OCEAN CITY -- Major portions of Maryland's and Delaware's coastal bays have been damaged by pollution from farming and development, says a study released here yesterday.
The four-year, $500,000 study concludes that the narrow, shallow bays alongside the two states' beach resorts are just as degraded environmentally as the Chesapeake Bay, which has been the focus of a $1 billion regional restoration effort for the past 12 years.
The study, conducted for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the two states, was presented yesterday at a conference on finding ways to protect and restore the bays while permitting development along them.
"Our bays are fragile and easily contaminated," said Ilia Fehrer, president of the Worcester Environmental Trust. She was one of nearly 300 citizen activists, government officials, scientists and business representatives at the two-day meeting.
The study's major findings:
More than three-fourths of the bays have such poor water quality that underwater grasses cannot grow, depriving fish and crabs of important habitat.
Clams, worms and other bottom-dwelling animals on which crabs and fish feed are relatively scarce in more than one-fourth of the bays.
Fish populations in Maryland's bays seem relatively unharmed so far, but the Atlantic menhaden, bay anchovies and spot once abundant in Delaware's Indian River and Rehoboth bays have been replaced by pollution-tolerant species.
Nutrients are the main culprits in the coastal bays' decline, just as they are in the Chesapeake.
They spur algae blooms, which deprive sea grasses of sunlight and consume oxygen in the water that fish need to breathe.
Nutrients come from farm and lawn fertilizer, failing septic systems and sewage discharges.
Traces of long-banned pesticides such as DDT and other toxic pollutants also were found in bottom sediments. Scientists said they probably were residues from past use, but in some places levels were high enough to affect fish and other aquatic life.
The most seriously degraded bays are in Delaware, where sea grasses "have almost disappeared," said Frederick W. Kutz, an EPA scientist.
The only healthy sea grass beds are in Chincoteague Bay, which straddles the Maryland-Virginia border.
Maryland's more northern coastal bays -- Assawoman and Isle of Wight by Ocean City -- have water quality problems approaching those of Delaware's estuaries, the report says.
