Nutrient Pollution

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.

The governor's commission on Pfiesteria approved ambitious goals for controlling farm pollution as it declared yesterday that every Maryland farmer should carry out a plan to control runoff by 2002.The action on the single most controversial matter before the panel was seen as a preliminary victory for environmentalists and a setback for farmers -- particularly the Eastern Shore's mammoth chicken industry.The recommendation passed by a 6-2 vote, the same margin by which the commission approved its final report and sent it to Gov. Parris N. Glendening.

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.

A gubernatorial panel agreed last night that the state's best hope of heading off future blooms of Pfiesteria piscicida is to limit the flow of nutrient pollutants into Chesapeake Bay estuaries.But the Governor's Pfiesteria Action Commission, which met in Annapolis, has just begun to grapple with the tougher question: whether to impose new regulations on a leading source of nutrients, Maryland's huge poultry industry.Commission members are far from a consensus on who should pay the cost of more prudent disposal of the Lower Eastern Shore's chicken manure.

JANICE THOMSON, a receptionist from Westminster, has been following the Pfiesteria piscicida crisis about as closely as, I suspect, most Marylanders are doing. She knows sick fish are turning up in Eastern Shore rivers, and is waiting for some biologist or government official to do something about it.It has never occurred to her that there is anything she can do, other than stay away from seafood.I have been talking to a lot of people like Janice about what's going on in the Chesapeake Bay. They're worried, even folks who don't live in the maritime region.

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.

A decade-long government campaign to upgrade sewage facilities in the Chesapeake Bay region has yet to reach the lower Eastern Shore, where nutrient pollution has been linked with outbreaks of a toxic microbe blamed for killing thousands of fish and sickening people.Wastewater treatment plants in the Pocomoke and Manokin river watersheds, parts of which have been closed to fishing and swimming, have not installed nutrient removal systems, even though 64 sewage facilities in Maryland are targeted for such overhauls.

Despite making progress in restoring Chesapeake Bay, the multistate cleanup effort is falling short of its major goal of reducing the bay's nutrient pollution 40 percent by 2000.Preliminary projections presented yesterday at a bay cleanup meeting show that Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia appear likely to meet their goal of reducing phosphorus, one of two key nutrients fouling the Chesapeake.But unless the cleanup pace quickens dramatically, the projections show that current efforts to reduce the other nutrient, nitrogen, will fall 28 percent short of the goal set a decade ago.Officials have warned for some time that the cleanup campaign may not achieve the 40 percent reduction in nutrient pollution by the deadline, which is just 3 1/2 years away.

WASHINGTON -- Most rivers that feed into the Chesapeake Bay are running clearer, but the bay overall is a long way from being restored to the natural vitality it once had, Maryland's congressional delegation learned yesterday.While water clarity, underwater grasses and some fish stocks have rebounded -- dramatically in the case of striped bass -- speakers at a Capitol Hill briefing said the bay remains ecologically degraded -- with oysters, shad and sturgeon still scarce and with troubling indications of subtle damage from low-level toxic pollution.