Bay Program

Senate panel OKs criminal-records bill A Senate committee voted yesterday in favor of legislation that would automatically expunge criminal records when people are arrested but not charged with a crime. In giving its approval, the Judicial Proceedings Committee rejected an amendment that would have required those who were arrested to sign a waiver promising not to sue the police department. Several senators had asked about the provision -- a prerequisite for expungement under current law. People seeking to have their records expunged must also pay a fee under current law and apply to have the records erased -- a process that typically requires the assistance of a lawyer.

The top elected officials from the Chesapeake Bay region acknowledged yesterday what scientists and environmental advocates have been saying for years: They will not achieve their goals for cleaning up the bay by 2010. However, members of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council -- which includes the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the mayor of Washington -- said they will enact programs and policies by 2010 to reach the benchmarks for reducing pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the bay and its tributaries.

WE HAVE BROKEN the 15 million population barrier in the Chesapeake Bay basin on our way to 18 million by 2020.Simultaneously, we are making great claims about -- and real progress toward -- cleaning up the bay. Our strongest commitment is to reduce the impact of nutrient pollution on the bay's living resources -- the crabs, fish and oysters, and the underwater grasses that provide critical habitat.We are committed to maintaining our progress in restoring the bay. However, will population growth and development, along with our consumptive lifestyles, halt and reverse our progress?

FIRST, let's be grateful that all the smiling pols didn't show up at Wye Mills this week for photo opportunities and overblown oratory, marking the launching of the Chesapeake 2000 draft plan.That means the real work of charting and improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay over the next decade can begin in earnest. It means that troublesome differences between bay states can be worked out through professional negotiation and expert persuasion, rather than through public saber-rattling.Controlling growth is the main sticking point of the Chesapeake Bay Program that is to be adopted by Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A new federal farm census shows Maryland's poultry industry is growing on the Upper Eastern Shore, bringing with it the potential for the same water-pollution problems that have beset the Pocomoke River and other Lower Eastern Shore waterways at the industry's epicenter.Farmers in Talbot, Kent and Queen Anne's counties say economic necessity is compelling them to follow their Lower Shore neighbors in taking out six-figure mortgages on large poultry houses and raising chickens under contract for the Delmarva Peninsula's large poultry companies.

OCEAN CITY -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening and a half-dozen federal, state and local officials signed a $6 million plan yesterday to clean up Maryland's threatened coastal bays over the next 10 years.The 175-page blueprint for the management and conservation of Assawoman, Isle of Wight, Sinepuxent and Chincoteague bays is largely voluntary. It relies heavily on education programs, incentives and disincentives to prod developers, farmers, homeowners and watermen to take better care of the waters between the barrier islands and the Eastern Shore.

Sediments from the Magothy River contain arsenic and those from the Severn contain copper, zinc and nickel. In the upper reaches of the Chester River, there are banned pesticides, Dieldrin and DDT, and in the Potomac River, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).Those rivers, isolated from the heavy manufacturing assumed to cause such pollution, are among 10 areas of concern noted in a Chesapeake Bay Program report on tidal rivers released yesterday.Nine of those areas -- the Middle, Back, Magothy, Severn, Chester and the upper and middle segments of the Patuxent and Potomac rivers -- are in Maryland.

SUSSEX COUNTY, Del. -- While Eastern Shore poultry farmers face tough new restrictions on manure pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, their counterparts upstream in Delaware operate under some of this region's weakest environmental scrutiny.Delaware's environmental controls are so lax that a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official is warning that the state must quickly improve on its current "Boy Scout pledge" approach to reducing poultry pollution or the agency will intervene.The differing approaches by the states are most apparent on the Nanticoke River, which runs through Delaware and Maryland and carries excessive loads of "nutrients" -- nitrogen and phosphorus, prime Chesapeake pollutants.

The health of the Chesapeake Bay is improving, with growing populations of oysters, shad and rockfish. But the estuary remains on the critical list, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.Wetlands, which filter pollutants from the water, have declined since last year and could shrink further under a federal court decision that allows wetland development in Virginia. And the blue crab population continues to drop, the foundation said yesterday in its annual State of the Bay report.The foundation gave the bay a score of 28 on a scale in which 100 is the pristine quality described by the English explorer Captain John Smith when he first sailed the Chesapeake in 1607.

Baltimore's plan to claim millions of gallons of water from the Susquehanna River Basin would have devastating effects on the entire Upper Chesapeake Bay region during a drought, say the Maryland and federal agencies arrayed against the city in a new water war.Opponents of the plan, ranging from the town of Havre de Grace to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, say they want Baltimore to agree to do what all other users of Susquehanna River water must...

