Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

(Posted by Gerald Winegrad). The recent deluges leading to massive stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay may cause great damage to an already seriously impaired system. We previously have discussed in this spot the huge flows of Bay-choking nutrients and sediment from farms each time it rains. Now, we will devote discussions to the pollution flowing from developed lands including huge amounts of nutrients, sediment, and toxic chemicals.

The Chesapeake’s watershed before 1607 was 95 percent forested with huge acreage of intact wetlands. These forests and wetlands absorbed and held nutrients and sediment. The flow of these Bay-killing pollutants was greatly accelerated due to enormous changes in land use when we converted forests and wetlands to agriculture and then, more recently, to development. The Bay region has since lost about 50 percent of its forest cover and 72 percent of its wetlands. No change has been more devastating for the Bay.

Our Senior Scientists and Policy Makers for the Bay group has concluded that we must change the way we do business as population in the Chesapeake’s watershed continues to grow&emdash;and continues to sprawl. The population more than doubled from 8.1 million in 1950 to 17 million today. There are 3.8 million more people since the Bay Program began in 1983. Demographers expect 3 million more by 2030.

We also consume more land per capita. The average household size decreased during the last 30 years, but the average lot size increased 60 percent. And we harden more land per capita. From 1990 to 2000, the population grew by 8 percent, while impervious surfaces–paving and roofs grew by a whopping 41 percent. At this rate, in ten years an area more than twice the size of Shenandoah National Park will no longer soak up rain, nutrients, and sediment because of impervious surfaces such as roads, shopping centers, houses, and parking lots.

Policies to channel growth into existing towns and cities and put an end to sprawling development aren’t working. Instead of growing where schools, transportation, and utilities exist, we are growing into forest and fields. In Maryland, the much-touted Smart Growth approach is an abject failure. Thirteen years after its enactment, this non-regulatory approach has had no discernible impact on curbing sprawling development, fostering better land use, or protecting open spaces. Even the Rural Legacy program under Smart Growth has not led to better protection of designated open space areas of fields and forests.

The State of Maryland’s own data details the failure: 78 percent of the land on which new homes were built from 1999-2008 was outside the Priority Funding Areas designated for growth. This compares to 75.6 percent from 1990-1998 before the law went into effect. More single family residential housing was developed outside Smart Growth areas than before the law was enacted. Further, the average amount of land used by each home built inside growth zones has crept upward.

The cost to the Bay states of this failure to rein in sprawl is daunting as such land-abusing development cripples the state financially, socially, and environmentally. Many urban areas, such as Baltimore City, continue to lose population. Of Maryland’s 157 municipalities, 40 lost population from 2000 to 2009 and 61 others had a population increase of less than 100 while the state’s population grew by 7.6 percent. While we close schools, fire houses, libraries, and churches in Baltimore City, we must pay to build similar facilities in surrounding counties.

This sprawl and spread of impervious surfaces is bad for the Bay. Stormwater runoff flushes pollutants to streams and changes their natural flow. It is the only source of water pollution that had been increasing until the economic slowdown. Existing stormwater management laws do not prevent this increasing pollution from development.

The dilemma is that while we have failed to address sprawl development and increasing stormwater flows from new development, existing developed areas present expensive challenges in that stormwater retrofits are generally very expensive. So, as we allow increases in stormwater pollution from new development, the Bay is already overwhelmed from existing runoff from farms and developed lands. The development juggernaut, coupled with the failure to systematically address existing impervious surface pollution, may undo all efforts to revive the Chesapeake.

So what can we do? Our Senior Bay Group has made strong recommendations to solve the problem: Strong state land use controls can eliminate sprawl and stringent stormwater management requirements with impervious surface limits can eliminate any increases in pollutants from runoff from new development. We have recommended that state legislatures and local governments establish a no net loss of forest policy with protection and replanting of forested stream buffers a must. The loss of forests must be ended.

