Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Maryland moved Monday to reduce the commercial harvest of female blue crabs in the aftermath of a survey finding that the Chesapeake Bay's crab population hit a five-year low last winter. The Department of Natural Resources announced that it was lowering the daily allowable catch of female crabs, effective Thursday. The move comes nearly a month after Maryland and Virginia officials announced the results of their annual winter dredge survey, which found that the bay's crab population had declined by nearly two-thirds over the previous year, to around 300 million, with juvenile crabs plummeting 80 percent.

Maryland moved Monday to reduce the commercial harvest of female blue crabs in the aftermath of a survey finding that the Chesapeake Bay's crab population hit a five-year low last winter. The Department of Natural Resources announced that it was lowering the daily allowable catch of female crabs, effective Thursday. The move comes nearly a month after Maryland and Virginia officials announced the results of their annual winter dredge survey, which found that the bay's crab population had declined by nearly two-thirds over the previous year, to around 300 million, with juvenile crabs plummeting 80 percent.

Environmental groups are appealing a federal judge's ruling that the owners of the Sparrows Point steel mill need only do a limited search for offshore pollution from the plant. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and its legal partners, including the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, have filed notice with the U.S. District Court in Baltimore of their intention to appeal a decision by Judge J. Frederick Motz accepting a plan by the steel plant's current owner, RG Steel, to test for contamination no more than 50 feet into the Patapsco River and Bear Creek.

Editor: A recent Aegis editorial about the health of the Chesapeake Bay ("Stormwater fee set low in Harford the best of a bad situation," April 23) is [off base]. Certainly the job of restoring the Bay is far from finished, but the Aegis is incorrect in asserting: "the degree to which the overall health of the bay has improved is hard to gauge. " Numerous recent reports from government agencies, and academic and non-profit researchers show significant improvements in the Bay. Most recently, the Chesapeake Bay Program (an arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

For those concerned about the plight of the Chesapeake Bay, it is a jolt to realize that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is only 25 years old. It is hard to imagine how the bay could have survived the onslaught of pollution and degradation without its pioneering work.No discussion of the bay's past, its present or its future can be conducted without heavy reliance on the foundation's research. Thousands have been introduced to the bay's wonders, its resources and its troubles by foundation lecturers or field trips.

One of Maryland's most well-known environmental activists, J. Charles Fox, abruptly resigned as a vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Fox, 43, resigned Thursday from one of the region's largest and most influential environmental groups. His resignation took effect yesterday, foundation spokesman John Surrick said. "We're not going to comment on his reasons for resigning," Surrick said. Fox was not available for comment. "This is a tremendous loss for CBF," Chuck Foster, the foundation's chief of staff, said in a statement to employees yesterday.

Maryland's largest environmental group and one of Baltimore's oldest civil rights organizations have formed an unusual alliance, pledging to work together to improve job opportunities for urban youth, reduce toxic pollution and help revitalize the city.The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Baltimore Urban League were to announce their agreement and a five-year joint strategy at a press conference today."It is so apparent that to save the bay you've got to save the cities," William C. Baker, president of the Annapolis-based foundation, said yesterday.

HOW FAR will a teacher go to find new approaches to help students learn? We know that many educators will dig into their own pockets to spend money on classroom materials and other resources they believe will make a positive difference for their school children.But the distance some teachers travel for the sake of education can be counted in miles -- nautical miles.In this worthwhile program, teachers from Maryland, Delaware and Virginia have gone aboard canoes for weeklong programs this summer to learn about ecosystems and aquatic life in the Chesapeake Bay. Conducted every summer by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the program focuses on the bay and offers insight on what its neighbors can do to save our treasured estuary.

EASTPORT, an Annapolis community that has thrived by virtue of its proximity to the Chesapeake Bay, does not want the Chesapeake Bay Foundation as a neighbor. The Eastport Civic Association has gone to court to prevent the conversion of a 33,000-square-foot warehouse into an office building to house the environmental organization. The community group's effort may prove counterproductive.At issue is Annapolis' Maritime Zoning and Economic Strategy. It was adopted more than a decade ago. The ordinance created four zoning districts to protect views of the water and limit shoreline uses to maritime-related activities.

With half its goal of $44 million pledged, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has announced its most ambitious capital campaign, designed to help revive life in the bay "to historic levels of health and productivity."The drive, the Covenant to Save Chesapeake Bay, aims to produce funds mostly for "projects that focus on restoring habitat, reducing toxic pollution and increasing fisheries," said Michael Shultz, vice president for public affairs.The goal is one of the largest capital amounts, if not the largest, set by any regional environmental group in the country, Shultz said.