Release of proposals for bay cleanup is delayed a day The promised public release Wednesday of new federal proposals for jump-starting the lagging Chesapeake Bay restoration was delayed by a day and is now planned Thursday, officials said. The state and federal bay "partnership" had announced that it would release a series of draft reports outlining proposals for accelerating the pace of cleaning up the Chesapeake and safeguarding its fish and wildlife Wednesday. But late in the morning, Jim Edwards, deputy director of EPA's bay program office, said the documents were still being finalized, particularly one report that focuses on restoring and maintaining the bay's "living resources," including bay grasses, oysters, crabs, fish and other wildlife.

WASHINGTON - -The federal Environmental Protection Agency would be given enhanced authority to clean up pollution in the Chesapeake Bay under legislation now being shaped in Congress, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland said Monday. A new, regionwide pollutant-trading system is another likely feature of the measure, designed to update the struggling, 26-year-old Chesapeake Bay program. The regional partnership, which includes the federal government, District of Columbia, Maryland and five other states in the bay watershed, has repeatedly failed to meet voluntary cleanup goals.

Four state programs aiming to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution flowing to the Back and Patapsco rivers and the Chesapeake Bay will share almost $1.9 million in grant money awarded Friday from a federally funded trust. The Herring Run Watershed Association will get $450,000 to slow runoff from Baltimore city and county landowners into Herring Run and the Jones Falls. The project will divert rooftop downspouts to lawns and landscaped areas rather than let them contribute to polluted runoff on streets and sidewalks that runs into storm drains - which is expected to prevent 650 pounds of nitrogen, 98 pounds of phosphorus and 11 tons of sediment from reaching local streams.

U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin pledged Monday to introduce legislation to reauthorize the Chesapeake Bay Program and expand the regulatory framework that has failed to clean up the watershed. Cardin spoke at a congressional field hearing in Annapolis, which he said would be the first in a series to discuss new legislation for the bay program. The program was last authorized in 2000, expired in 2005 and has fallen far short of goals for improving the bay's water quality by 2010. While he expects a renewed focus by the Environmental Protection Agency on bay pollution, Cardin said, the bill must specifically lay out the agency's role to ensure it is carried out in a new administration.

Reading the recent reports on the Chesapeake Bay Program at 25, I smell a whiff of "Who lost the Chesapeake Bay?" We should recognize that managing the impact of 16 million Americans on the bay was always going to be difficult. What exactly the problem is, what to do to fix it, and how to make that happen - these are complicated issues that the Chesapeake Bay Program, the state and federal partnership established to clean up the bay, needed to sort out. It should not surprise anyone if we have not yet gotten it right.

The Maryland Department of the Environment says Chesapeake Bay striped bass more than 28 inches long are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs - industrial chemicals that can damage children's nervous systems. Maryland fish advisories say children should not eat large rockfish that run in springtime, and no one should eat local rockfish more than twice a month. In fact, Maryland and Virginia have posted health warnings for 23 kinds of bay fish and shellfish. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study found half the bay bottom is degraded by PCBs, mercury or pesticides.

A group of Chesapeake Bay scientists and advocates is calling for new, more aggressive efforts to restore the bay, saying that the current approach has not worked and that the troubled estuary is getting worse. The group - more than a dozen scientists, policy specialists and activists - presented its recommendations to the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's bay program office in Annapolis on the eve of today's 25th anniversary of the formal launch of the bay restoration effort.

EPA report faults agency's bay efforts The Environmental Protection Agency needs to do more not only to clean up the Chesapeake Bay but also to let the public know where it is falling short on the effort, according to a report released yesterday. The report, by the EPA's Office of Inspector General, said the federal agency needs to work with local governments in the bay's six-state watershed to make sure their land-use practices are helping to protect the bay. It calls on the EPA to outline for Congress how much money it is spending on cleanup actions and how much progress it is making.

Near the Interstate 95 on-ramp just beneath the intersection of Bush and Russell streets in Baltimore, the outfall of Pipe 263 inspires little optimism. Trash bobs in sickly green water. Plastic bags hang from drooping trees on the riverbank. Here, stormwater flows untreated from a 72-block underground watershed, a network of storm drains that channels water beneath the streets of West Baltimore into the Patapsco River and into Baltimore Harbor beyond. Ultimately, this dirty water ---- laden with organic matter, toxics, nitrogen and phosphorus ---- heads for the Chesapeake Bay. Aboveground feels pretty bleak too. Abandoned houses checkerboard the 12 neighborhoods that make up Watershed 263, defined by the hydrology of underground pipes.

The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are beautiful, but you can't get to them easily. Only 2 percent of the Maryland shoreline of the Chesapeake offers public access. "Along the Anacostia River," says environmentalist Robert Boone, "there are only two boat ramps along eight miles of tidal river." The Potomac, "other than along the C&O Canal tow path, does not have much access either." On the Eastern Shore, there is a shortage of waterside parks and boat ramps. Veteran kayaker Clarence "Doc" Kuntz points out that there is "very little Talbot County shoreline open to the public.