BROOMES ISLAND - This afternoon, Bernie Fowler, the former state senator and indefatigable Southern Maryland environmentalist, will wade into the Patuxent River in coveralls and white tennis shoes for his 17th annual clear-water test.
As usual, Fowler's wife, Betty, will serve fried chicken, children will sing "Chesapeake Born" and the old-timers will swap stories of a river so clear that they could see crabs scamper across its bottom.
But this year, the usually folksy event is taking on a dire tone because the Patuxent River that Gov. Harry R. Hughes promised to help save 25 years ago continues to struggle for life.
Long gone are the hundreds of crabbers and oystermen who lived well off the river's abundance. In their place are declining bay grasses, rampant aquatic diseases and persistent pollution. These days at Broomes Island, waders barely get into water 16 inches deep before the murky Patuxent obscures their toes.
"This year, it just keeps hammering away at me: `You gotta hit hard on this one. Time is running out,'" Fowler said. "And I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that there is a point of no return. How close we are to that, I don't know. But not too distant."
So Fowler, 80, is asking the politicians wading with him this year to bring a commitment, just as Hughes did 25 years ago when he looked at the piles of dead oysters and declared that the river could and should be saved. Fowler is hoping for promises to invest more in wastewater treatment plants, to examine growth more closely and to preserve the river's health and heritage.
It might sound naive, but those who know him say that if anyone can wrest commitments out of those in power, it's the genteel former senator.
Nearly 30 years ago, when he was a Calvert County commissioner, Fowler led the three Southern Maryland counties in a lawsuit against the state and federal governments, charging that they were allowing too much untreated sewage from suburban counties upstream into the Patuxent.
With the help of University of Maryland scientists who risked their jobs to testify, the counties won, and the state agreed to reduce nutrients flowing into the river. That agreement became the model for the interstate bay restoration effort.
"No one has greater dedication to cleaning up the Patuxent River than Bernie Fowler," Hughes said. "It's going to take a massive effort and resources, and the political leadership has got to recognize that and do it."
