Water Quality

NEWS THIS WEEK from north and south of us: encouraging signs of an environmental turnaround in Virginia; and in Pennsylvania, bringing "ecosystem management" to a mammoth forest coveted by loggers and deer.It is a pleasure to write of good environmental news out of Virginia, where Gov. George F. Allen's administration has spent the last few years welshing on Chesapeake Bay commitments.Before the legislature adjourned last month, it passed two bills called "historic" in importance by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Richmond, Va., office.

Swimmers should avoid contact with tidal and fresh water for 48 hours after a big rain storm this summer, warns the Chesapeake Bay Foundation . The precaution is suggested by state and county health departments, but foundation officials believe it's not widely known by the public. The foundation says runoff makes the water unsafe, and the large fish kills already seen this year could be a sign that poor water quality is arriving earlier than usual. “I'm amazed how few people know our water can be unhealthy for days after a storm.

Monitoring of water quality to end week of Aug. 30The Anne Arundel County Department of Health will end its summer water-quality monitoring program for fecal coliform bacteria the week of Aug. 30.The water-quality phone line at 410-222-7999, installed for access to the results, will remain in operation through Sept. 6.The program and phone line will be activated again next year during the Memorial Day weekend.Information: www.health.co. anne-arundel.md.us.

A warning against water contact in the lower Patapsco River issued nearly two months ago has been lifted, the Anne Arundel County health department announced Monday. Health officials had ordered an emergency closure of the river downstream from Annapolis Road in Brooklyn and warned against swimming or other water contact after sewage spilled March 25 from a Baltimore County pumping station. Workers halted the spill soon afterward, according to a spokesman for the county public works department.

Saving streams protects legacy for our children Forty years ago, children swam safely in Herring Run, a small tributary that flows through Baltimore County and northeast Baltimore City. Now it is contaminated from sewage leaking from our aging sewer system, trash dropped and swept into storm drains, nutrient pollution from fertilizers and pollutants surging into the stream with every storm. Yet the stream remains a beautiful place that gives urban children a small sense of the wild. And it can become better.

Residents can provide input into improving water quality in Prince George's County at a series of three public forums. The forums are a joint effort between the county's Department of Environmental Resources, Soil Conservation District, Health Department, Department of Public Works and Transportation; Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission; and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. The first forum will be held Tuesday, Aug. 16 from 4:30 to 8 p.m. at the Prince George's County Soil Conservation District, 5301 Marlboro Race Track Road, Suite 100, inUpper Marlboro.

On a bridge behind a strip mall on Liberty Road just west of Baltimore, a group of state biologists trekked out in the morning drizzle Monday to gauge the health of the Chesapeake Bay. From the bridge over the Gwynns Falls they lowered a device about 2 feet into the brown-green water to take the temperature and measure the dissolved oxygen. Then they lowered a bottle with a small crane to collect a water sample, checking for sediment, nutrients and solids. The effort, made in 54 sites each month across the state since 1986, shows the short-and long-term health of Maryland's streams, the Inner Harbor and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay. The results not only help guide those who regulate pollution, but help the biologists show how the way people live and work affects the water quality nearby and downstream.

The Sun's January 11 op-ed accurately describes the Department of the Environment's focus on enforcing environmental laws that, despite resource constraints, resulted in a 34 percent increase in enforcement actions in 2008 ("Tougher policing of water quality needed"). Our annual report will soon detail an additional 7 percent increase in 2009. But while there are certainly differences of opinion, the claim that "nobody is doing anything" to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is simply incorrect.

222-7999 -- is available to check recreational water quality and theweekly water sample results for fecal coliform from the Health Department.Information may be retrieved 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and includes the emergency closing of creeks or portions of creeks caused by sewage spills. It also includes the average weekly results for the 66 stations routinely sampled by the Health Department anda list of phone numbers that can assist citizens in reporting a variety of water quality problems.

A multiagency effort is being made to improve water quality in the Piney and Alloway Creek watersheds.Federal and state agencies have selected these areas for a concentrated attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of conservation practices installed by farmers.The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service has received more than $200,000 in cost-share money available to area farmers who install needed conservation practices, said Elizabeth A. Schaeffer, county executive director.

