Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

(Posted by Gerald Winegrad.)

The National Research Council has just released its evaluation of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s pollution reduction program this week. The report, Achieving Nutrient and Sediment Reduction Goals in the Chesapeake Bay: An Evaluation of Program Strategies and Implementation, the culmination of a study begun in 2009 and sponsored by the U.S. EPA, fully supports the measures outlined in the Bay Action Plan.

The NRC found significant shortcomings in the current two-year milestone framework used by the states and EPA for tracking nutrient and sediment reductions. Most of the NRC’s recommendations for improvements to assure meeting the nutrient and sediment reduction goals are right in line with those proposed by our group of Bay leaders. Now it’s past time for the states and EPA to adopt these measures we have been proposing for several years and end the politics of postponement.

The prestigious NRC concluded that:

“Reaching the long-term nutrient and sediment reduction goals will require substantial commitment from each of the Bay jurisdictions and likely some level of sacrifice from those who live and work in the watershed. Jurisdictions are required not only to significantly reduce current loads, but they will need to take additional actions to address future growth and development over the next 15 years…. Recovery of the Chesapeake Bay from excessive nutrient and sediment loads will require profound changes in the Bay watershed. These changes include a greater awareness of each watershed inhabitant’s contribution to the Bay nutrient load, extensive adoption of urban and agricultural nutrient control practices, and widespread willingness to balance the cost of restoration programs with the quality of life values provided by the Bay and its land uses.”

We fully support this call by the NRC for these substantial commitments, profound changes, and sacrifices necessary to assure a healthy Chesapeake. The report also notes the difficulties in achieving water quality goals given the massive amount of legacy nutrients and sediment already in the Bay.

Let’s briefly examine key elements of the shortcomings that the NRC found in their two-year study and how these are neatly covered by our 25 measures to restore the Bay in the Bay Action Plan:

1) Better evaluation of progress in reducing nutrient pollution with much better monitoring and assessment by indepednent third-parties of bmps on farms and urban areas and intensive use of small-watershed monitoring. See numbers 1, 3, 7 and 8 of the Bay Action Plan in which our scientists were quite adamant about these needs. Thus, we completely concur with the NRC and the need for such accountability and third-party field monitoring.

2) The two-year milestone strategy, in and of itself, does not guarantee that implementation goals will be met, and consequences for nonattainment remain unclear. We concur. See numbers 1 and 2 calling for mandatory sanctions for failure to meet targeted deadlines.

3) Improved and innovative manure management with expanded concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) permitting programs, regulations to control the timing and rates of manure application, and limits on the extent of animal operations based on the nutrient carrying capacity of the watershed. We completely concur and have detailed how this can be accomplished in numbers 4, 5, and 6.

4) Incentive-based and regulatory mechanisms to increase the use of agricultural BMPs for the purpose of improving water quality. We again concur. See our suggestions in #’s 1, 2, and 3.

5) Regulations to address stormwater growth and development including stormwater utilities, and restrictions on nitrogen and phosphorus residential fertilizer application. We concur and adopted specific measures to accomplish this and assure a no net increase in pollutant loads from development in numbers 9-14.

6) Additional air pollution controls on nitrogen emissions from all sources, including nox and agricultural ammonia emissions. We concur and numbers 5, 6, 20, and 21 in our Bay Action Plan specifically cover this recommendation.

While the NRC recommendations add more support for the implementation of the 25 measures in the Bay Action Plan, the question remains: Do the Bay states and EPA have the political will to take these bold steps and overcome the special interests resisting the necessary changes?

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(Posted by Brooke DeRenzis and Walter Smith.)

Anacostia Watershed

On May 2, 2011, DC Appleseed released a report, a New Day for the Anacostia: A Model for Urban River Revitalization at an event on the banks of the river. The report calls on the federal government to partner with local jurisdictions, businesses, and residents to transform the badly polluted Anacostia River into a centerpiece for recreation, economic development, and community revitalization. The Anacostia River’s clean-up could provide a model for revitalizing urban waterways in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and across the country.

The Chesapeake Bay strategy developed under President Obama’s executive order promotes green infrastructure, such as green roofs, permeable pavements, and rain gardens, as a solution to stormwater pollution. Our report recommends that the federal government implement a pilot program to help local jurisdictions and private property owners install green infrastructure throughout the watershed. If these green techniques work in the Anacostia watershed, they could be held up as a model for solving the Bay’s growing stormwater problem.

Green infrastructure is not just good for the health of the Anacostia and the Bay; it’s also good for the health of our region’s economy. As our report shows, installing and maintaining green infrastructure throughout the Anacostia watershed will enhance economic development, create jobs, boost property values, reduce energy costs, and improve quality of life.

The town of Edmonston, Maryland’s “green street” illustrates these benefits. The working-class town has suffered serious floods, not from the Anacostia River that runs nearby, but from stormwater running off of parking lots, roads, and roofs. Edmonston “greened” its main street by using landscaping, permeable pavers, and trees to reduce stormwater runoff. The project created over 50 jobs; three-quarters of its costs were spent on local businesses; and 60 percent of contractors were minority-owned businesses. The town expects to save money through lower flood control costs, and has earned national recognition as a sustainable community committed to a high quality of life. The U.S. EPA is now partnering with other communities in the Anacostia watershed to replicate Edmonston’s success.

