Bernie Fowler, the 85-year-old former Maryland state senator from Calvert County, held his annual wade-in last Sunday, a ritual in the Patuxent River that draws politicians and the press to his side as he crusades for cleaner, clearer water in the Chesapeake Bay. Once upon a time, Mr. Fowler would not lose sight of his feet until he'd waded into more than 50 inches of water. Last Sunday off Broomes Island, with the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and the governor of Maryland joining him, Mr. Fowler marked the disappearance of his white tennis shoes at only 25.5 inches.
Still, Mr. Fowler was optimistic: President Barack Obama signed an executive order assigning the Environmental Protection Agency to control Chesapeake pollution, bringing some much-needed federal muscle to a quarter-century effort that failed under state and local political pressures.
At the same time, leaders of the Chesapeake states vowed to become more aggressive in reducing the amount of nutrients getting into the bay. Maybe we'll start to get somewhere this time.
As Mr. Fowler was preparing for his annual wade-in, I was a few hundred miles north, but still very much in the Chesapeake watershed, in what's known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, Pine Creek Gorge. I waded into a trout stream in the woods, and the foot visibility was an exquisite four feet, maybe more.
Where the Chesapeake begins, up in the mountain springs and runs that feed the creeks that feed the big rivers, the water runs clear and cold enough that trout can survive. It's what happens to the water between there and here - as it flows down through the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the Patapsco, the Patuxent, gathering nitrogen-rich runoff from farmland and suburban lawns, absorbing the massive drainage of an urbanized, fossil-fuel-dependent population - that makes the difference.
Where I hiked and waded, you could put your hand into a feeder spring in a cool, mossy place in the woods and feel the birth water of the bay run cold and fresh over your hands. And then you could stand back, your head in the low-hanging hemlocks, and watch the water splash down through the damp, forested mountainside on its way to Pine Creek, deep in the gorge below, and from there more than 40 miles to the West Branch of the Susquehanna, and from there to the big river, which provides the Chesapeake with half of its fresh water.
