Restore The Bay

The top elected officials from the Chesapeake Bay region acknowledged yesterday what scientists and environmental advocates have been saying for years: They will not achieve their goals for cleaning up the bay by 2010. However, members of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council -- which includes the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the mayor of Washington -- said they will enact programs and policies by 2010 to reach the benchmarks for reducing pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the bay and its tributaries.

Whatever HMOs do, Medicare will be there for its beneficiariesI want to reassure seniors and disabled Americans who read The Sun's article "HMO to drop rural elderly" (July 2) that whatever decisions HMOs make about doing business with Medicare, the program will be there for every beneficiary.If HMOs decide to stop serving beneficiaries in certain areas, we want to make sure Medicare clients have accurate information about their options.Every beneficiary is still in Medicare. A beneficiary in an HMO that is leaving the program can remain with that HMO until the end of this year.

Saving the Chesapeake Bay is turning out to be a lot more complicated than we thought.In the mid-1980s, it seemed as simple as a second-grade subtraction problem: Just take out the main pollutants -- nitrogen and phosphorus -- and we'd be left with clear water and bountiful seafood harvests.Now, as the bay's guardians begin refining their long-term plan to restore the bay, they're looking at the first dozen years' worth of results and realizing they don't add up. And new worries are cropping up: toxic Pfiesteria piscicida, rising sea levels, oyster diseases.

THE BALTIMORE Sun's March 8 editorial, "Port treading water," did not convey the very serious economic and environmental implications of dumping two million cubic yards of dredge spoil a year in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.The editorial refers to the deeper waters as the bay's "dead area." Ask any waterman who relies on this area to make a living and you'll see such a statement couldn't be farther from the truth.Roughly 50 percent of female blue crabs use waters deeper than 40 feet to migrate during the fall and winter to spawn at the mouth of the bay.Also, ask any sport fisherman who has been fishing in the deep waters and brought home a beautiful rockfish for a family meal and you'll see, once again, that your statement is way off the mark.

Levels of the two nutrients that cause poor water quality and algae blooms in Chesapeake Bay have risen, reversing a decade of decline or stability, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.However, an EPA official said that because the changes seem to result from natural causes rather than pollution caused by human activities, they may not inflict major harm.The analysis found a 10 percent increase in nitrogen compared with levels in 1984. Levels of phosphorus, which had declined 16 percent from 1984 through 1992, are back where they were a decade ago, said William Matuszeski, director of EPA's Chesapeake Bay program office in Annapolis.

Africans and Asians are not the only ones who must worry about the limits to population growth. The same concern looms among Marylanders and others who care about restoring the Chesapeake Bay.About 15 million people live on the 64,000 square miles of land that drain into the bay, which includes almost all of Maryland, major portions of Pennsylvania and Virginia and even chunks of New York and West Virginia.Within the next 25 years, and quite likely sooner, planners project the population of the bay watershed will grow by at least another 2.6 million people.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust has awarded 85 grants totaling $110,262 to community groups for projects to restore the bay and educate students about the bay's importance.The grants will be used for projects ranging from shoreline erosion control to the creation of oyster reefs.Recipients included schools in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties and Baltimore City, Anne Arundel Rotary clubs, the Magothy River Association and the Baltimore County Recycling Partnership.The grants are designed to help community groups improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay, said Thomas L. Burden, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

A panel of Chesapeake Bay area legislators decided today to try drawing New York, Delaware and West Virginia into the bay cleanup.The Chesapeake Bay Commission, whose members are legislators from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, agreed at its meeting in Annapolis to invite officials from those neighboring states to the commission's next meeting in Harrisburg, Pa., in May.The commission's decision was prompted by a new study showing that New York, Delaware...

The effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay will expand to include cleaning up the bay's rivers and restoring its underwater grasses when region officials meet Wednesday in Annapolis.Officials from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the federal government plan to sign a seven-point agreement that calls for restoring water quality in the bay's 10 major tributaries, where most of the estuary's fish feed and spawn. A draft of the agreement was obtained by The Sun.Officials also will pledge to restore the bay's underwater grasses, vital fish habitat which have been slowly returning since they all but vanished in the early 1980s.

How do you clean up Chesapeake Bay on a shoestring?If you're Gov. William Donald Schaefer, you announce a 14-point program to save the bay that tries to make the most of what the state is already doing. You also rely more than ever before on the kindness -- and free help -- of volunteers.Schaefer unveiled his 1991 bay agenda today at Quiet Waters Park near Annapolis, an $18 million recreational complex that belies the no-frills nature of the state's campaign this year to restore the bay.With environmental programs suffering the same belt-tightening as the rest of the state budget, Schaefer's aides have concocted a "less-is-more" plan for cracking down on pollution, protecting wildlife and curbing growth in Maryland.

