Polluted Runoff

WASHINGTON -- In a daylong visit to Baltimore today, President Clinton will unveil an ambitious and detailed blueprint for improving the quality of America's rivers, lakes and coastal waters, including the Chesapeake Bay.The administration's $10.5 billion Clean Water Action Plan, obtained last night by The Sun, lists 110 "key action steps" intended to restore the estimated 40 percent of the nation's waterways that are too polluted for safe fishing or...

Last summer's Pfiesteria outbreaks made the Chesapeake Bay perhaps the most prominent battleground for what has become a national environmental problem - polluted runoff from large livestock operations. Whether or not these outbreaks reappear this summer, they stand as a visible symptom of the bay's chronic ailment from excess nutrients. And Maryland's recently passed nutrient-management legislation will not do enough in the short term to address this problem.Gov. Parris N. Glendening has demonstrated admirable leadership on this issue since last summer's Pfiesteria outbreaks.

DRINK YOUR way to a cleaner bay. Buy Chesapeake Milk.Assuming a test-marketing project begins next month as planned, consumers can choose to directly reward dairy farmers who go the extra step toward a bay-friendly operation.Here's how it will work, according to project sponsors that include Pennsylvania State University, the Rodale Institute and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation."Chesapeake Milk" will be sold in half-gallon cartons at retailers across Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Northern Virginia who agree to carry it.It will cost a nickel extra, and it is no different from any other milk in the grocery display case.

Environmentalists marked the 25th anniversary of the Clean Water Act yesterday by calling for stricter federal regulation of polluted runoff, especially from farms, to help combat the fish-killing microorganisms that closed three Chesapeake Bay tributaries this summer.At a Federal Hill news conference overlooking Baltimore's Inner Harbor, spokesmen for three environmental groups said outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida show that cleanup has been slow in Maryland and the rest of the country since Congress enacted the landmark water pollution law Oct. 18, 1972.

WE USED TO treat our nation's waterways with what can be best described as disdain. We viewed rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, estuaries and oceans alike as the nation's waste receptacles.Only 25 years ago, one of the world's great freshwater lakes, Lake Erie, was pronounced dead. Ohio's Cuyahoga River near Cleveland spontaneously burst into flames.Chesapeake cesspoolGrand waters in the nation's history, like Boston Harbor, the Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson, Delaware and Potomac rivers, were cesspools.

TOM SIMPSON called to ask: "Did you take mean pills before you wrote last week's column?"The column argued that Maryland's agricultural leadership was incapable of achieving cleanup goals for the fertilizers and manures running to the bay from farms.Simpson is the liaison from Maryland's Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture College of the University of Maryland, College Park to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the multistate and federal program that works to restore Chesapeake water quality.

Maryland and other states must do more to curb the polluted farm runoff that may have helped trigger outbreaks of a toxic microorganism in Chesapeake Bay this summer, federal officials told a state commission yesterday.But Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Republican who represents the Eastern Shore, warned members of the panel investigating Pfiesteria piscicida that the region's huge poultry industry would "crumble" if regulations are imposed on farmers' use of fertilizer."Any immediate mandatory regime would give us very little environmental benefits," Gilchrest said.

The cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay, which President Clinton will highlight today in a visit to Havre de Grace, may be jeopardized by possible federal spending cuts and easing of environmental laws, scientists and environmental officials say.Considered a national model for restoring a degraded coastal water body, the 12-year-old cleanup campaign has halted the bay's decline and reversed the loss of underwater grasses that provide habitat for crabs and fish.But...

In the laboratory, baby rockfish exposed to levels of toxic chemicals present in a Chesapeake Bay spawning river die -- but out in the river, they survive in record numbers.In the laboratory, underwater grasses dosed with pesticides comparable to what is found in the Chesapeake are weakened severely -- but out in the bay, it just doesn't happen that way.In the laboratory, scientists can't figure out how to infect oysters with the deadly parasitic disease MSX -- but out in the bay, they can't figure out how to stop the infection from spreading.

BLADENSBURG -- Against the backdrop of an abandoned Maryland marina silted over as the result of urban development, the chief federal environmental official said yesterday that 40 percent of the nation's rivers, lakes and streams are adversely affected by pollution.Carol M. Browner, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cited the Anacostia River waterfront, just outside Washington in this historic Prince George's County community, as an example of what "silt from polluted runoff -- the No. 1 problem threatening America's waterways" -- can produce.

