Nutrient Pollution

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?

Maryland's U.S. senators and a congressman laud Gov. Parris N. Glendening in a new television commercial airing in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore, courtesy of the state's Democratic Party.What the ad says: Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes introduces Glendening as a decisive leader who moved to protect the Chesapeake Bay after last year's outbreak of a fish-killing microbe. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski calls the Democratic governor "a fighter" who created the "toughest standards in the nation" for public schools, and Rep. Albert R. Wynn of Prince George's County says the state gained 150,000 jobs during Glendening's tenure.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening is reintroducing himself to Marylanders with a new, personalized television commercial that talks of his humble beginnings and his accomplishments in office.What the ad says: The 30-second spot that began running yesterday shows a different side of the pragmatic, professorial Democratic incumbent. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend introduces Glendening as a private man who "doesn't talk much about himself," who grew up in poverty and found "a lifeline" through education.

Bosnian murderers must be punishedFifteen hundred children were murdered during the war in Bosnia, shot dead by snipers hidden in the densely forested hills looking down on Sarajevo.It is said you never feel it. Just a dull impact and then nothing. But how do we know this?These deaths weren't accidental and this wasn't war. This was murder, pure and simple. And those who pulled the triggers and those who gave the orders should be brought to justice.It's too soon for the U.S. to pull out. Fifteen hundred small bodies demand that we stay.

IN AN ODD WAY, the Pfiesteria piscicida organism has done us a favor by drawing attention to the fragile health of the Chesapeake Bay. Pfiesteria alerted us to the need to curb nutrient pollution -- phosphorus and nitrogen -- caused by failing septic systems and treatment plants, lawn fertilization and, most notably, agriculture.Last summer, nutrient pollution helped trigger toxic behavior in Pfiesteria, a naturally occurring microbe. That's why Gov. Parris N. Glendening's much-needed $41.5 million plan targets such runoffs.

The re-election campaign of Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has begun running a new television commercial touting the administration's accomplishments.What the ad says: The 30-second spot that began running yesterday on Baltimore television stations portrays Glendening as a quietly effective governor. It features a series of laudatory newspaper blurbs beneath shots of Glendening and Townsend in the State House, in a school classroom and chatting with people on a street.

Spurred by last year's outbreaks of the toxic microbe Pfiesteria, General Assembly negotiators reached agreement yesterday on sweeping legislation intended to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.While the bill has been scaled back from the administration's original proposal, the accord is considered an important victory for Gov. Parris N. Glendening. Environmentalists and farm interests said they could accept the compromise."This is a tremendous day for everyone who treasures the Chesapeake Bay," Glendening said.

Rural legislators and agriculture industry representatives have tentatively agreed to a compromise under which they would accept mandatory controls on farm nutrient pollution, a powerful House committee chairman said yesterday.Del. Ronald A. Guns, a Cecil County Democrat and a leading advocate for farm interests, said the emerging compromise would give farmers more time to comply than under Gov. Parris N. Glendening's proposal for fighting outbreaks of toxic Pfiesteria in Maryland waters.

The gubernatorial commission looking into toxic outbreaks of Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay watershed chose pragmatism over political confrontation yesterday as it backed away from imposing controls on the Eastern Shore's chicken industry.In a sometimes rancorous session, the panel refused to recommend a moratorium on building any new chicken houses on the Shore and moved toward keeping farmers' participation in pollution-control plans voluntary.On a 6-2 voice vote, the commission rejected the moratorium proposal, along with the arguments of Sen. Brian E. Frosh, a Montgomery County Democrat, that too many chickens are producing too much manure for the soils of the Eastern Shore to absorb.

The Clinton administration's top environmental official said yesterday that toxic outbreaks of a fish-killing microorganism in five Chesapeake Bay tributaries were "a clarion call" for stronger curbs on nutrient pollution.Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol M. Browner said the sooner progress is made toward nutrient reduction, the better the chances that Pfiesteria outbreaks will be reduced or prevented."We have known for a very long time when you increase nutrient levels in lakes and streams, that can bring a host of problems," said Browner, who joined four governors and other officials at a six-state regional summit in Annapolis.