By helping local jurisdictions, businesses, and residents install green practices through the Anacostia watershed, the federal government can refine these techniques so that they can be applied in a cost effective and efficient manner in other urban areas. If the federal government takes an active role in the Anacostia’s green clean-up now, it could create a blueprint for revitalizing urban rivers and communities in the Bay and the nation.

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(Posted by Michele Merkel.)

Here’s an idea: When the whole world is becoming more aware of the many environmental ills and human health impacts from burning fossil fuels to make electricity, when we’re growing tired of asthma rates, air pollution and noxious odors, when there is a concerted effort to make a responsible move towards clean energy systems where limitless wind and sunlight provide pollution-free energy, let’s ignore all of that and put our resources and effort into coming up with something else to burn for our electricity. How about chicken manure? That’s right, now we’re going to burn chicken poop because our political leaders won’t make the Delmarva poultry giants – the Tysons and the Perdues – figure out what else to do with their mountains of unsustainable waste.

According to the EPA, agriculture is the greatest contributor to Chesapeake Bay pollution. The poultry industry alone generates over 1 billion pounds of untreated waste on the Delmarva Peninsula every year. While poultry litter can be a valuable fertilizer for crops due to its high nutrient content, much of it is over-applied to land, resulting in nitrogen and phosphorous run-off into our waterways. These nutrients rob our waters of oxygen, choking out aquatic life. Because of the recent, renewed focus on cleaning up the Bay, desperation is mounting to find disposal alternatives to land application of excess poultry litter. This pressure, coupled with Maryland’s desire to promote waste-to-energy solutions, has put poultry waste incineration on the front burner.

Fibrowatt, a Pennsylvania-based company, has been lobbying hard to build the first litter-to-energy power plants in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. They claim that their Maryland plant would combust 465,000 tons of poultry litter a year, resulting in significant nitrogen and phosphorous reductions that contribute to poor water quality. At the same time, they would be producing a low cost renewable energy on the Eastern Shore. Sounds like a win-win, right?

It’s not.

There is only one poultry litter incineration plant that is operational in the United States. It is in Benson, Minnesota, and it is owned by Fibrowatt. According to its permit, the Benson plant emits more arsenic, a toxic chemical added to poultry feed, excreted in the waste, and released as a byproduct of incineration, than any other source in the state. (Just last month the Delmarva poultry industry beat back legislation that would have made arsenic in chicken feed illegal under Maryland law.) Arsenic is a known human carcinogen and has been associated with multiple types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, endocrine disruption, and decreased immunity. In addition, the Benson plant is among the highest emitters of other toxic chemicals such as sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and dioxin.

A recent, peer-reviewed journal article summarizes the environmental health and environmental justice issues associated with the incineration of poultry waste. It found that many of the emissions, including those mentioned above, are associated with a variety of diseases and functional impairments. Moreover, its analyses revealed that emissions from litter-to-energy power plants can be greater than from plants that use other forms of fuel, including coal. Finally, poor rural communities will suffer the most, because it is where industrial agriculture is concentrated and these communities tend to lack the political clout to prevent the siting of other polluting industries such as power plants.

So if we can’t dump excess poultry waste on the ground to protect the water we drink, and we can’t incinerate it to protect the air we breathe, what do we do?

The logical solution would be to promote strategies that reduce the waste stream in the first place. But so far, fewer chickens hasn’t been politically palatable. To the contrary, by making poultry waste a “profitable commodity” we may actually increase consolidation of the industry further in order to meet the waste inputs necessary to generate electricity. Worse yet, Fibrowatt expects farmers to sign 10-20 year supply contracts, making it nearly impossible for them to ever transition to a more sustainable way of raising chickens.

The next best alternative is to make companies like Perdue pay to transport the excess waste out of the watershed since they profit substantially on the backs of contract farmers who are burdened with the waste generated by Perdue’s chickens. Of course, this assumes that we can continue the shell game of moving excess animal waste around the country, which isn’t sustainable when NRCS studies demonstrate that the problem we have in Delmarva is a nationwide one–we simply produce more animal waste than we can manage through land disposal.

Until industry and its political apologists stop pretending that they can bring sustainably to an inherently unsustainable system with a bunch of avoidance schemes, one thing is clear: Any waste-to-energy process that creates toxic air pollution isn’t clean, renewable or acceptable. If we truly have a burning desire to clean up the Bay, we should be investing in clean technologies, such as wind and solar, while simultaneously demanding that Big Poultry manage its waste in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the health and environment of Chesapeake Bay communities.

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(Posted by David Burke.)

Chesapeake Commons, a new web resource, now provides informative maps and data about nearly any type of information relevant to the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Chesapeake Commons is made available through the sponsorship of the Chesapeake Bay Funder’s Network. CBFN’s new data tool is powered by Rhiza Labs’ Insight software that makes it easy for users to store, map and analyze whatever data is of interest to them.

