Unmet Promises Do Little to Help Ailing Chesapeake Bay

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, August 22, 2003 (ENS) - In 1991, environmental journalist Tom Horton chronicled the health of the Chesapeake Bay and found an ecosystem in serious trouble. And despite a slew of agreements and goals to protect and restore the Bay, little has changed in past 12 years. The Bay's health continues to deteriorate and "we are not on track to restore it in the next decade or two no matter how many times we state it is our goal," Horton told reporters Thursday.

The measures needed to protect and restore the Bay are widely known, Horton says, but there remains a lack of commitment to these efforts.

"We do not have a firm prospect right now to make the progress we know we need," Horton said. "The good news is that we have run out of excuses."

The bad news is that time may be running out for the Bay.

Dead zones - areas of the Chesapeake Bay starved of oxygen because of nitrogen pollution - have reached record levels this year, oyster populations are at record lows, and there is little chance that many of the goals set by the 2000 agreement to improve water quality will be met by 2010.

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. (Photo courtesy Chesapeake Bay Program)

Speaking at an event to promote a revised 2003 version of Horton's book "Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay," Baker said it is time for stronger action and for a renewed commitment to get restoration efforts on track.

He called on government leaders of the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort to create a new compact that can bring the full force of federal and state laws, regulations, and incentive programs to bear on improving the Bay's water quality.

"A new water quality compact is needed to manage bay restoration on a watershed wide basis," Baker said. "What we have in place now has not worked."

The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers more than 64,000 square miles and encompasses parts of six states: Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia.

These six states, the D.C. government, a commission representing the watershed states' legislatures, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and twelve other federal agencies currently work together on a voluntary basis to set goals and polices for protecting and restoring the Bay.

This collection of parties is spearheaded by an executive council made up of the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as representatives from the DC government and the EPA.

But the executive council lacks the authority to adopt regional, legally binding restoration goals and has no means to ensure compliance with any measures it may agree to.

This has got to change if the Bay is to be restored, Baker said.

"We need binding commitments," said Baker, who runs the 35 year old CBF, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving the Chesapeake Bay.

He proposes a new federal-state compact that expands the executive council to include all six governors of the watershed states and is accountable for implementing specific actions to achieve water quality goals.

Pollutants from urban and suburban areas, farms and roads all wash into the Chesapeake Bay. (Photo courtesy Anacostia Watershed Society)

Protecting and restoring the Bay could cost some $20 billion over 10 years.

"If we do not spend something in that ball park, we are not going to get there," Horton said.

About $6 billion has been budgeted for the Bay thus far, and finding additional funding in a time of fiscal crisis for states in the watershed will not be easy.

The changes Baker has proposed would require congressional action and some might question the call for yet another bureaucracy to take charge of the restoration of the Chesapeake. But Baker says it is clear the current framework is not working and he is adamant that an entity with strong authority must be created to reverse the status quo.

If nothing changes, Baker said, "history will record that a well meaning - but timid - group of leaders lost the Chesapeake Bay."

"It is time for the government to err on the side of environmental protection and restoration," Baker said. "If the richest nation in the world can not save the Chesapeake Bay, what hope do we have for the planet as a whole?"

The longer efforts are delayed, the more daunting the challenges of cleaning up the Bay will become, says Horton. Part of this is simple population growth - more than 15 million people live in the watershed, but this population is expected to grow to 18 million by 2010.

"We have consistently underestimated what it will take to restore the Bay," said Horton, a lifetime Maryland resident and environmental columnist for the "Baltimore Sun."

There may be no more intimidating problem than that of nitrogen pollution, he explained.

The blue crab - a symbol for many of the Chesapeake Bay - continues to suffer from poor water quality. (Photo courtesy Maryland Sea Grant)

Today nitrogen comes from four major sources: agricultural run off, air pollution, urban runoff and sewage wastewater. Part of the problem is simple regulatory oversight, Baker explained - not one permit for any discharger into the Bay's watershed has nitrogen limits.

The prospects for reducing nitrogen inflow to the Bay from urban runoff or air pollution are not good, Horton says, but there are more favorable prospects for the other two.

Wastewater from sewage treatment plants, which contributes some 60 million pounds of nitrogen to the Bay each year, is the most tempting target because it is easy to identify and control.

There are some 300 wastewater treatment plants in the Bay's watershed and Baker says upgrading these plants to reduce nitrogen releases to three milligrams per liter (mpl) is needed to effectively limit their contribution to the nitrogen problem. Despite a slew of promises by politicians to upgrade the plants, less than a third have been upgraded and many have only been upgraded to achieve nitrogen reductions of eight mpl.

Some of the plants release nitrogen amounts in excess of 25 mpl, Baker said.

It will cost billions to upgrade the plants, but Baker says the annual cost would be about "$5 to $14 per household."

Agriculture is the biggest challenge in reducing nitrogen pollution to the Bay and Horton says a recent study indicates that the enormity of the task has been underestimated.

The study found that farmers who reduced both nitrogen and phosphorous by almost 50 percent achieved water quality improvements of 25 percent. Not bad, Horton said, but far less than many expected.

"We are going to have to go well beyond current nutrient management strategies, and all of us are going to have to help foot the bills for farmers to do that," he said. "The cost per acre is not much, but there are many millions of acres of the Bay's watershed in agriculture."

Restoration of the Chesapeake is still possible, Horton told reporters, but "we can not keep singing the same tune."

"We know how to restore the Bay and we know approximately what it will cost," he said. "The technologies are there, what is lacking is the political will."

For more information about Tom Horton's book on the Chesapeake, see http://www.islandpress.org.