Requirements for and significant funding to clean up runoff from existing urban areas also is needed. Stormwater utilities must be established by all local governments. The states need to develop dedicated funding sources for stormwater retrofits and the establishment of an impervious surface fee on all impervious surfaces (like the Flush Fee) is the most logical source.

We have recommended that all new development have stringent stormwater runoff controls so as to achieve no net increase in pollutants or stormwater flows to the Bay with offsets possible. Scientists have documented even a 3 percent impervious surface cover in a watershed can cause damage to water quality.

All of those concerned with Bay restoration know that losing forests substantially increases the amount of pollutants reaching the Bay. A 2006 report found that from 1982–1997, development destroyed 140 acres of forest a day in the watershed, a total of 750,000 acres. This trend is pre-dicted to accelerate, producing catastrophic results for our rivers and the Bay. Net wetland acreage from a regulatory standpoint appears to have been stopped, but many wetlands still are filled for development and others are impaired by development activities.

However, state legislatures and local governments have not acted to establish a no net loss of forest policy with protection and replanting of forested stream buffers a must. This loss of fo-rests must be ended. Governor O’Malley’s 2007 transition team recommended that this no net loss of forest policy be established but this has not been done. The Chesapeake Bay Agreement called for 10,000 miles of riparian forest buffers by 2010. We’ve planted only a little more than half, and experts say that goal is too modest with at least 30,000 more miles needed to meet restoration goals. Controlling development will help achieve another vital goal – preserving forest land.

Unless we are prepared to accept a continuously declining Chesapeake Bay and the loss of our natural heritage, these difficult measures must be adopted — and soon.

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For the last decade I have written, talked, and sometimes even done things to promote clean water in the Chesapeake Bay region and beyond. But one thing I have always refused to do was to participate in that unique Chesapeake Bay tradition known as “the wade-in.”

The practice was made popular by my good friend and trusted ally, former Maryland State Sen. Bernie Fowler, who has conducted his wade-in for more than two decades. As regular as the fish that return to the Bay each spring, on the second Sunday in June, Sen. Fowler and his followers return to the banks of the Patuxent to see how far they can walk in the water before their shoes become obscured by the thick flow of agricultural pollution, mud and sewage that plague that troubled river. Politicians make speeches, friends are acknowledged for their hard work, and Bernie loses sight of his feet at about 30 inches (never much different than the year before).

I have avoided this event and others like it, despite my sincere admiration for Bernie Fowler, because I do not think they go far enough. Like many others, I have concluded that it is time for us to go farther, deeper, to do more. No more tinkering around the water’s edge. It’s time to take the plunge. So on June 30th, one day prior to the 28th anniversary of the Clean Water Act’s due date for making our nation’s rivers swimmable, a small group of environmental policy experts and scientists will defy the recommendation of health officials and our own better judgment, and we swim will in one of the nation’s dirtiest rivers—the Anacostia.

The Anacostia has been closed for swimming for as long as anyone can remember, and for good reason. Despite the hard work of countless volunteers and environmental professionals the river remains polluted—defiled by a vile mixture of two billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm water that desecrate its sacred waters each year. As well as the annual insult of 70,000 tons of trash, toxic pollution and sediments that further degrade the once mighty Anacostia.

Public health officials promise, if you believe them, that the river will be restored by 2032 (my friend Bernie Fowler will be 108 years old in 2032 and my 4-year son will have spent his entire childhood without having had the chance to swim in the nation’s Capital River). The point is this: Rivers around this region, and in fact around the globe, are looking more and more like the Anacostia with each passing year. Sewage spills, beach closures, off-limits rivers—all are a regular part of modern life.

The reality is that we know what the solutions are. For the Anacostia it is sewage and storm water upgrades. For the rivers of the Eastern Shore it is meaningful agricultural regulations. And for the rivers in between it is some combination of these needed changes.