A group of environmental advocates and experts is warning that pesticide pollution from farm fields and households is contributing to the Chesapeake Bay's decline, and may well be linked to declines in frogs across the region and intersex fish seen in the Potomac River. In a report released Thursday, the group calls on federal, state and local governments to accelerate research into the threat of pesticide contamination to the bay and to step up efforts to reduce such pollution. "The thing that alarms us the most are the endocrine disruptors and the findings that have come out about intersex fish and frogs with reproductive problems," said Robert SanGeorge, director of the Pesticides and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Project.

The Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration executive order recently signed by President Barack Obama is the most assertive act a president has yet taken to protect and restore the bay. It is remarkable for another reason as well: It puts the conservation of landscapes and ecosystems on an equal footing with restoring water quality and recognizes the immense cultural and ecological value of the Chesapeake's landscapes. President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar understand that we must conserve the watershed's intact ecosystems and restore others for the Chesapeake Bay to fully recover.

With scientists pointing to some bright spots and even a possible "tipping point" in the long-running struggle to restore the Chesapeake Bay, Gov. Martin O'Malley vowed Monday to more than double the pace of cleanup of Maryland's rivers feeding into the troubled estuary. On the eve of a meeting in Virginia of the bay region's leaders, O'Malley joined bay scientists aboard the state-owned research vessel Rachel Carson for a firsthand look at the Bush River off Aberdeen Proving Ground, one of a handful of places throughout the Chesapeake watershed where there are signs of recovery from decades of pollution and abuse.

The modern concept of property rights substantially contributes to the Chesapeake Bay's continued decline. At this point, tinkering around the edges of the issue with minor changes to laws and regulations will no longer be enough to save the bay. Only a societal decision to redefine an individual's rights regarding property can restore the bay and other critical ecosystems. Developers, industrialists, homeowners and farmers have long assumed that the core bundle of rights attached to a piece of property exists to benefit the property owners.

The top elected officials from the Chesapeake Bay region acknowledged yesterday what scientists and environmental advocates have been saying for years: They will not achieve their goals for cleaning up the bay by 2010. However, members of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council -- which includes the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the mayor of Washington -- said they will enact programs and policies by 2010 to reach the benchmarks for reducing pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the bay and its tributaries.

If Hollywood ever decides to do a remake of the movie Groundhog Day - the one where a TV newsman finds himself covering the same event day after day - and is looking for a scenario suitable for a never-ending time loop, it won't have to search any further than the repetitive calls for and ceremonial signings of pledges to save the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. If such a movie were made, it would, unfortunately, not be a comedy like the original flick. It would be a farce. The latest request for a bay cleanup pledge comes from river-protection environmental groups representing five states and the District of Columbia.

The government program to clean up the Chesapeake Bay lacks credibility because it uses misleading numbers that underestimate pollution and exaggerate successes, a federal agency reported yesterday. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the Chesapeake Bay Program, which is run by the federal and state governments, should have independent scientists reviewing its reports to make sure they don't sugar-coat truths about the bay's health. Environmentalists complain that such exaggerations allow federal officials and the leaders of states surrounding the bay to make impressive-sounding claims that help them politically while undermining public support for increased funding and stronger pollution controls.

NORMALLY, I bristle when someone says to run government like a business. If we did, we'd likely eliminate assistance to the needy elderly, for example. They're a drag on the bottom line. But there are days -- like recently when a scientist friend and I attended a popular annual event to highlight restoration of the Patuxent, a Chesapeake Bay tributary. It was the 18th year of the event, and the water's little cleaner than the year it began. "If this were a business, they would have fired us scientists and shut down 10 years ago for lack of product," my friend observed.

HERE'S what I wish I could tell farmers about agriculture's role in the sad state of the Chesapeake Bay: "Yes, the runoff of fertilizers and manure and sediment from farmland is the largest source of pollution. But farms are shrinking while development is expanding with no end in sight. Growth and development is what we really must focus on to clean up the bay. "After all, you guys have been farming for centuries, but it's only as population doubled in recent decades that the bay's water quality and sea grass habitats have crashed.

MARYLAND'S natural resources secretary has declared it's time to fish or cut bait on cleaning up Chesapeake Bay. Ron Franks used bureaucratic language when he spoke Saturday to citizens and environmental officials who have labored for years on detailed, science-based plans to restore the bay by the end of the decade. "We have reached the point where implementation stands before us," he said. In other words, no more excuses. On one level, you had to feel gratified. We know all sources of bay pollution, how to reduce each (and by how much)