The latest round of state budget cuts is taking a couple of bites out of Maryland's efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay, trimming plans to tackle polluted runoff from city and suburban streets and curtailing monitoring of the bay's health. State officials are cutting $2 million from the Bay Trust Fund, a special pot of money lawmakers had agreed on three years ago to earmark for curbing polluted runoff - a growing and particularly difficult problem for the bay. Originally meant to accelerate the pace of bay cleanup, the fund has been shrinking since its inception.

O'Malley administration officials urged lawmakers yesterday to leave them the flexibility to determine how best to spend a new $50 million Chesapeake Bay cleanup fund. But they pledged to rely on scientists' advice and on the administration's new computerized BayStat system to underwrite projects most likely to curtail polluted runoff from farms, suburbs and cities. "We realize resources in government and nongovernment are very tight," Natural Resources Secretary John R. Griffin told members of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee.

CENTRE COUNTY, Pa. -- If we want to look at whether we're winning the battle to control bay pollution that runs off the land, there's no better place to start than the Susquehanna River here. It drains more than 40 percent of the Chesapeake's 41 million-acre watershed. It has more than half the bay's agricultural lands, and among the world's highest concentrations of farm animals and manure, a major pollutant of the bay. It determines the water quality of Maryland's Chesapeake -- in fact, it is the Chesapeake.

WASHINGTON -- That nitrogen found in polluted runoff is poisoning many of the nation's rivers, lakes and estuaries is not surprising to many Americans. What is shocking is that the federal government is turning away farmers who want to be better stewards of the land. Every day, 40 percent of the farmers seeking financial and technical assistance to reform their tillage practices, install buffer strips and restore lost wetlands are being turned away by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, the nation's primary private land conservation agency.

Last summer's Pfiesteria outbreaks made the Chesapeake Bay perhaps the most prominent battleground for what has become a national environmental problem - polluted runoff from large livestock operations. Whether or not these outbreaks reappear this summer, they stand as a visible symptom of the bay's chronic ailment from excess nutrients. And Maryland's recently passed nutrient-management legislation will not do enough in the short term to address this problem.Gov. Parris N. Glendening has demonstrated admirable leadership on this issue since last summer's Pfiesteria outbreaks.

DRINK YOUR way to a cleaner bay. Buy Chesapeake Milk.Assuming a test-marketing project begins next month as planned, consumers can choose to directly reward dairy farmers who go the extra step toward a bay-friendly operation.Here's how it will work, according to project sponsors that include Pennsylvania State University, the Rodale Institute and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation."Chesapeake Milk" will be sold in half-gallon cartons at retailers across Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Northern Virginia who agree to carry it.It will cost a nickel extra, and it is no different from any other milk in the grocery display case.

WASHINGTON -- In a daylong visit to Baltimore today, President Clinton will unveil an ambitious and detailed blueprint for improving the quality of America's rivers, lakes and coastal waters, including the Chesapeake Bay.The administration's $10.5 billion Clean Water Action Plan, obtained last night by The Sun, lists 110 "key action steps" intended to restore the estimated 40 percent of the nation's waterways that are too polluted for safe fishing or...

WE USED TO treat our nation's waterways with what can be best described as disdain. We viewed rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, estuaries and oceans alike as the nation's waste receptacles.Only 25 years ago, one of the world's great freshwater lakes, Lake Erie, was pronounced dead. Ohio's Cuyahoga River near Cleveland spontaneously burst into flames.Chesapeake cesspoolGrand waters in the nation's history, like Boston Harbor, the Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson, Delaware and Potomac rivers, were cesspools.

Environmentalists marked the 25th anniversary of the Clean Water Act yesterday by calling for stricter federal regulation of polluted runoff, especially from farms, to help combat the fish-killing microorganisms that closed three Chesapeake Bay tributaries this summer.At a Federal Hill news conference overlooking Baltimore's Inner Harbor, spokesmen for three environmental groups said outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida show that cleanup has been slow in Maryland and the rest of the country since Congress enacted the landmark water pollution law Oct. 18, 1972.

Maryland and other states must do more to curb the polluted farm runoff that may have helped trigger outbreaks of a toxic microorganism in Chesapeake Bay this summer, federal officials told a state commission yesterday.But Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Republican who represents the Eastern Shore, warned members of the panel investigating Pfiesteria piscicida that the region's huge poultry industry would "crumble" if regulations are imposed on farmers' use of fertilizer."Any immediate mandatory regime would give us very little environmental benefits," Gilchrest said.