Underwater Grasses

Gordon and Rita Snyder remember swimming and crabbing in pristine Anne Arundel County waters, but the aquatic playground of their youth is nowhere to be found in Gray's Creek, where the Snyders have a waterfront home. Over the years, the once-sandy bottom of the Pasadena waterway off the Magothy River has been covered by at least a foot of silt, making it difficult for the Snyders and their neighbors to navigate boats, take a swim or dig their toes in the sludge-covered sand. They're among 28 property owners on Gray's Creek seeking dredging permits from the Army Corps of Engineers to clear and deepen the channel.

MARYLAND'S shallow coastal bays are a fragile treasure, an important nursery of fish and crabs. There's little dispute of their ecological value, even while greater protection efforts have long focused on the main Chesapeake estuary.So it's disturbing that federal officials are taking the lead in trying to halt the degradation of Sinepuxent Bay by a shoreline developer, while the Maryland Department of the Environment repeats its compliant refrain: the developer was doing everything he was asked to do.According to the Army Corps of Engineers, however, the developer of the golf course and subdivision near Ocean City had failed to protect the underwater grasses -- required by his permit -- while bulldozing the shoreline and creating heavy erosion and runoff into the bay.It took the personal intervention of Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, at the request of alarmed environmentalists and the National Park Service, that brought regulatory authorities to the construction site last month and got an agreement from developer Tom Ruark to stem the flow of mud into the bay immediately.

How committed are this region's top elected officials to saving the Chesapeake Bay? At the moment, the answer is hardly encouraging. Lukewarm support from the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia and the mayor of the District of Columbia raise troubling concerns.Some officials generously call the current disinterest in cleaning up the Chesapeake a "pause." But unless this delay is brief, the momentum that has been building in favor of a massive save-the-bay effort could be lost.Perhaps Gov. William Donald Schaefer, who has remained a staunch supporter of this environmental effort, can yet prod his colleagues to action.

Two weeks after Tropical Storm Lee flushed millions of tons of mud into the Chesapeake Bay, state and federal officials announced Tuesday they are launching a study of how to protect the estuary from sediment and other pollutants building up behind dams on the Susquehanna River. Experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Maryland departments of environment and natural resources and the Nature Conservancy, a Washington-based conservation group, will team up for the $1.4 million, three-year evaluation of how to deal with sediment accumulating upriver from the Conowingo Dam and three other hydroelectric facilities on the Susquehanna.

State and federal leaders plan to commit themselves today to adding 46,000 acres of underwater grasses to the Chesapeake Bay within five years, increasing by tenfold the oyster population and cleansing the water enough to remove the bay and its tidal tributaries from the Environmental Protection Agency's list of "impaired waters." Chesapeake 2000, the carefully worded bay restoration agreement, is scheduled to be signed today by the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the mayor of the District of Columbia and EPA administrator Carol M. Browner.

State and federal leaders plan to commit themselves today to adding 46,000 acres of underwater grasses to the Chesapeake Bay within five years, increasing by tenfold the oyster population and cleansing the water enough to remove the bay and its tidal tributaries from the Environmental Protection Agency's list of "impaired waters." Chesapeake 2000, the carefully worded bay restoration agreement, is scheduled to be signed today by the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the mayor of the District of Columbia and EPA administrator Carol M. Browner.

WHAT IS THE Chesapeake Bay worth? Calculations of its value as seafood source, commercial waterway and recreational mecca can range up to $100 billion. It's impossible to put a value on sunsets from one's sailboat, anchored in a forested cove, with night sounds piping up from nearby wetlands. And who can price the thrill of seeing one's kid reel in a big striped bass, or dip a blue crab from a pier? One price tag we are close to placing on the bay comes not a moment too soon. That's the cost to restore it to health.

Suppose they held a big Chesapeake Bay cleanup and no one came? It's not quite at that point, but Maryland officials charged with involving the public in the latest blueprint for restoring the estuary say they're concerned. "Turnout at public meetings has not been what we hoped," said Jamie Baxter, a program director at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "If we get to the end of this process without broad citizen support ... and a lot of stakeholders end up surprised, it's going to blow up on us," said Thomas W. Simpson, coordinator of Chesapeake Bay agricultural programs at the University of Maryland.

LOOK HARD until you find a little bald spot, a place without grass, and cast to it." That was how my dad taught me to catch striped bass around the Honga River at Hoopers Island in the 1950s. Back then, eelgrass, widgeon grass and a dozen other species of aquatic plants liberally covered the Chesapeake's tidal shallows every summer. They were so thick, it was routine to stop a skiff to reverse the outboard engine's propeller, to rid it of the wads of grass that clogged forward progress.

Underwater grasses, a vital sign of the Chesapeake Bay's health, declined by 8 percent overall last year and by an alarming 30 percent in the Tangier Sound, a critical nursery area for blue crabs.The 5,740-acre decrease, announced yesterday at a news conference on the Severn River, comes after two years of steady improvement in the extent of bay bottom covered by aquatic grasses.Federal and state environmental officials blamed the drop-off on a combination of weather and man-made factors, including runoff from poultry farms on the Delmarva Peninsula.