So instead of packing our cars and heading to the beach this holiday weekend, a small group of us are going to skip the celebrations, and swim in the Anacostia. I’ll be joined by the Anacostia Riverkeeper, leaders from the Anacostia Watershed Society, former U.S. Senator Joe Tydings (D-Md.), Maryland state Sen. Paul Pinsky (D-Prince George’s County), former Maryland state senators David Harrington and Gerald Winegrad and leading scientists. We’ll don (mock) hazmat suits to dramatize the toxicity of the river, and publicize the 28 years of broken promises.

In doing so, we hope to remind a few people of the lost treasure in nation’s back yard, of the promises made by our government when they passed the Clean Water Act—promises now overdue by 28 years—and of the solutions that are in reach.

Will you join us to witness this event? We hope so. Details here.

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(Posted by Tom Fisher.)

For the last 400 years agriculture has been an important component of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Native Americans cleared small patches of forest for squash and corn, and the flood of European colonists in the 1600s followed their example and added tobacco for local use and export to Europe. Wheat and other grains in the 1700s and 1800s led to widespread clearing of forests, but poor management practices resulted in soil erosion that left a clear signal in the sediments that is still visible in cores retrieved from the bay. The introduction of European soil conservation methods in the 1800s helped stabilize a denuded landscape, and abundant oysters and submerged grasses cleared the waters.

Agriculture entered a new phase in the 1900s. Urban areas were growing and expanding into former farmlands, creating demand for agricultural production, and mechanization improved the efficiency and yields of the agricultural remaining lands. Nationwide, agriculture was moving further south and west where longer growing seasons provided better conditions than the cooler, short growing season in the NE. Many formerly cleared lands that were too wet or otherwise marginal for agriculture went back into forest, leaving only the better arable lands for production. A second phase of intensification of the remaining agricultural lands was introduced by widespread application of fertilizers – the green revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Crop yields doubled and then doubled again, as farmers increased the applications of fertilizers and suppressed weeds with herbicides. Use of green manures (clover or other N-fixing plants) and animal manure from widely dispersed, small-scale barns declined, keeping arable lands in near-continuous production. Small excesses of phosphorus accumulated in surface soils, and highly soluble nitrate leached to groundwater from nitrogen-rich soils in the winter. At the same time, the growing poultry industry on Delmarva created an enormous demand for feed grains (corn, wheat, soy), more than could be supplied by local growers. This drove local farms away from vegetables and fruit to grain production to supply the poultry growers, and grains were imported from the Mid-West to supply the shortfall that local farms could not produce. The concentrated animal operations of the poultry industry resulted in larger quantities of manure than could be readily absorbed locally, and manure was disposed of on local soils, rather than being spread widely. Phosphorus accumulated still further in surface soils, and nitrate in groundwater increased and began appearing in local streams.

The green revolution also touched urban areas. Individual homeowners began to desire thick green lawns with smiling wives and cavorting children, and lawn care companies became a growing industry for both homes, apartment buldings, public spaces, and golf courses. USDA recommendations for lawn fertilization, reconfigured as pounds per 100 square feet, are equivalent to those of corn, the most heavily fertilized crop on agricultural lands. Just as on agricultural lands, rain infiltrating through fertilized lawns leaches excess nitrogen to groundwater, and overland flows during heavy rains carries P to storm drains and streams. Currently, fertilizer sales in the Chesapeake region are 40-50% for non-agricultural use. Compounding the problem, increasing human populations resulted in larger waste streams from treatment plants.

