Nutrient Pollution

The effort to restore Chesapeake Bay still has a long way to go, but Maryland officials say they already see signs of recovery in the rivers that feed the ailing estuary.New data from long-term monitoring indicate that the Patuxent River, one of the Chesapeake's major tributaries, is getting cleaner, according to scientists with the Maryland Department of the Environment.In the past five years, there has been a dramatic drop in the river's levels of phosphorus, one of two nutrients blamed for choking off bay grasses and fish.

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.

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.

The state has made a rare binding pledge to offset whatever pollution it may cause by depositing the muck it dredges from Baltimore harbor in a cove south of downtown. Bowing to concerns raised by environmentalists, the state Department of the Environment is requiring the Maryland Port Administration to limit or make up for the nitrogen and phosphorus expected to drain back into the Patapsco River from the dredged material to be placed in Masonville Cove. The port administration has spent $153 million to clean up trash and debris in the cove area and build an environmental education center there.

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.

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."

Maryland's Smart Growth crusade against suburban sprawl is running headlong into the state's effort to save the Chesapeake Bay. As Smart Growth pushes development in areas of the state served by public sewers, the growing volumes of nitrogen and other nutrients those new homes flush down their drains are threatening Maryland's greatest natural asset. The tension inherent in that dilemma is visible in the state government's ambivalent attitude toward an otherwise routine project in Howard County to expand the Little Patuxent Water Reclamation Plant in Savage to cope with suburban growth.

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.

Heavy rains and snow melt have flooded the Chesapeake Bay, fouling it with nutrients and sediment, spurring record algae blooms and risking at least a temporary setback in its improving water quality.The deluge could worsen the "dead zone" that chokes the deep waters of the bay each summer and could deal another blow to the estuary's struggling underwater grasses and oyster population.Experts differ over how -- or even whether -- blue crabs and fish might be affected by the weather-related phenomenon.