"Everyone's watching Calvert County and wondering, 'Will this work?' " she said.
The rest of the area, she said, hasn't followed suit. Sprawl continues to spread in St. Mary's and Charles counties.
Even if Calvert's new policies help the river, old-timers know they can never bring back the ambience of villages like Broomes Island - places where everyone knew each other by the sound of their boat motors.
From his porch, Hezekiah "Duck" Elliott can still see the locust blossoms in the spring. They no longer signal that the crabs are running; even if they did, hardly any watermen are left to notice. Elliott, 81, works only part time. Most others have long since retired.
He is doubtful that decades of damage can be undone. "If you get the grasses back, you'll get the crabs back, and the minnows back," Elliott said. "But how are you going to get anything back?"
The bay: 'bad water'
All that pollution from Maryland's rivers eventually makes its way to the Chesapeake. Pat Norris knows that all too well. This summer, the veteran waterman steered his workboat to a spot off Point Lookout, near Maryland's southern tip, where he had set his crab pots. He pulled them up to find they were filled with dead crabs.
Norris has worked the bay for nearly 20 years, and he has long known about "bad water" - oxygen-deprived swaths where little can live. But this was the first week in July. He had never seen bad water so early, or in so many places.
"It's disheartening," he said, "to say the least."
During the past 25 years, several billion dollars in state and federal funds have gone to bay cleanup programs. A large chunk of that - including money from Maryland's landmark flush tax - has paid for improvements to sewage treatment plants. Other money has gone to farmers to plant cover crops and conserve land.
Environmental experts say those steps have helped to hold the line - that the bay would be in even worse shape without them. But it has not gotten better.
Population growth is bringing increased pavement to the landscape, as well as increased loads to treatment plants. Treated wastewater is cleaner than it was a decade ago, but there's more of it. Farms remain the bay's single biggest polluter.
No one is suggesting that governments halt development or outlaw farming. But many environmentalists say that officials in the six-state watershed - especially Maryland - could do much more to stop pollution from development and farms, not just pay to clean it up.
"Every politician will say, 'I'm for the Chesapeake Bay.' But when it comes time to vote, they won't protect it," said Kelly, the Severn riverkeeper. "It's just not a high enough priority. There's no political will."
tomorrow
Politics has failed Maryland's rivers, as farmers, homeowners, developers and local government have thwarted reforms.