The intensity of agricultural production and urban discharges were beginning to influence the bay. Nitrogen leached from agricultural and urban lands via groundwater, which over years and decades moved towards streams, and phosphorus in surface soils was eroded and leached during storms. The fertilizing elements that should have been growing plants on land began to grow algae in the waters of the Bay. First, the dissolved oxygen in bottom waters began to decline as the additional algal production sank to the bottom, fueling bacterial respiration. Then submerged grasses began to decline as algal slicks on their leaves robbed them of the light that they needed to grow and reproduce. Oysters, decimated by over-harvesting and diseases, were unable to remove significant quantities of the excess algal production. Currently, the bay is very green, and those who venture into the waters to swim are challenged to see their feet. Much of the Bay’s bottom waters below 10 meters (30 feet) are devoid of oxygen, oysters, and fish in summer. Submerged grasses make occasional appearances in dry years when nitrogen and phosphorus leaching from land is reduced because of low river discharge, only to be wiped out in a wetter year when greater quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus are transported. The intensity of agricultural production and urban use of fertilizers and sewage production has stimulated the high production of Chesapeake Bay, with the classic symptoms of eutrophication: bottom water oxygen deficits, loss of submerged grasses, and turbid, green waters.

What is the scientific evidence to support this narrative? Nitrate in groundwater has increased in parallel with fertilizer sales (jump to figure 1). Compared to streams draining forests, streams draining agricultural lands are now enriched in nitrogen in proportion to the amount of agriculture (jump to figure 2). During storm events, phosphorus concentrations increase dramatically due to leaching and erosion of phosphorus-rich soils (jump to figure 3). The intensity of modern agriculture and sewage production and fertilizer use in urban areas is clearly enriching streams draining into the Bay in nitrogen and phosphorus and creating low oxygen conditions and losses of bay grasses and water transparency. It is our own waste, either due to food production on farms or from disposal of our excreta, which creates the problems in the Chesapeake.

The trick now is to learn how to deal with our own waste as a society in equitable and cost-effective ways. We have clearly abused the use of plant-stimulating fertilizers in both urban and agricultural areas, and we have resisted using our own wastes for alternative products such as fertilizer or energy production. Regulations on agricultural fertilizer use are needed, and their application on urban areas should be greatly curtailed or eliminated. We clearly need agriculture for food production, and regulations that potentially put small farmers out of business may lead to larger agribusinesses with less incentive to comply and more ability to resist regulations. Going forward, we need to consider the marginal economics of agriculture, and potentially be willing to pay more for food that is grown green, not literally green, but with less fertilizer and less loss of nitrogen and phosphorus to streams. There are many solutions available, but most will require changes, some small and others larger, in how we live on the land that drains to the Chesapeake Bay.

Figure 1 (above). Bottom panel: the history of fertilizer sales in three agricultural counties on Delmarva in the second half of the 20th century. The exponential increase in fertilizer use enriched soils in nitrogen and phosphorus and resulted in greatly increased crop yields. Top panel: the history of the amount of nitrate (NO3) in surface groundwater. Nitrate increased in parallel with fertilizer applications, and now groundwater nitrate frequently exceeds the maximum amount allowable in drinking water. As a result, surface groundwaters in most agricultural areas generally can not be used for drinking water.

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Figure 2 (above). Current conditions for the amount of nitrate (NO3) in non-tidal streams on coastal plains in North America and Europe as a function of agricultural land use in the drainage basin. As agricultural land use expands to greater than 50% of total basin area, the amount of nitrate increases exponentially due to substitution of agriculture (a nitrate source) for wetlands and forest (where nitrate can be removed). In contrast, forested basins, represented as stars in the lower left corner of the graph, discharge very little nitrate despite atmospheric deposition of nitrogen. Plant uptake and soil interception remove most biologically available N in forests.

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Figure 3 (above). Effects of a large rain event in late September 2004 on stream chemistry. Top panel: as stream stage (water depth and discharge) increased, seston (particulates in water) dramatically increased as a result of soil erosion and mobilization of stream sediments. Middle panel: both total phosphorus (TP) and dissolved phosphate (PO4) were mobilized to very high concentrations during the high flow period due to erosion and leaching of P-rich soils, and concentrations required many days to recover to previously lower levels. Lower panel: total nitrogen (TN) increased briefly during the storm due to mobilization of particulate nitrogen, but nitrate (NO3) decreased due to dilution of high-nitrate groundwater by lower concentrations in rainfall and overland flow during the event.

