Bay Cleanup

Seeming to contradict assertions by farmers that they're doing their share to protect the Chesapeake Bay, a new federal report finds major shortcomings in what crop growers are doing across the six-state region to keep from polluting the troubled estuary. While farmers have made "good progress" in reducing the amount of soil and fertilizer washing off their fields into the bay and its rivers, more pollution controls are needed on about 81 percent of all the croplands, says the draft report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Like a good teacher refusing to grade on a curve, the U.S. Environment Protection Agency handed out some failing grades last week to Chesapeake Bay states whose cleanup plans are woefully inadequate. Hallelujah. If the EPA's heightened involvement in the Chesapeake Bay is going to turn the tide on water quality, the agency can't be seen backing down now. The low scores given to Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia should send a message that the environmental excuses of the past are the equivalent of dogs eating homework.

Chesapeake Bay watershed states that have submitted hefty plans to reduce pollution are looking to the federal government to cover much, if not most, of the added expense of completing the troubled estuary's restoration. The federally mandated cleanup "roadmaps" drawn up by the six states that drain into the bay and by the District of Columbia take nearly 900 pages combined — not counting appendices — to outline how they intend to reduce the pollution that is fouling the Chesapeake and its tributaries.

While we appreciate Tom Ballentine's explanatory detail ("Nutrient trading essential to bay cleanup," Readers Respond, Sept. 1), he overlooks the fact that trading programs between point sources and agricultural non-point sources – which he asserts as a solution to cleaning up Chesapeake Bay – have never resulted in water quality improvements anywhere in the country. According to its 2007 Water Quality Trading and Agriculture report, the American Agricultural Economics Association argued that the lack of documented success in water quality trading shows a "mismatch between theory and practice.

Maryland officials proposed Wednesday tripling the pace of the state's efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, releasing a draft plan that calls for pollution reductions across the landscape, including upgrading more sewage plants and household septic tanks, retrofitting urban and suburban storm drains, and trying new ways to curb farm runoff, including burning poultry manure for energy. The 170-page plan, submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency, outlines 75 "options" for reducing nutrient and sediment pollution enough to restore the bay's troubled water quality by the end of this decade — five years ahead of the 2025 bay cleanup deadline the states earlier set for themselves.

Your article, "Military urged to boost bay cleanup" (Aug. 26), is just another photo op for Gov. Martin O'Malley to continue to blow smoke. I tried to participate in the nitrogen reducing septic system program last year. I submitted all the forms and heard nothing. When I called back they said the process for filing had changed. I resubmitted and heard nothing. I called back and they were out of money. The funding stopped, because Mr. O'Malley took the money from the fund to use in the general fund.

State, federal and military officials huddled at the Naval Academy in Annapolis on Wednesday to see how the Pentagon — one of the largest landowners in the Chesapeake Bay watershed — might do more on the region's sprawling bases to control pollution and restore the troubled estuary. But they steered clear — for now — from talking about what it would cost and how a war-strapped Defense Department might pay for it. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said President Barack Obama had called on civilian and military agencies alike to lead by example in drawing up a new federal strategy for restoring the bay. The federal government controls 5.3 percent of all the land in the six-state region.

Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. made a campaign stop Wednesday on the shores of Back River in Essex to champion his administration's Chesapeake Bay Restoration Act — and to criticize Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley for using money from the act's bay fund to help balance the state budget. Ehrlich's criticism and O'Malley's response marked the first time the two candidates have sparred over the environment, a diversion in a gubernatorial race that has focused primarily on the economy, jobs and how government taxes and spends.

I have an article request for your writing team: the threat of water contamination, including to the Chesapeake Bay, resulting from the process of hydraulic fracturing used by natural gas companies, and their arrival to Maryland. Hydraulic fracturing is a process where natural gas companies drill 5,000-plus feet beneath the surface of the earth into shale deposits, or rocks that contain natural gas. In order to extract the gas, they use a mixture of sand, hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water, and toxic chemicals to break the gas away from the shale and bring it to the surface.

Federal officials are launching efforts today in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia to enlist farmers in targeted watersheds in a concerted effort to curb pollution running off their land. The upper Chester River, a 23,000-acre swath of mostly rural land on the Eastern Shore, is the Maryland watershed targeted for a special effort by federal, state and nonprofit agencies. The aim of the "showcase watersheds," a U.S. Department of Agriculture official said Thursday, is to demonstrate that voluntary cooperation, aided by generous infusions of federal funds, can help restore degraded bay waters without the need for further government regulation of agriculture.