Chesapeake Bay

Maryland seafood processors, desperately short of hands to pick crabmeat, are rushing to apply for visas for foreign workers after the federal Department of Homeland Security declared Thursday that 25,000 seasonal immigration permits have gone unclaimed for this year. The unexpected discovery that some of the annual allocation of 66,000 seasonal worker visas were still available was a welcome relief for the operators of Eastern Shore crab "picking houses," some of which had remained shuttered when the season started in the spring because they could not find enough help.

She's never missed an oyster dredging season in almost 40 years, but for this winter her future seemed uncertain.With parasitic diseases wiping out the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay, it looked as if the skipjack Martha Lewis was doomed to follow the fate of others in her fleet -- lying on the muddy banks of a cove, slowly rotting away.Instead, she's being restored to her original grandeur when she was known as one of the best working boats on the bay.And when she is returned to the water next month, the Martha Lewis will not only work the bay, trying to do her part catching a few bushels of oysters, but she'll also be a goodwill ambassador for the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum.

After vowing to invigorate Maryland's toothless Smart Growth program, Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to ask the legislature for only modest changes - far short of the overhaul that activists say is needed to curb suburban sprawl and halt the decline of the Chesapeake Bay. The governor intends to seek legislation reversing a court ruling that freed local officials from having to heed their own master plans when making growth decisions. He also wants to add new goals to the state planning law, and to require local governments to track more information on how growth is occurring in their communities.

The Green Fund has run into a red light. An innovative proposal for raising public money needed to curb polluting runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, which passed the House of Delegates last week 96-41, has been abruptly halted in the Senate. Like other revenue measures, the Green Fund bill is being held hostage by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller in his campaign for a broader budget package that includes approval for slots. But the bay has no more time to wait for politics to catch up to the reality of its desperate state.

WASHINGTON -- Fresh from California, where the crash of a ship spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the San Francisco Bay, U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings is asking state and federal officials about preparedness should a similar disaster strike Maryland. The Baltimore Democrat, who chairs the House subcommittee on the Coast Guard and maritime transportation, has written to Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and the commandant of the Coast Guard with questions about how quickly local and state authorities would be notified of a spill, who would respond and how recently they've conducted a drill to practice.

The smiles were bigger than the fish. But that's the way it usually is at the annual Wish-A-Fish event at Sandy Point State Park. Sure, the kids had ear-to-ear grins painted on their faces yesterday. But so did their parents and the scads of volunteers who handed out the fishing gear and life jackets, drove boats, took pictures and served food. So did I. You've got to try really hard to have a lousy time. Consult the Grinch. Sit your snow cone in the sun. Stick your hand in a hornets' nest.

Still time to pass `green fund' bill Reading The Sun's headline "Senate kills `green fund' bill" (Nov. 3) reminded me of that old Mark Twain line, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Last week, the O'Malley administration came out in strong support of the green fund. State Environment Secretary Shari T. Wilson and Natural Resources Secretary John R. Griffin, among other officials, have testified for it and provided helpful amendments, including proposals to better monitor the green fund and add transparency and cost-effectiveness to the way it would function.

CAMBRIDGE -- It looked like just another beautiful day on the water as Bill Dennison and his crew of biologists pushed off from their pier at the Horn Point Laboratory and sailed toward the mouth of the Choptank River. The sun glistened on the waves. In the distance, craggy, tree-lined peninsulas carved the river into jagged coves that have long been home to crabs and rockfish. But there were hardly any fishing boats. In fact, hardly anyone was on the river at all. It soon became clear why. The researchers passed large patches of brownish-white foam - so-called "mahogany tides" where the water is so thick with algae that no light can get through.

EDGEWATER -- Greg Ruiz uses a pair of tweezers, tugging flesh out of the leg of a curiously hairy crab and thrusting it into a plastic vial. Ruiz, director of the Marine Invasions Research Lab, packs the vial into a blue plastic box, which he will ship off for DNA analysis to determine where the crab came from. Then he aims his pincers at his next subject - one of six Chinese mitten crabs spread out on his lab table. Ruiz is like a detective. He's trying to solve the mystery of how this spider-like Asian creature started breeding in the Chesapeake Bay and whether it's likely to threaten blue crabs or other native species.

