Restoring The Bay

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?

How's the bay doing?It is at slightly more than a quarter of its healthiest -- 27 on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 representing the clear waters and abundant seafood extolled by Captain John Smith and other explorers four centuries ago.A score of 27 also puts it just under 40 percent of the way back to the best shape (70 on a scale of 100) we can realistically expect to achieve.And yes, it is on the way back, though progress is depressingly slow -- 27, up from an estimated 22 or so in the early 1980s.

Responding to scientific evidence that forests prevent water pollution, the governors of Maryland and neighboring Chesapeake Bay states are expected today to agree to take steps to restore wooded buffer strips along the 111,000 miles of streams that empty into the bay.But Virginia officials have balked at setting a specific goal, threatening to undermine the harmony that has been a hallmark of the 12-year-old Chesapeake restoration effort.The reforestation plan, the latest idea for restoring the bay, remains unsettled as Gov. Parris N. Glendening journeys to Harrisburg, Pa., today to meet with the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner and other officials.

The farmer has a question. Could someone tell him, please, how much manure comes from a chicken?He has seen three different sets of numbers, and if the highest estimates are right, somebody must pay to truck the excess manure far away to keep it from getting into the Chesapeake Bay.Another farmer wonders how a computer model done by the Environmental Protection Agency can gauge the amount of fertilizer running from cropland into Chesapeake rivers when he's...

The commercial fisherman and the recreational fisherman sat side by side. That alone was noteworthy.What was "unprecedented," using one man's term, was why these traditional foes had come together yesterday for a meeting billed as Chesapeake Fishermen's Summit: To join forces in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.The Chesapeake Bay Foundation organized the summit at the Governor Calvert House, an Annapolis inn next to the State House. Bill Goldsborough, fisheries scientist for the foundation, described the gathering as "unprecedented."

Declaring the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort at "a turning point," the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency pledged continued federal support yesterday after meeting with Maryland environmentalists and the state's two U.S. senators.Carol M. Browner, in her first visit to Annapolis since being named EPA administrator by President Clinton, said that while the bay's decline appears to have been halted in the past 10 years, restoring the estuary to its historic vitality will take a long time and even greater effort.

The effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay moved upstream yesterday, with the setting of pollution-reduction goals for each of 10 river systems in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia that feed into the troubled estuary.Bay-region officials announced they had agreed on how to divide responsibility for making a 40 percent reduction by the end of the decade in the amount of nutrients from sewage and farm runoff that are fouling the Chesapeake.An overabundance of nitrogen and phosphorus causes massive "blooms" of algae in the bay during spring and summer.

For those concerned about the plight of the Chesapeake Bay, it is a jolt to realize that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is only 25 years old. It is hard to imagine how the bay could have survived the onslaught of pollution and degradation without its pioneering work.No discussion of the bay's past, its present or its future can be conducted without heavy reliance on the foundation's research. Thousands have been introduced to the bay's wonders, its resources and its troubles by foundation lecturers or field trips.

It is probably no coincidence that the summer of 1992 was an excellent one for fishing and also the healthiest in at least eight years for oxygen levels throughout the bay.You can't prove that link conclusively. It's not what a scientist would call hard evidence; but baked, fried or poached, it tasted good just the same; and it gave us a little taste of why we're spending so much time and money restoring the bay.Although the bay is far from dead, it's been down so long that fewer each year can recall how good it really could be. "I worry more and more about leaving a generation that has no idea of what this river was like," Bernie Fowler, a state senator from southern Maryland, told me at an environmental rally this summer on his native Patuxent.

Bountiful populations of fish and oysters and underwater grasses may never return to the Chesapeake Bay unless leaders of the bay cleanup consider involving more states and making more drastic cuts in air pollution.An interstate panel, convened this year to evaluate how the bay cleanup has worked since a 1987 agreement by Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, will meet tomorrow to give its preliminary report.What is becoming clear, scientists and environmental regulators say, is that the amount of pollutants from New York, West Virginia and Delaware is far greater than was imagined in 1987.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and several fishing groups will file suit today accusing the federal government of shirking its legal responsibilities to clean up the troubled estuary, officials of the Annapolis-based environmental group said yesterday. The lawsuit, to be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, contends that the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to comply with the Clean Water Act and with multiple interstate agreements the agency has signed over the past 25 years aimed at restoring the bay. The suit contends that the federal government's inaction has led to the continued decline of the bay's water quality and harmed its crabs, oysters and fish - and the people who make a living from the bay or seek to enjoy its diminished bounty.

