Water Pollution

Maryland is failing to ride herd on water pollution in the state because of serious funding shortfalls and its own flawed enforcement practices, according to a Washington-based think tank. The Center for Progressive Reform contends in a new report that while Maryland has some of the nation's toughest environmental laws, its enforcement of water pollution is lagging. "They could do better," Robert L. Glicksman, the report's co-author and environmental law professor at George Washington University, said of state environmental officials.

Steep projected costs for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay could be trimmed by billions of dollars, a new study suggests, by allowing polluters to buy "credits" for less-expensive reductions made by others. The study, presented Thursday to the Chesapeake Bay Commission, an advisory panel of legislators from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, estimates that nutrient pollution trading could trim projected costs for upgrading sewage treatment plants and controlling urban and suburban storm water pollution by $1 billion or more a year baywide.

A series of water pollution violations reported at the University of Maryland's Horn Point environmental laboratory were not violations at all, but "a reporting error," the Maryland Department of the Environment said Wednesday. The university's laboratory near Cambridge on the Eastern Shore was identified as an example of poor state enforcement of water pollution laws in a report by a coalition of environmental groups. The Waterkeepers Chesapeake of Maryland said federal data show the lab had reported 80 violations of its discharge permit requirements over the past five years, and that there was no record of a state inspection of the facility during that time.

Nearly all of the toxic pollutants in Maryland's waterways come from the watershed that enters the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, according to a report released Thursday by an environmental watchdog group. The Gunpowder-Patapsco Watershed, which stretches above the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and as far west as Mount Airy, had more than 1.3 million pounds of toxins dumped into it during 2010, the nonprofit group Environment Maryland concluded. That's 98 percent of the chemicals released into the state's waterways that year, the report said.

Maryland is failing to ride herd on water pollution in the state because of serious funding shortfalls and its own flawed enforcement practices, according to a Washington-based think tank. The Center for Progressive Reform contends in a new report that while Maryland has some of the nation's toughest environmental laws, its enforcement of water pollution regulations is lagging. "They could do better," Robert L. Glicks- man, the report's co-author and environmental law professor at George Washington University, said of state environmental officials.

A pair of environmental groups said Thursday that they plan to sue Perdue Farms and an Eastern Shore chicken grower for alleged water pollution violations. The Assateague Coastkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance filed notice of their intent to seek legal action in 60 days against the Salisbury-based poultry company and the owners of a farm near Berlin that raises 80,000 birds under contract to Perdue. The groups contend that a drainage ditch feeding into the Pocomoke River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, is being polluted with chicken manure washing off the farm.

Nearly all of the toxic pollutants in Maryland's waterways come from the watershed that enters the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, according to a report released Thursday by an environmental watchdog group. The Gunpowder-Patapsco Watershed, which stretches above the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and as far west as Mount Airy, had more than 1.3 million pounds of toxins dumped into it during 2010, the nonprofit group Environment Maryland concluded. That's 98 percent of the chemicals released into the state's waterways that year, the report said.

Evil-smelling effluent bubbling from a factory into a bay. Is that what you see when you think of water pollution?Twenty years ago, that picture would have been pretty accurate. But factories and municipalities have largely cleaned up their act -- and their effluent, the technical term for waste water.Now when it comes to polluting surface waters, the biggest villains are us. You, me, Mr. Perennially Tinkering Under Cars next door, Ms. Weed and Feed the Lawn Every Month Whether It Needs It or Not on the corner, and the folks across the street who paved their yard so they wouldn't have to mow it.The problem is runoff.

The New Windsor town government has asked the Maryland Department of Environment to reduce a fine imposed for water pollution at the town's sewer treatment facility from $5,000 to $500, Mayor Jack A. Gullo said last night at the monthly council meeting.In return, the town will improve its laboratory conditions at the treatment lagoon, explain why wastewater discharged from the system in February and March had a high alkalinity, and improve and document the plant's standard operating procedures, Mayor Gullo said.

WASHINGTON - An internal Environmental Protection Agency study concluded that the states are doing a poor job of monitoring and punishing water polluters, even as the Bush administration plans to turn more pollution enforcement over to the states. "Not taking prompt enforcement action increases water pollution as violations go unchecked," the EPA's inspector general found. The 100-page report on state enforcement of water pollution laws in 1998 and 1999 was posted on the EPA's Web site yesterday.

