Bay cleanup meetings' turnout a concern

Officials worry few know of big changes discussed that might raise hackles

Suppose they held a big Chesapeake Bay cleanup and no one came?

It's not quite at that point, but Maryland officials charged with involving the public in the latest blueprint for restoring the estuary say they're concerned.

"Turnout at public meetings has not been what we hoped," said Jamie Baxter, a program director at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

"If we get to the end of this process without broad citizen support ... and a lot of stakeholders end up surprised, it's going to blow up on us," said Thomas W. Simpson, coordinator of Chesapeake Bay agricultural programs at the University of Maryland.

Baxter and Simpson are leading Maryland's Tributary Strategies effort, which, by year's end, will lay out who must do what to meet tough new bay pollution goals agreed to by Maryland in March.

The "tribs strategies," so-called because they differ from river to river, depending on the pollution sources in each drainage basin, will encompass wide-ranging change, likely to include:

Increases in water and sewer rates, and possibly in the costs of septic tanks.

Agreement on how much manure and other fertilizers farmers use, and how much land they must devote to pollution-absorbing winter crops and natural buffers.

Decisions on how land is developed - and where - with an eye toward reducing the runoff of pollutants from pavement, and also, how home lawns, golf courses and other suburban lands are managed with respect to fertilizers and pesticides.

Most of these have been on the bay cleanup agenda for years. Maryland held an initial round of Tributary Strategy meetings across the state a decade ago. But Simpson says it's possible that many citizens, lulled by the length of the cleanup effort, don't realize that this time, there are significant differences.

New goals

The new cleanup goals include reducing primary bay pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus by twice as much in the next eight years as they were during the past 16 years, he and Baxter noted. And for the first time, there are enforcement teeth behind the goals. If Maryland is not showing major progress by 2011, state and federal regulators must impose their own cleanup plan.

Also, for the first time, the goals are tied to improvement in water quality, rather than just reducing pollutants by a particular number of pounds. The agreement says the bay must get clearer and cleaner, regaining its once vast acreage of underwater grasses, and oxygen in huge volumes of now-dead waters.

"The challenge we've accepted is very real and very substantial," Simpson said.

An example is nitrogen, which comes from sewage, runoff and polluted air. According to scientists, nitrogen promotes too much algae, which cloud the water, shade out the underwater grasses and suck up oxygen needed by other aquatic life.

Maryland is committed to reducing nitrogen by another 20 million pounds a year by 2011. That should lead to a level of bay health not seen since perhaps the early 1960s, scientists believe.

The Ehrlich administration has pledged to do this through what Simpson calls "a pretty bold" upgrade of all major sewage treatment plants - bringing them close to the limits of current technology.

All agree that sewage cleanup won't be easy or cheap. But even if done to perfection, officials say, it will only cut about 7.5 million pounds of nitrogen, about a third of the required reductions. Many observers think 5 million pounds is more likely.

Where to get the rest? Urban and suburban storm runoff is a significant source, but Simpson says with Maryland's continued high pace of development, "we'll be lucky to stay even there."

That leaves agriculture as the only other major source, and farmers, along with the poultry industry, are pushing to relax current runoff rules or make them more voluntary.

As for air pollution, the new cleanup goals assume that pending federal Clear Skies legislation - backed by President Bush but opposed as too weak by environmentalists and many states agencies - will take an 8 million-pound bite out of the bay's nitrogen pollution.

That assumption was recently termed "a wing and a prayer" by Roy Hoagland of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. To the extent it doesn't materialize, Maryland will need to accomplish more than the current 20 million-pound reduction.

Setting the bar low

Some officials believe the 20 million-pound goal may be too low. Simpson acknowledged that the computer models of the U.S. EPA Bay Program, on which cleanup progress since 1987 is based, are over-optimistic. To the extent they are, and some scientists think they are stretched by as much as 30 percent, Maryland will require even larger pollution cuts to meet the 2011 deadline.

The story is similar with phosphorus. Maryland is committed to removing another 900,000 pounds a year by 2011, and the only generally agreed-on way to do it - upgraded sewage treatment - will at best cut about 220,000 pounds, officials say.

Finally, Baxter and Simpson said, the 2011 goals are "caps." That means pollution levels must be held at the new, lower levels forever, even as Maryland continues to grow.

The task is so daunting, Simpson said, that it's vital now to get the broadest possible public input on how it should be accomplished.

"The worst thing that could happen is for the state to impose what a small group has decided, and it comes as a big surprise to affected people all over the state," he said. "It would make the chances of achieving our goals a lot less likely."

A schedule of local Tributary Strategy meetings is available from the DNR's Jamie Baxter at 410-260-8720. Regional meetings include: Southern Maryland and Harford County on Monday; the Upper Eastern Shore on Tuesday; Frederick County on Wednesday; the Lower Eastern Shore on Thursday; and the Choptank River basin on June 30.