On a sultry morning, Dave McNally exits Smith Point Marina and aims his 24-foot Carolina skiff toward 1 o'clock. There, his destination, a faint, gray shadow, protrudes above the Chesapeake Bay horizon. Within minutes, the shadow resolves into the Smith Point lighthouse, a formidable octagonal structure with the haunting allure of a Victorian pile. This is McNally's weekend retreat. For the Minnesota resident who has spent his life exploring the Mississippi by boat, the notion of "going to the Territory" has an entirely different meaning than it did for fellow river rat Huck Finn.

Maryland politicians and others gathered on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis Monday to announce a new push in Congress to restore the troubled estuary by giving state and federal governments more power and funding to clean up pollution from farms, cities and suburbs. But in a bid to win more support, sponsors of the legislation have agreed to a five-year delay in the deadline for states to do their part. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin said the bill he helped draft and plans to introduce today would put the bay cleanup on a "realistic but aggressive path."

Baltimore school board wins leadership award A national school board association has given the Baltimore school board its Progressive Leadership Award for policies to increase parent and community involvement. Baltimore's board received one of three honorable mentions awarded by the Council of Urban Boards of Education. The top award went to Atlanta. "Baltimore City truly has transformed itself around governance and policy-setting, and its hiring of a new CEO has resulted in improvements in academic performance and public support, which really is a major mark and should be heralded," said CUBE director Katrina Kelley in a news release.

William A. Pistell, a retired printing firm executive active in Chesapeake Bay conservation, died of cancer Sept. 24 at his Owings Mills home. He was 83. Born in Buffalo, N.Y., he earned a history degree at Princeton University after serving in the merchant marine during World War II. He had a master's degree from the New York University School of Business and was a certified public accountant. He moved to Baltimore in 1962 and was vice president of finance at Baltimore Business Forms and later served as treasurer of a federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corp.

The consensus among experts is that the biggest polluter of the Chesapeake Bay is the nitrogen, phosphorus and contaminated sediments that move from the land into the bay's tributaries and ultimately the bay itself. Runoff from agricultural lands remains the largest source. However, estimates suggest that 16 percent to 19 percent comes from stormwater runoff from manmade surfaces, and while agriculture's share is decreasing, the pollution contributed by urban and suburban stormwater is increasing.

More than a quarter-century ago, the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, along with the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agreed to a partnership to restore the Chesapeake Bay. Since then, the federal role in that partnership has been helpful but all too limited, with states left to do much of the heavy regulatory lifting on their own. That looks to be changing, and none too soon, given the Chesapeake Bay's compromised...

Declaring the Chesapeake Bay a national treasure that needs urgent help, the Obama administration unveiled sweeping plans Thursday for jump-starting restoration efforts, including proposals to crack down on pollution from farming and development in the six-state region that drains into North America's largest estuary. They also called for giving the federal government more say in setting baywide regulations to protect key fisheries like crabs and oysters, long a source of tension between Maryland and neighboring Virginia.

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.

State and federal governments would receive new enforcement powers and funds to clean up the Chesapeake Bay - but would also have to meet firm deadlines to act - under proposed legislation released Tuesday by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin. Cardin, chairman of a subcommittee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency's bay program, said the bill would give states more authority to regulate runoff and provide more than $1.5 billion in new funds to clean up urban and suburban storm water, a growing and costly source of pollution fouling the Chesapeake.

During the depression of the 1930s, the Chesapeake Bay thrived largely because people let it alone. They quit punishing the bay with overharvesting, and industrial pollution and construction diminished. The result was a maritime environmental bonanza. After the end of World War II, watermen were reporting record strikes of oysters, crabs and rockfish. A roundtable of "experts," including this writer, mulled this scenario at a "Chesapeake Futures" conference held by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels.

In 1983, Vic Kennedy and Linda Breisch published a paper in the Journal of Environmental Management called "Sixteen Decades of Political Management of the Oyster Fishery in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay." For any Marylander who likes oysters, the paper is a depressing read, documenting the failed attempts to change the way oysters are managed in the state. Time and again, efforts to introduce more rational policies have been overwhelmed by tidewater legislators. Amazingly, those political influences still persist, even as the oyster fishery shrinks to near zero.