Chesapeake Bay Foundation Blog

The debate is hot in PA

Pennsylvania newspapers are filled with articles about municipalities who are frustrated about the costs of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. The cleanup is federally mandated--but unfunded, and if a 2010 deadline for meeting these mandatory water quality standards isn't met, the federal government could come down harder with even stricter standards. But local jurisdictions don't know how they're going to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to comply. CBF has joined the call for the Rendell administration to provide funds to municipalities struggling to meet sewage treatment upgrade requirements.

If you live near Harrisburg, you might want to attend tonight's panel discussion on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup and its effects on sewage bills. The discussion will be held from 5 - 7 p.m. at the Holiday Inn West, 5401 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsburg. Panel participants include Kathleen McGinty, secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection; John Brosius, deputy director of the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association; and Scott Wyland, lawyer for the Capital Region Council of Governments.

Saving the Bay from the Bench

Excerpt of a Baltimore Sun Op/ed written by Kim Coble, Executive Director of CBF's Maryland Office.

When citizens want to change how the government protects the environment, they generally work toward changing legislation, regulations or government leaders. Rarely do people think about judges.

But they should.

Maryland's judges are thoughtful people whose primary experience is with criminal and business law. But they are often unaware or insufficiently educated about the environment and the laws meant to protect it. Too often, these judges do not have a fundamental understanding of the complexity and importance of our natural resources...Lacking a larger understanding, they can be overly sympathetic to claims that protecting our water, air and land should be subordinate to an individual's property rights...As a result, in recent years, we have seen cases in which the legislature had to go back and rewrite legislation to repair damage done to environmental laws through misinterpretation by the court system.

...The courts and other judicial institutions (as well as many local planning offices) have chosen to ignore the cumulative impact of the next shopping center, apartment complex or industrial park. Each case is reviewed independently, and thus the courts look only at the impact of just this "one" case: One parking lot. One gazebo. One bed of underwater grasses destroyed. One wetland lost.

It's an argument developers routinely deliver, with amazing success. But the cumulative effects of these "ones" is death by a thousand cuts for our environment, our rivers and streams, and our bay.

...Sadly, the cost of mounting a legal challenge to each case is beyond the financial ability of most citizens. And special-interest organizations, willing to act on behalf of concerned individuals, are rarely even allowed to appear because of an overly narrow interpretation of who has "standing" - that is, who has the right to appear before the board or court.

...Judges who respect our natural resources and the common good, who have a demonstrated record of protecting the public interest, can help preserve and restore the land, air and water that belong to all citizens.

Maryland has good environmental laws. They could be stronger, but even the strongest and most well-crafted laws are only as good as those who enforce them.

Read the complete Op/Ed here...and recommend it when you're done.

Success Over Sewage

"CBF applauds the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for redrafting the town’s pollution permit to require protective pollution controls,” said Ann F. Jennings, CBF Virginia Executive Director. "Obviously, much more needs to be done to correct the pollution problems in the Bay.  But the State Water Control Board and DEQ have now done what we originally asked of them on the Onancock permit, and that is why we are dismissing this lawsuit. If these pollution control measures are applied across the board to both large and small dischargers alike, we should start to see improvement in the Bay's water quality."

In the press release quote above, Jennings is talking about a three-year-old lawsuit CBF against the Commonwealth of Virginia that the Foundation has dropped after the state rewrote a pollution permit for the Town of Onancock, significantly reducing the amount of pollution from the town's sewage treatment plant.

Who Has the Right to Protect the Magothy River

by Kim Coble, CBF Maryland Executive Director
(this column appeared in the Maryland Gazette)

The Dobbins Island case embodies more than just building a home, or a pier. It's about the quality of the Magothy River, the health of the crabs, fish and grasses within it, and about the Bay's future.

This week, Anne Arundel County's Board of Appeals decided that neither the Chesapeake Bay Foundation nor the Magothy River Association had the right to challenge its decision to allow construction of a pier, driveway, well and septic system on the Magothy River's Dobbins Island, one of the last vacant islands in Maryland.

The county said the organizations do not have the right to challenge because they do not own property on the river. It was not enough that 58 of our members own property on the river, or that the organizations have spent considerable efforts to restore the river. We still have no right to question the county's actions on the river.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Magothy River Association argued their right to protect investments in the river, including underwater bay grasses and oyster reefs the organizations built with their hands, sweat, and funds. The organizations' key point is that the county's decision to allow construction of a house, driveway, pier and septic system on an island with steep slopes will produce harmful runoff, damaging these oyster reefs and bay grasses.

Anne Arundel County said that, despite our extensive work and hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment, our interests were no different than the average citizen and called our efforts to protect those essential oyster reefs and bay grasses, "big brother at its worst."

If the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Magothy River Association don't have the right to appear in court and challenge decisions we believe will be harmful to the quality of the Magothy River, then who CAN protect the river and its natural resources?

Anne Arundel County's Board of Appeals believes no one has that right. Their decision to limit that right to anyone living within 175 feet of these islands results in no one being able to challenge the county's decisions.

This is a bad decision for not only the Magothy but for all of Anne Arundel's waters. Little Dobbins Island, right next to the bigger Dobbins, is another example of county decisions that will hurt the Magothy.

With Little Dobbins, we saw a "build first, seek variances later" approach. A developer built a home, lighthouse, pool, boat ramp, driveway, and gazebo, and removed acres of protective trees and shrubs that reduced pollution and erosion—all without the necessary permits and variances. The county allowed the structures to stand, and decided that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Magothy River Association did not have the right to challenge this damaging development.

On Dobbins Island, the county allowed one pier to be built, extending from the island to a length that will kill about 1,600 square feet of flourishing bay grasses—a rare sight in the bay today.

Underwater grasses play a critical role in supporting water quality of rivers and the Bay. Essential bay grasses have dwindled from their abundant numbers, and the Bay and its rivers have less than 40 percent of the grasses they used to have. We should not allow actions that result in losing more underwater grasses.

Anne Arundel County's trend seems to be to issue one permit after another, allowing construction that is harmful to our rivers and bay, without any regard to the grasses, oysters, crabs, and the rest of the bay's bounty. At the same time, the county seeks to block all voices of opposition to such development, even from groups that are spending thousands of hours and millions of dollars to improve county waters.

Citizens and organizations are working tirelessly to restore our rivers and Bay in order to make the Chesapeake Bay a resource they can enjoy and leave to their children in better shape than they found it. Without the ability to protect their efforts, citizens and organizations will start to question whether their efforts are worth it.

The County Board of Appeals' decision to tell the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Magothy River Association that they cannot challenge the county's decision to allow harmful construction—to silence their desire to protect investments in the Bay and its rivers—has larger consequences.

If these organizations - and the tens of thousands of voices and Bay resources they represent - are not allowed to speak for the Bay and the rivers, who can?

CBF Goes to Supreme Court

CBF heads to the VA Supreme Court Thursday to argue it has legal authority to represent CBF members in a suit against a VA agency for failing to require lower nitrogen limits in Philip Morris' waste water discharge permit.