The Obama administration unveiled a new strategy Monday for restoring the Chesapeake Bay that calls for stiffer controls on farm and urban runoff, but Republicans in Washington criticized legislation that would give the federal government more regulatory authority to clamp down on pollution in the nation's largest estuary. Acting in response to a presidential executive order declaring the bay "a national treasure," federal environmental agencies proposed a sweeping plan to re-energize the lagging restoration effort with more water quality regulations, financial and technical aid for farmers and plans to promote more voluntary cleanup efforts with creation of a "conservation corps."

WASHINGTON - State and federal officials pledged yesterday to redouble their efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay but declined to set a new target date for when they plan to do it. Instead, the officials - including the governors of Maryland and Virginia - agreed to meet again in the spring to adopt an ultimate deadline. And they promised to lay out detailed, two-year cleanup plans intended to put more pressure on elected leaders such as themselves to make progress in the 25-year restoration effort that has left the bay's water quality as poor now as it was when the campaign began.

Using data that track 200 years of changes in the Chesapeake Bay, a team of environmental scientists has found that nutrient pollution has fundamentally altered the variety of aquatic life in the bay. "Nature doesn't disappear ... it changes," said W. Michael Kemp, a researcher at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Horn Point Laboratory and the study's lead author. In the Chesapeake, the study found, the influx of nitrogen and phosphorus has meant sharp declines in the number of bottom-dwelling organisms, such as oysters, blue crabs, sturgeon and flounder.

After being sued by environmental activists, federal and state officials yesterday announced a new get-tough policy for sewage treatment plants that don't meet pollution limits meant to protect the Chesapeake Bay. Plants that spew unhealthy levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed algae blooms and create low-oxygen "dead zones," will be fined up to $32,500 per day per violation, said Robert Summers, director of water management at the Maryland Department...

States in the Chesapeake Bay watershed would have to limit discharges of pollutants that turn large swaths of the bay into biological "dead zones" each summer under plans announced yesterday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA proposal would force sewage treatment plants to spend tens of millions of dollars on technology to reduce discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus - nutrients that in excessive amounts deplete dissolved oxygen that fish, crabs, oysters and other marine life need to survive.

WHATEVER HAPPENED to the principle of the polluter pays? This bedrock belief of environmentalism appears to have been abandoned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other environmental groups pushing for expensive, mandatory sewage treatment plant upgrades to improve water quality in the bay. Agricultural sources generate more than double the nutrient pollution than sewage treatment plants, but the bay foundation only advocates voluntary reductions from...

A second major Chesapeake Bay advocacy group has joined the effort to persuade state and federal governments to require strict nutrient pollution limits on sewage treatment plants. In a 25-page report released yesterday, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay argued that it would cost at most a nickel a day for each of the 13 million residents of the watershed to install the latest nutrient reduction technology in all sewage plants. It also said that the watershed states must move more quickly to persuade or require farmers to limit nutrient runoff from their fields.

Charging that the pace of cleanup is too slow, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation will file a petition today with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calling for strict, mandatory limits on harmful nitrogen discharges from sewage treatment plants and industries. The petition - the first step toward a potential federal lawsuit over the Clean Water Act - is an aggressive warning by the nonprofit foundation a week before the leaders of the bay restoration effort celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement.

Sen. Paul. S. Sarbanes proposed yesterday creation of a federal panel to find new sources of money to reduce nutrient pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. Sarbanes' legislation would create a 21-member Blue Ribbon Commission on Chesapeake Bay Nutrient Pollution Control Financing to focus on curbing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from sewage treatment plants, fertilized farmland and storm water in urban and suburban areas. "Our scientific and technical understanding of what needs to be done to reduce excess nutrients going into the bay serves as a model for the nation," he said in a statement introducing the measure to the Senate.

AFTER MORE than a decade of effort to reduce agricultural pollution, a major source of the Chesapeake Bay's ills, scientists and environmental managers are questioning how much effect it's having. Despite impressive action by many farmers, pollution in rivers that drain farmland remains high, and the two basic causes of it don't seem to have diminished. Sales of commercial fertilizer across the bay's 64,000-square-mile, six-state watershed have remained stable since the late 1980s, and manure from farm animals has increased in many areas.