Nobody asked me, but I'm betting - and hoping - that 85-year-old Roscoe Bartlett, Buckeystown's most durable Republican, will seek re-election in the reconfigured 6th Congressional District. There's been a lot of buzz about this lately, with political gossips saying Mr. Bartlett is doomed, and with numerous Republicans and Democrats lining up to run in the 2012 primaries. A political blogger reported that Mr. Bartlett's chief of staff, Bud Otis, has been exploring a run. Mr. Bartlett apparently hasn't been raising much money for a re-election bid, either.

I was shocked and very disappointed to see Gov. Martin O'Malley's letter regarding the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Maryland ("O'Malley butts in," Nov. 21). Mr. O'Malley has been a champion of clean energy and global warming solutions, and he has promoted some sound policies to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, like reducing pollution from septic systems. But when it comes to this lawsuit, I believe the governor is clearly in the wrong. This case is about defending our clean water laws and protecting the Chesapeake Bay. Even more fundamentally, it's about whether poultry companies should be held responsible for water pollution caused by their chickens' manure.

Whatever the pressures of his city law practice, Robert Lazzaro could count on finding refuge at the end of the day at his home in Jacksonville, where the back deck offered quiet, a hot tub and a woodland view. That changed five years ago after an Exxon station less than a mile away leaked about 25,000 gallons of regular unleaded gasoline into the groundwater, contaminating dozens of wells and casting a shadow of fear over the small community in northern Baltimore County. "It's a constant worry, it's a constant stressor," said Lazzaro.

Entering the fourth decade of a massive effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay's health, how do we keep "hiding" tens of millions of pounds of a well-documented water pollutant? We do it with the complicity of a national network of influential agricultural scientists who care less about water quality than about helping farmers avoid the gigantic disposal problem they face with excess manure. The dilemma for the watershed's poultry and livestock farmers is stark: To get enough nitrogen on fields to grow a crop, they must spread manure in amounts that build up phosphorus in the soil so excessively that it runs off and pollutes waterways, even if the farmer employs otherwise sound conservation practices.

Maryland is failing to ride herd on water pollution in the state because of serious funding shortfalls and its own flawed enforcement practices, according to a Washington-based think tank. The Center for Progressive Reform contends in a new report that while Maryland has some of the nation's toughest environmental laws, its enforcement of water pollution regulations is lagging. "They could do better," Robert L. Glicks- man, the report's co-author and environmental law professor at George Washington University, said of state environmental officials.

Maryland is failing to ride herd on water pollution in the state because of serious funding shortfalls and its own flawed enforcement practices, according to a Washington-based think tank. The Center for Progressive Reform contends in a new report that while Maryland has some of the nation's toughest environmental laws, its enforcement of water pollution is lagging. "They could do better," Robert L. Glicksman, the report's co-author and environmental law professor at George Washington University, said of state environmental officials.

EVIDENCE of the pernicious Pfiesteria piscicida microorganism in the mucky bottoms of five Maryland rivers is no big surprise, nor is it a cause for great alarm. But it underlines the need to prevent waterway pollution, primarily from runoff of agricultural waste and chemicals, that encourages the tiny creature to turn toxic -- killing fish and causing short-term memory loss for humans. Responding to large fish kills and reports of watermen's illness in 1997, Maryland required farms to develop surface runoff control plans by 2001 if they use chemical fertilizer and 2004 if they use manure.

An O'Malley administration proposal to ease Maryland's stringent new storm-water pollution rules won legislative approval last night, capping a fierce debate over whether the Chesapeake Bay would suffer from giving developers more time and leeway in having to clamp down on rainfall washing off their building projects. After a three-hour hearing, the House-Senate Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review overwhelmingly endorsed emergency changes to state storm-water pollution regulations that are scheduled to take effect in a month.

Remember how this winter's snow, so pretty at first, morphed into gritty, grimy mounds laced with road salt, petroleum products and pet poo? Want that stuff in your drinking water? It's probably there. How about in the Chesapeake Bay? You can visit it on weekends. And the air you breathe -- well, that's where a lot of the less-visible contaminants came from. The Mid-Atlantic's record snowfall of 2010 made a powerful, if slow motion, case for curbing the rain that washes off sidewalks, streets and parking lots into the waterways that sustain life.