Many thanks go to Alison Prost of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for her explanation of the stormwater fee ("Beyond 'rain tax' rhetoric," May 1). I would like to add a little historical background. When Europeans first visited the Chesapeake Bay, it was vibrant with aquatic life galore. Over the centuries, it was exploited with oyster beds being destroyed by "traditional oyster collection practices" and unsustainable fishing of the best fish here and along the Atlantic Seaboard. But the real deathblow to the bay came with Hurricane Agnes - not because of the influx of freshwater, but because the pesticides, fertilizers and other waste that washed from the greater Chesapeake and Susquehanna River watershed ended up killing the native underwater fauna forever.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation's recently released 2012 State of the Bay Report tells us the health of the Chesapeake Bay has improved 14 percent since 2008. But that doesn't tell the whole story. Throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, we hear about local governments, businesses and citizens rolling up their sleeves to reduce pollution from all sectors: agriculture, sewage treatment plants, and urban and suburban runoff. They are working to restore local rivers and streams.

The 90-day legislative session in Annapolis wrapped up at midnight Monday to mixed reviews among environmental advocates, who hailed the passage of a bill promoting offshore wind development but had little else to celebrate. Gov. Martin O'Malley, who had pushed for the bill offering state incentives to put turbines off the Maryland coast, was scheduled to sign it Tuesday.  Karla Raettig, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, called its passage "a great day for democracy," while Tommy Landers of Environment Mary land praised it as a "landmark victory for our climate and for our children and grandchildren.

The House of Delegates gave preliminary approval Friday to a bill that would give Maryland farmers a 10-year reprieve from new Chesapeake Bay cleanup requirements, in return for their voluntarily doing more to reduce polluted runoff from their fields. Lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a series of amendments to SB1029 , including ones that would have limited the scope of the program to 50 farms for now, and that would have required participating farmers to disclose some information about their farms.

While frequently lumped together as one homogenous group, environmentalists every now and then come at the same problem from different perspectives and suggest varying solutions. That is the case with the legislation creating the Maryland Agricultural Certainty Program ("Bill would give farmers 10-year reprieve on new regs," March 27). Too much is being made of the fact that the environmental community has different opinions about this bill. We all take seriously legislation to improve water quality.

When our governor criticized state university law school students for backing the fight against pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, one knew the fix was in - even though the pollution at issue, according to U.S. District Court Judge William M. Nickerson, turned out to be not from some 80,000 chickens but from 42 cows put on the property as the proverbial red herring ("Farmers, Purdue win pollution suit," Dec. 21). The judge covered his tracks in an opinion that insults the common sense of all Marylanders.

T. Marshall Duer Jr., an avid sailor who channeled his love of the Chesapeake Bay into the founding of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other environmental and historical organizations, died of prostate cancer Friday at his home in White Stone on Virginia's Northern Neck. The longtime Ruxton resident was 90. Mr. Duer who was born in Baltimore and raised in Pikesville, attended the old Marston School. He later transferred to Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., from which he graduated in 1931.

Municipal sewage treatment plants in Maryland and neighboring states continue to pollute Chesapeake Bay more than they should, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation charged today.In a report reviewing the performance of 160 large sewage plants in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the environmental group based in Annapolis says that many plants are routinely exceeding state-imposed limits on how much pollution they may discharge. In addition, the foundation contends that those limits often are not nearly as stringent as they should be.Maryland Department of the Environment officials dispute the group's criticisms, saying they are based on outdated information from 1989.

Why does the Chesapeake Bay Foundation refuse to take seriously the threat posed by the Conowingo Dam's inability to hold back Susquehanna River pollution? With respect to the effect of Susquehanna River pollutants, the bay foundation has taken an inexplicable U-turn in its long-held doctrine regarding pollutants and the Chesapeake. In August, the U.S. Geological Survey reported last year's Tropical Storm Lee contributed 39 percent of the sediment, 22 percent of the phosphorus and 5 percent of the nitrogen flowing through the Conowingo Dam over the entire previous decade.

— In a challenge to the Obama administration's efforts to jump-start the lagging restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, lawyers for farmers and homebuilders argued in federal court here Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its legal authority and relied on a flawed computer model in setting a pollution "diet" for the ailing estuary. Lawyers for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders, poultry and pork producers, and other farming groups argued that states in the Chesapeake watershed, not the federal government, should be in charge of deciding how and where to reduce pollution fouling the bay. They also complained that the far-reaching "diet" was rushed into place despite gaps and errors and without giving the public enough time to review and comment on it. "It will affect urban growth; it affects how agriculture land will be used," said Richard E. Schwartz, one of the industry groups' lawyers.