No easy solution for septic problems on Maryland's Eastern Shore

Town's sewage ruined lake

pollution continues 14 years after state stepped in

GOLDSBORO — — "Capture a Lake Bonnie memory," the flier reads. Tucked away "in the heart of the Eastern Shore," the wooded campground in northern Caroline County offered swimming, fishing and boat rentals on a 28-acre man-made lake. It was, says owner Gail Litz, a "home away from home" for dozens of families, many from Baltimore.

Memories are all that's left now of Lake Bonnie Campsites. The lake, the heart of the campground, was declared unfit for swimming or wading in 1996 because of sewage leaking from failing septic systems in Goldsboro, about a mile away. The Maryland Department of the Environment ordered the town to build a public sewer system or come up with an alternative to stop the pollution. The town agreed to pay fines of $100 per day if it didn't meet the deadlines or requirements of the state's consent order.

Fourteen years later, the pollution continues unchecked. No fines have been collected. The lake remains contaminated.

"You can smell it in the summer; it's horrible," said Litz, 61. "It's really heartbreaking."

Litz has filed suit in Caroline County Circuit Court, seeking an injunction that would require the town and the county to halt the seeping sewage that is fouling her lake. She's seeking $7 million in compensatory damages from the town, the county and the state for the harm their inaction has done to her livelihood. She closed the campground four years ago, after watching business dwindle since the lake was put off limits to swimming, and now faces foreclosure.

"I think it's really unbelievable that the government identified the problem and then failed altogether to pursue it," said Philip W. Hoon, her lawyer.

The inaction is all the more remarkable, Hoon adds, because Lake Bonnie drains into the Choptank River, a Chesapeake Bay tributary that is in worse shape than the bay.

Most of the nutrient pollution fouling the river comes from fertilizer and animal manure washing off farmland, scientists say. But some evidently is coming from failing septic systems.

Town, county and state officials insist that they have doggedly pursued a solution to the town's leaking septic tanks over the years but say they have been stymied by a lack of funding and a remedy the community can afford. What's needed, they say, is a sewer system to pipe the waste to a treatment plant, where disease-causing bacteria can be eliminated and nutrient pollution greatly reduced. But with just 216 residents in about 84 households, the community is too small to be able to pay to run, much less build a wastewater plant, they say.

"It hasn't been for lack of trying to find a solution," said Virginia Kearney, the MDE's deputy water management director. "It's lack of being able to come up with a viable solution. ... It's a tough one."

Grappling with enforcement

Environmental activists acknowledge that the problem is complicated by the town's small size and lack of affluence; Caroline is among the state's poorest counties. But they say it's another example of Maryland's failure to protect its waters and its residents from polluters.

"It's on MDE's back," said Scott Edwards, director of advocacy for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international coalition of water-quality watchdog groups. "The fact that they've sat and done nothing for 14 years, that's outrageous."

The environmental group, which is not a party to Litz's suit, petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency late last year to strip the state of authority to enforce federal clean-water laws, complaining that the Department of the Environment was lax in its oversight of permits to discharge pollution into streams, rivers and the bay.

State officials say they've kept the pressure on water polluters, despite shortages of staff and funds. The agency's operating budget has shrunk by nearly one-third in the past three years. But the number of enforcement actions taken last year increased by 7 percent overall, according to the agency's 2009 report, while water and wastewater actions increased by 47 percent.

Even so, activists note that the Goldsboro case isn't the first of the state's cleanup orders that has dragged on for years without resolution. Last year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper threatened to sue the state and the owners of the steel mill at Sparrows Point, accusing them of failing to live up to a 1997 consent decree that required remediation of soil, water and groundwater contamination there. MDE officials have said the cleanup has been complicated by the steel mill's revolving-door ownership.

MDE is enforcing nearly 200 consent orders, decrees or agreements, 55 of them involving water cleanups, according to agency spokesman Jay Apperson. Last year, in defending lack of progress on another consent decree, MDE spokeswoman Dawn Stoltzfus said that with limited staff and resources, the agency gave priority to cases that pose threats to public health.