Bay Cleanup

As a young man in the 1960s, Bernie Fowler recalls he could wade chest deep into the Patuxent River and still see his toes as he netted crabs.  But the clarity of his beloved river plummeted over the years, along with the vitality of the rest of the Cheaspeake Bay. In 1988, frustrated with what seemed to him then as the slow pace of efforts to restore the river, Fowler, a state senator representing Calvert County, staged a wade-in to demonstrate graphically...

Facing federal and state mandates to reduce pollution washing off its streets and alleys, Baltimore city is taking the first step toward imposing a fee on residents or property owners to pay for controlling its tainted storm-water runoff. City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Youngintroduced a resolution Monday night calling for a charter amendment to create a "stormwater utility" for Baltimore. It's slated for a hearing June 12 before the council's judiciary and legislative investigations committee, chaired byCouncilmanJames B. Kraft.

Could pollution "trading" really shave billions of dollars from the costs of restoring the Chesapeake Bay?  Or would the long-running cleanup effort suffer at the hands of those looking to make a buck on it? A study presented Thursday to the Chesapeake Bay Commission suggests there could indeed be significant cost savings from letting polluters pay others to make less expensive reductions in bay-fouling nutrient pollution elsewhere.  RTI International, an economic consulting firm from Research Triangle Park NC, found that savings could range from 20 to 80 percent, depending on how trading is structured.

Steep projected costs for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay could be trimmed by billions of dollars, a new study suggests, by allowing polluters to buy "credits" for less-expensive reductions made by others. The study, presented Thursday to the Chesapeake Bay Commission, an advisory panel of legislators from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, estimates that nutrient pollution trading could trim projected costs for upgrading sewage treatment plants and controlling urban and suburban storm water pollution by $1 billion or more a year baywide.

Federal regulators have given mostly high marks to the latest Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan drafted by Maryland but found fault with Pennsylvania's and Virginia's restoration blueprints. In reports posted online late Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency said Maryland's draft "watershed implementation plan" for meeting the agency's bay pollution reduction goals "meets EPA's expectations. " Maryland and the other five states that drain into the Chesapeake have been working with the agency for the past three years on a "pollution diet" aimed at reducing nutrient and sediment pollution fouling the bay by 20 percent to 25 percent.

A coalition of environmental groups has handed out mixed grades for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plans every county in Maryland prepared late last year. The plans, submitted to the state Department of the Environment , are part of a detailed statewide bay restoration plan the state was required to give the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month.  EPA has prescribed a "pollution diet" for Maryland and the other five states that drain into the Chesapeake, requiring them to lay out steps they'll take by 2025 to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment fouling the bay's waters.  MDE submitted its latest draft plan on Jan. 26 and is seeking public comments until March 9.  Counties have until July to improve or refine their local plans.

Maryland's counties and cities say they will need to spend billions of dollars to take the extra steps needed to restore the Chesapeake Bay to health by 2020, the deadline the state gave them for action. In cash-strapped Baltimore, for example, officials estimate added cleanup measures will cost more than $250 million over the next six years. They say they'll seek City Council approval next month to levy a fee on all property owners to help pay for controlling polluted runoff from streets, alleys and parking lots.

A state task force called Tuesday for tripling the "flush fee" Maryland homeowners pay as a way to help finance an accelerated cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. The 28-member task force, appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley to tackle sewage and growth issues, voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the $2.50 monthly bay restoration fee be doubled next year and increased to $7.50 a month by 2015. The fee is levied on water and sewer bills for utility customers, and on property tax bills for homeowners on septic systems.

The argument over who should take the lead in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay cleanup misses the point that change for the better is already on its way ("Harris has it right: Let states enforce pollution law," July 19). Here in Dorchester County, the cleanup is gaining momentum precisely because all levels of government are on the same page. Sparked by the bay's new pollution diet and by assistance from the Environmental Protection Agency and the state, a group representing the farming community, city and county officials and citizens have made unprecedented progress toward putting together a concrete plan to clean up our waterways.