It’s a great tool because users don’t need to be familiar with complicated GIS (geographic information system) software. Users can download data from the site and visualize it on Google earth or standard GIS formats. The information can be made locally relevant and at the scale and region of interest to the user. CBFN wanted to make finding and using the wealth of information developed by Bay analysts and researchers available to everyone in both visual and data formats. Intersecting one set of information with another can be easily done right on the website.

The web tool is currently in its “soft launch” phase, whereby users are encouraged to try it out and offer suggestions and insight regarding further refinements to the system. Several upgrades to the current version are planned over the coming months, so don’t expect perfection at this point.

The Chesapeake Commons platform is in essence a public participation geographic information system using volunteered data. Users can upload data from spreadsheets, ESRI Shapefiles, GeoTIFF raster imagery or KMLGPX (Google Earth) files. Uploaded data comes with a standardized explanation (meta data) of the information origin and interpretation. Below is an example of data that has been “visualized” or placed onto a map.

A second component of the Chesapeake Commons is a blog site called Chesapeake Forum. The blog provides a platform for preliminary research, publication, and discussion of Chesapeake Bay related data findings and leads users to the Chesapeake Commons site. John Dawes, the Chesapeake Commons Administrator, helps new users and periodically provides demonstrations to groups to help them understand the system.

Contact John Dawes for further information: jdawes@environmentalintegrity.org.

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(Posted by Bill Dennison.)

This year’s Chesapeake Bay report card, produced by EcoCheck, a partnership between NOAA and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, was released last week. The overall report card score was a C-, based on data collected throughout 2010. Unfortunately, this report card score declined from the 2009 report card which was a C, and this was the first time the score declined since 2004. Of the 15 reporting regions, only two had higher scores than last year, but nine had lower scores, leaving four with no change.

The Chesapeake Bay report card is based on three water quality parameters (dissolved oxygen, water clarity and chlorophyll levels) and three biotic parameters (aquatic grasses, benthic index of biotic integrity and phytoplankton index of biotic integrity). The data are collected and analyzed by state agencies, academic institutions and private consultants, and coordinated through the Chesapeake Bay Program. EcoCheck staff then calculate, map and analyze report card scores to produce the final report card.

Why was this year’s Chesapeake Bay report card bad news? The report card indicators are influenced by nutrient loading into the Bay, and one of the most efficient ways to increase nutrient loading is to have dry weather punctuated by high runoff, washing unused fertilizer, animal waste and other nutrient sources into the streams and rivers. In the Potomac River watershed, this is what happened last late winter and early spring.

Chesapeake Bay aquatic grass, one of the biotic indicators in the report card, had a downturn which is likely due to thermal stress in early summer. Hot, still weather created extremely high water temperatures in the shallow water where aquatic grasses reside. The heat stress led to aquatic grass declines, just as happened in the late summer of 2005.

The natural inclination when receiving a bad grade is to blame the weather. “It was too rainy,” “It was too hot,” etc., but what really causes problems are the things that we are doing on land that affect runoff when it does rain. Animal waste and unused fertilizer applied to the land is delivered to the Bay with rainfall-derived runoff. In this sense, blaming the rain is blaming the courier (I.e., shooting the messenger), rather than the real cause. Heat stressed aquatic grasses will bounce back in healthy meadows supported by good water quality, but will not do well in poor water quality.

No one likes to receive a bad report card, no matter the cause or the overall upward trend since 2003. What is important is our reaction to the bad news report card. We need to be receptive to the message that we still need to do more, that our considerable efforts are not enough to guarantee measurable improvements in the Bay health. The Chesapeake Bay report card is totally data based, and there is no subjectivity to the final grades. The data are the data. It is up to us not to say “Don’t bring me no bad news,” but rather, “We’ll do better next time.” Inspired by the need to avoid saying “Don’t bring me no bad news,” I have adapted the lyrics for a song with the same name:

Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News

(Adapted from lyrics by Charlie Smalls for a song of the same name, used in the musical “The Wiz” and sung by Mabel King in the film version)

When I wake up and look at Chesapeake
Which it pleases me to do
Don’t nobody bring me no bad news
‘Cause I wake up already negative
And I’ve got too much to lose
So don’t nobody bring me no bad news

If we’re going to be reportin’
Better bone up on the grades
‘Cause don’t nobody bring me no bad news
You can be my best of friends
If you act before hope fades
But don’t nobody bring me no bad news

No bad news
No bad news
Don’t you ever bring me no bad news
‘Cause I’ll need you to act right now
That you cannot refuse
So don’t nobody bring me no bad news

When you’re lookin’ at the grades
Don’t be cryin’ the blues
‘Cause don’t nobody bring me no bad news
You can rationalize and apologize
But just start payin’ your dues
But don’t nobody bring me no bad news

Bring some restoration to the Bay
We cannot afford to lose
But don’t you ever bring me no bad news
If you’re gonna bring me something
Bring me, something I can use
But don’t you bring me no bad news

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