HOW TO PUT in perspective the environmental accomplishments of the General Assembly session that ended Monday? To the legislature and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., thanks for a job well done. Congratulations on graduating from high school. But let's talk about that Ph.D. you must earn very soon. At some political risk, Ehrlich did the right thing, imposing a $30-a-year charge on households hooked to sewers, to pay for much-needed upgrades in sewage treatment plants. Legislators made it better and fairer, imposing a $30 annual charge on Marylanders who live in areas without sewers as well.

IT IS AN UNFORTUNATE fact of life that there are organizations and people who prey upon the good intentions of others in order to make a buck. That's what's behind the opposition of a small band of wacky fringe groups out to stop efforts to reduce the mute swan population in the Chesapeake Bay. Here are the facts. Three major objectives of the state Department of Natural Resources are critical to restoring the health of the bay: restoring the oyster population to filter the bay, reducing nutrient runoff that contributes to bay pollution, and increasing bay grasses.

FEW WOULD argue with the notion that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is a reason to feel optimistic about restoring the bay to health. With 100,000 dues-paying members, annual revenues of $18 million to $20 million, nationally recognized education programs and science-based campaigns to cut pollution and restore habitat, what's to argue? How about whether it's actually going to work? So says Howard R. Ernst in Chesapeake Bay Blues -- Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay, due in bookstores next month.

HERE'S THE problem: Chesapeake Bay crabs are overfished. They need a break to relax, recover, make love, make babies, grow big and start the cycle over and over again. But Chesapeake Bay watermen say they are underfishing. They need to catch more crabs, and catch them younger and smaller, in order to make a living and keep up their own cycle of love and babies and life. Putting aside the bias of our own yearning for a bushel of those steamed delicacies after a snowbound winter, this is a dilemma that cries out for a third way. Yielding to the watermen, as Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. proposes to do, might provide some relief in the short term but could ultimately ensure the demise of their livelihood and way of life.

The Chesapeake Bay is still ailing and would have declined further if the drought hadn't cut the flow of contaminants in the past year, according to an assessment by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The foundation issued its fifth annual report on the bay yesterday, scoring the nation's largest estuary at 27 on a scale of 100, the same score as last year. Because of increased dumping of toxic chemicals, the bay would have scored worse if the region had had a normal amount of rainfall, according to Will C. Baker, foundation president.

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?

How's the bay doing?It is at slightly more than a quarter of its healthiest -- 27 on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 representing the clear waters and abundant seafood extolled by Captain John Smith and other explorers four centuries ago.A score of 27 also puts it just under 40 percent of the way back to the best shape (70 on a scale of 100) we can realistically expect to achieve.And yes, it is on the way back, though progress is depressingly slow -- 27, up from an estimated 22 or so in the early 1980s.

Responding to scientific evidence that forests prevent water pollution, the governors of Maryland and neighboring Chesapeake Bay states are expected today to agree to take steps to restore wooded buffer strips along the 111,000 miles of streams that empty into the bay.But Virginia officials have balked at setting a specific goal, threatening to undermine the harmony that has been a hallmark of the 12-year-old Chesapeake restoration effort.The reforestation plan, the latest idea for restoring the bay, remains unsettled as Gov. Parris N. Glendening journeys to Harrisburg, Pa., today to meet with the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner and other officials.

Declaring the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort at "a turning point," the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency pledged continued federal support yesterday after meeting with Maryland environmentalists and the state's two U.S. senators.Carol M. Browner, in her first visit to Annapolis since being named EPA administrator by President Clinton, said that while the bay's decline appears to have been halted in the past 10 years, restoring the estuary to its historic vitality will take a long time and even greater effort.