Bay Region

The ink is barely dry on the draft of a sweeping plan to protect Chesapeake Bay from suburban sprawl, and already some members of a gubernatorial commission are jockeying to change it.Environmentalists hailed the state growth-management legislation proposed yesterday to the Governor's Commission on Growth in the Chesapeake Bay Region. But, some on the 33-member panel indicated last night they still are not satisfied with the measure, despite the compromises worked out between development and conservation interests.

Farmland across the Chesapeake Bay region is overloaded with phosphorus, a new study by an environmental group finds, indicating that the bay's waters are being polluted by excessive use of animal manure and sewage sludge as crop fertilizers. In a report released Tuesday, the Environmental Working Group says soil data on file at universities show that in one of five counties in the six-state watershed, more than half of all soil samples tested are overloaded with phosphorus, a nutrient blamed for fouling the bay's waters.

I ALMOST WISH I had not waded into this column, a revisit to "Chesapeake," the 1978 novel of 859 pages by James A. Michener, who died last week at the age of 90.I read it avidly almost two decades ago. This time, the urge to skim large portions was irrepressible.What place do you assign a book that is not memorable literature, but sold more copies than anything written since on our bay region (including William Warner's 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner, "Beautiful Swimmers")?Michener's fame, dating to his 1948 Pulitzer for "Tales of the South Pacific," was such that his name covered more of the "Chesapeake" book jacket than the title.

I won't waste time telling you how to vote in the upcoming elections, but I will provide some history and context on politics and the environment. The choices for environmental voters used to be harder — and that was a good thing. I began writing about the Chesapeake Bay almost 40 years ago, and for the first couple of decades I don't recall that the environment was a partisan issue. A short list of leaders who were instrumental then in working to restore the bay will make my point.

George Bush is playing rhetorical games with the nation's wetlands policy. During his 1988 campaign, Bush -- who wants to be the "environmental president" -- pledged "no net loss" of wetlands, the coastal marshes, swamps and prairie potholes that flood seasonally. But sticking to that commitment would have put about 100 million acres nationwide off limits to bulldozers and cranes. Developers and oil and lumber companies complained.So the President's Council on Competitiveness, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, simply recommended changing the definition of wetlands.

MOUNT VERNON, Va. - -Buoyed by a pledge of federal help from President Barack Obama, state and local leaders across the Chesapeake Bay region vowed Tuesday to accelerate their cleanup of the beleaguered estuary. But some environmentalists said the promised pollution reductions fall far short of what is needed and called for more aggressive federal action. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and other leaders called their commitments announced here on the banks of the Potomac River a "turning point" and "a new day" in the long-running struggle to bring back the Chesapeake, which has missed two previous cleanup deadlines in the past 26 years.

Save the farms, save the bay? After years of criticizing agriculture as a leading source of pollution in the bay, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation unveiled a new strategy yesterday of supporting farmers to prevent suburban sprawl. Will Baker, president of the environmental advocacy organization, said his group has hired a Washington law firm to lobby for more federal aid for Maryland farmers who participate in voluntary programs to reduce runoff. Some environmentalists question the foundation's new approach, saying that farms remain the top source of pollution in the bay and need to be controlled by stronger regulations.

Maryland farmers are not getting their fair share of the money that the federal government hands out each year in farm production payments. That's a major complaint of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which says that if bay region growers received as much funding as their Corn Belt counterparts, the bay could be a lot cleaner. An analysis by the environmental group shows that for every dollar of food produced in Maryland, farmers receive 4.8 cents in federal support money. This is well below the national average of 9 cents per state.

Maryland farmers could be poised to receive more money to help pay for conservation practices that reduce the amount of pollution making its way into the Chesapeake Bay. A version of the 2007 federal Farm Bill drafted by Rep. Collin C. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, would direct $150 million to farmers in bay-region states for conservation programs. Environmentalists in Maryland are applauding the Minnesota Democrat's proposal as a potential major step in the restoration of the bay. "The region's farmers have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to implement conservation measures, but they can't foot the bill alone," said Doug Siglin, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's federal affairs director.

Saving Chesapeake Bay will require greater community cooperation to preserve the bay region's rapidly vanishing rural landscape, a group of international planning experts said yesterday.Speaking at the Maritime Institute in Fells Point, visiting teams of planners from abroad and elsewhere in this country urged environmentalists, developers and farmers in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia to find common ground on ways to accommodate growth and development without destroying the bay region's remaining forests, wetlands and wide open spaces.

The Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration executive order recently signed by President Barack Obama is the most assertive act a president has yet taken to protect and restore the bay. It is remarkable for another reason as well: It puts the conservation of landscapes and ecosystems on an equal footing with restoring water quality and recognizes the immense cultural and ecological value of the Chesapeake's landscapes. President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar understand that we must conserve the watershed's intact ecosystems and restore others for the Chesapeake Bay to fully recover.

MOUNT VERNON, Va. - -Buoyed by a pledge of federal help from President Barack Obama, state and local leaders across the Chesapeake Bay region vowed Tuesday to accelerate their cleanup of the beleaguered estuary. But some environmentalists said the promised pollution reductions fall far short of what is needed and called for more aggressive federal action. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and other leaders called their commitments announced here on the banks of the Potomac River a "turning point" and "a new day" in the long-running struggle to bring back the Chesapeake, which has missed two previous cleanup deadlines in the past 26 years.

With its cities, industry and traffic congestion, the Chesapeake Bay region is known more for its energy consumption than energy production. But that could change, perhaps within a decade or so, if officials in Maryland and neighboring states are willing to invest in cellulosic ethanol. In layman's terms, that's the production of alcohol from the fermentation of stalks, stems and wood chips that contain glucose. Cellulosic ethanol is one of the most promising technologies within the field of biofuel production.

We know that the average water temperature of the Chesapeake Bay has increased by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1960. If global warming continues unabated, it is likely to rise by an additional 5 or more degrees by the end of this century. We know that the bay's sea level has risen by a foot and a half since the 1930s. Climate science tells us that we should prepare for an additional 2 feet to 4 feet before the next century. We know that over the last four centuries, the bay has lost about 10 inhabited islands to erosion and a rising sea level.

With all due respect to polar bears and melting ice caps, the Chesapeake Bay region is likely to be among the nation's most vulnerable to global warming because of its grossly polluted state. Rising water temperatures threaten fragile fisheries, including crabs that depend on vanishing eelgrass. Rising water levels are swallowing islands and can easily overwhelm shoreline communities that have lost storm protection. Warming the smoggy air in Baltimore can quickly lead to heat-related deaths.

Ethanol could fuel corn-farming growth The national boom in ethanol production could spark as much as a 50 percent growth in corn farming in the Chesapeake Bay region - and perhaps a 5 percent increase in nitrogen pollution from runoff, according to a new report. The additional pollution in the bay is a reason for Congress to include more money in the Farm Bill for cover crops and other runoff control programs, said Beth McGee, a senior scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and an author of the report.

SPRING HAS barely settled in, and already comes bad news for this season on the Chesapeake Bay. It seems the winter's heavy snow and rain - which were welcome from a drought perspective - have washed three years of sediment into the bay at once, choking off oxygen for marine life. Oysters are dead in their beds. The prognosis for a robust crab harvest is poor. No one can do anything about the weather. But curbing the pollutants that wash off farms and fields and the landscapes of suburban subdivisions is a critical, if politically arduous, task.

Industries and municipalities in the Chesapeake Bay region would be asked to reduce releases of toxic chemicals by up to 75 percent over the next six years under a multistate plan to be adopted Friday.But the Chesapeake Bay Foundation warned yesterday that state and federal governments would be "backpedaling" on their commitment to restore the bay if the plan is adopted, waiting "until fish start dying and people become sick" before acting.The Annapolis-based environmental group called on the political leaders of the bay region, including Gov. William Donald Schaefer, to "stand firm against the recommendations of state and federal bureaucrats . . . to weaken efforts to reduce toxic pollution of the bay."

Maryland farmers could be poised to receive more money to help pay for conservation practices that reduce the amount of pollution making its way into the Chesapeake Bay. A version of the 2007 federal Farm Bill drafted by Rep. Collin C. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, would direct $150 million to farmers in bay-region states for conservation programs. Environmentalists in Maryland are applauding the Minnesota Democrat's proposal as a potential major step in the restoration of the bay. "The region's farmers have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to implement conservation measures, but they can't foot the bill alone," said Doug Siglin, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's federal affairs director.

Gathered in the back room of a St. Mary's County restaurant the other day, an aging collection of folks whose families have been farming in Southern Maryland for generations, even centuries, worried about how many will be the last of the line. Estate taxes, low profits, labor and equipment costs, the decline of tobacco, the sheer drudgery of working the land and - most dangerous of all - the siren call of developers eager to pay handsomely to buy them out have drastically thinned the ranks of Maryland farmers and spell further losses.