suggest a manure runoff problem.

Have Yourself A Slow Little Christmas

Like a lot of folks, I'm scrambling around, madly trying to get my Holiday shopping done.  And then I read this article that suggests, "Have a Slow Holiday." 

Ahhh.  It is such a soothing concept -- and actually an idea that is not only good for our blood pressure, and family relations, but also for the world.  Less driving around to malls, less buying of stuff that's going to be thrown out anyway. More cooking of food, the old fashioned way.

A few years ago, my daughters and I started a little neighborhood tradition that has become my favorite part of Christmas. Every year, we bake a whole bunch of oatmeal cookies with raisins. We put them in bags, decorated with hand-cut paper snowflakes.  And then we walk around the neighborhood, giving them out to all the local families.  It's so cheap, nobody feels guilty to get a present like this.  And it provides a great opportunity just to walk up and down the street, talking to the people who live near to us -- but who we're sometimes too busy to visit with.