Good morning, Bay Daily readers! It’s Monday, I’ve had a gallon of coffee, and there is a lot going on in the environmental world this week. So today I’m going to fire off a list of highly caffeinated, tightly compacted news items, machine-gun style. You can ponder them at your leisure … while I crash.
* Folks are divided over plans to build a $1.4 billion power line across the Chesapeake Bay near Calvert Cliffs, with public hearings planned on Wednesday in Delaware. Some supporters say the new transmission lines would be good because they could help carry clean wind power from a new offshore wind farm proposed off of Delaware’s coast, but some wildlife advocates are afraid the lines will be a blight on the landscape.
* Maryland Department of Natural Resources officials and watermen are debating new blue crab harvest numbers, which appear -- paradoxically -- to have risen in 2008 despite new restrictions meant to reduce the catch by a third. What is going on here?
* One highly valuable way to judge crab populations is by dredging the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay and counting them, a survey that is now underway.
* The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s letter writing campaign to new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is picking up steam, with hundreds of people writing in, demanding federal action to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
* Meanwhile, a new report by the Maryland legislature’s Office of Policy Analysis argues that Maryland needs to accelerate its cleanup of the Bay by 2.5 times if it were to meet a new, proposed 2020 deadline for restoring the Chesapeake.
* The Baltimore Sun is criticizing a proposal by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to modify the state’s sprawl-control “smart growth” laws as too weak. O’Malley’s plan is not “likely to reverse local governments' continued failure to prevent sprawl,” the paper says.
But on the other hand, the newspaper praises in O’Malley for not cutting funds to preserve open space or reduce runoff pollution in the Bay. And it gives him a thumbs up for supporting a new bill that would reduce global warming pollution.
* Government action to reduce the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is urgently needed, in part because new research shows the air pollution is acidifying the oceans, destroying the web of food for fish and other marine life.
* The Richmond Times Dispatch has weighed in against a proposal to introduce Asian Oysters into the Chesapeake Bay. The newspaper argues that it would be a better idea to give more support to farmers cultivating native oysters.
* This is the same position that Ann Jennings, Virginia executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Michael Lipford, Virginia state director of The Nature Conservancy, take in an opinion piece published in the newspaper. They argue that investments in native oyster aquaculture and restoration are paying off and do not carry the risks that introducing Asian oysters could pose to ecological and human health. Recent evidence indicates that these non-native oysters can harbor more human pathogens than native oysters.
* NASA satellite monitoring of air quality over Pennsylvania last night revealed an unhealthy amount of carbon dioxide rising from the Pittsburgh area, right after Steeler wide receiver Santonio Holmes caught the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. (Okay, that last one, I made up....The real source of this data was not NASA but a jealous Baltimore Ravens fan. Me.)
Okay, now I’m going to crash. Discuss the news among yourselves, while I go back to my dreams of the Arizona Cardinals winning the Super Bowl.
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