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Posted by Sen. Brian Frosh.

Some of the best minds—including the diverse group of scientists and policymakers who are signatories of the Chesapeake Bay Action Plan—have devoted decades of study to determine the causes of the Bay’s decline and remedies for its revival. (If you haven’t already, check out the no-nonsense 25-Step Action Plan tab at the top of this page.)

Part of the Plan is to rein in nitrogen that now seeps from septic systems into the Bay and our groundwater.

We’ll take a significant step toward limiting nitrogen if the General Assembly approves a proposal by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to ban future installations of septic systems in most new housing developments throughout the state.

In his State of the State address before the General Assembly in early February, Gov. O’Malley minced no words when he laid out the reasons for his challenge:

We must realize that where we choose to sleep, eat and live affects our environment and it affects our Bay. Together, we’ve made some great progress in recent years. And we shouldn’t take that lightly. It didn’t happen by chance, it happened by choice…reducing farm run-off, reducing pollution from aging sewage treatment plants; most recently, starting to reduce the damage and the pollution that’s caused by storm-water run-off. But among the big four causes of pollution in the Bay, there is one area of reducing pollution where so far we have totally failed, and in fact it’s actually gotten worse,…and that is pollution from the proliferation of septic systems throughout our State—systems which by their very design are intended to leak sewage ultimately into our Bay and into our water tables.

Within days of the governor’s address, a bill titled “Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2011” was drafted and dropped in the House and Senate hoppers. Noting that four million pounds of the state’s yearly total nitrogen load to the Bay comes from on-site sewage disposal systems and that 145,000 new on-site septic systems could be added over the next 25 years, the proposed legislation would require that any new development of more than six residences be hooked up to sewers or shared systems. In other words, individual septic systems that dispose sewage effluent beneath the soil surface would be banned from most new housing projects.

I am encouraged by the governor’s call to action. I applaud Sen. Paul Pinsky (D-Dist. 22) and Del. Steve Lafferty (D-Dist. 42) for filing the Preservation Act bills. While this is an important bill, it’s not the land-use bogeyman that its opponents will make it out to be. And in fact, such a law would only eliminate a fraction of the nitrogen that flows into the Bay from the six states and the District of Columbia that are within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

In the meantime, I and eight of my Senate colleagues will be keeping an eye on Senate Bill 160, legislation we filed in late January to require that on-site septic systems used in new construction throughout the entire Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bay Watersheds—an area covering all of the state except part of Garrett County—utilize the best available nitrogen-removal technology. Identical legislation has been filed in the House of Delegates.

This bill further addresses the issue of excess nitrogen, the main culprit behind the Bay’s life-choking algae blooms that threaten crabs, fish and other watery denizens with enormous “dead zones.” Maryland already has laws in place governing septic systems within the Critical Area. SB 160 expands the coverage because nitrogen continues to flow into the Bay and its tributaries from surface and groundwater well beyond the Critical Area buffer. It is estimated that this legislation will prevent 13,000 pounds of surface water nitrogen and 37,500 pounds of groundwater nitrogen from entering the Bay each year.

While SB 160 is a logical progression in our ongoing effort to become better caretakers of the Bay, ushering it and the Preservation Act through the legislative process will not be a cakewalk. We need to convince lawmakers and citizens that remedying our septic system problems are not only good for the Bay, but has the added benefit of reducing infrastructure costs associated with suburban sprawl.

Do we have the political will to do what’s right for the Bay by stopping the damaging flow of nitrogen from our septic systems? Gov. O’Malley thinks we do. “We are up to this,” he said during his address. I think so, too, but only with public support. Help us say “yes” by giving these bills your support. That’s a much more gratifying answer than the alternatives.

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