The 3,000-mile water and land trail network created to relive the Chesapeake Bay's 17th century exploration by English colonists is about to grow still larger. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis are slated to visit Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis this afternoon to celebrate the addition of four new river river trails to the existing Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail .  The federal officials are to be joined by Gov.Martin O'Malley, local officials, Native American tribal leaders and conservation group representatives.

Maryland is fortunate to have many beautiful parks, rivers and streams, breathtaking views, delicious fish and shellfish and enjoyable recreational opportunities, from our nation's largest estuary to the snow-capped mountains in Western Maryland. Throughout our history, we have not done enough to protect these treasures and the water that links them, allowing them to deteriorate and their ecosystems to suffer. Under Gov.Martin O'Malley's leadership, though, things have started to turn around.

In their quest to cure Baltimore's ailing harbor, advocates and authorities have tried one gadget after another: floating wetlands, a solar-powered aerator, even a trash wheel. Add now the "algal turf scrubber," a long wooden sluiceway through which harbor water is pumped over a bed of slimy green algae. The gutter, 350 feet long by a foot wide, uses native algae to strip nutrients, suspended sediment and carbon from water and inject oxygen into it before returning it to the harbor.

In their quest to cure Baltimore's ailing harbor, advocates and authorities have tried one gadget after another: floating wetlands, a solar-powered aerator, even a trash wheel. Add now the "algal turf scrubber," a long wooden sluiceway in which harbor water is pumped over a bed of slimy green algae. The ecological restoration firm Biohabitats and the Living Classrooms Foundation invited news media to see the contraption set up on a former chromium plant site in Fells Point. The gutter, 350 feet long by one foot wide, uses native algae to strip nutrients, suspended sediment and carbon from water and inject oxygen into it before returning it to the harbor.

Baltimore's Inner Harbor is about to dramatically enlarge one of its newest attractions — one meant to draw crabs and fish as well as tourists. For weeks now, teams of young and adult volunteers have been assembling what promoters say will be Maryland's largest floating wetland, to be anchored along the bulkhead off the World Trade Center. It's a 10-fold enlargement of a tiny, checkerboard array of grassy floats tethered by the trade center tower since summer 2010. Those initial wetlands, plus one launched at the same time by the National Aquarium, marked the mostly symbolic beginning of an ambitious campaign to clean up Baltimore's degraded harbor and make it swimmable and fishable by the end of the decade.

Unfavorable weather conditions last year worsened water quality in the West and Rhode rivers south of Annapolis, according to the environmental group working to restore them. The two Chesapeake Bay tributaries earned a 'D' grade overall on the West & Rhode Riverkeeper 's annual report card on their health, a drop from 2010 that the group attributed to a wet spring and hot summer worsening water quality conditions. Although there were no major fish kills reported last year, the report card notes, weather conspired to make conditions worse for crabs and fish, increasing nutrient pollution and algae while lowering dissolved oxygen levels in the water.  Heavier spring rains wash more fertilizer and other nutrients off the land, while hot temperatures help drive down dissolved oxygen levels in the water, stressing fish.

Residents can gain easy access to weekly water quality reports on the county's creeks through a county Health Department telephone service.The service, established last year, was reactivated May 25. It provides residents with the number of fecal coliforms measured in specific creeks. The information is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at 222-7999.Fecal coliform is a bacteria found in the intestines of all warm-blooded animals. Because of its prevalence and because it is easy to detect, it is used as one measure of water quality.

James Edwin Gutman, a former department store executive whose concern for the Chesapeake Bay led him to chair the Maryland Water Quality Advisory Commission, died Wednesday from complications of Parkinson's disease at Holy Cross Rehabilitation Center in Burtonsville. He was 81.A longtime Mount Washington resident, Mr. Gutman and his wife of 48 years, the former Ruth Binswanger, moved to the banks of Cypress Creek in Severna Park in 1971. Since the late 1930s, he had worked for Julius Gutman and Co., the family department store that became Brager-Gutman.

Environmentalists came to Annapolis dressed in waders, life jackets and even a shark costume to rally for a package of bills moving through the House and Senate that would protect water quality. "There is nothing more important than clean water," said Del. Tom Hucker, a Montgomery County Democrat who pushed legislation in the House for a storm water fee. "We are on the finish line. " This year environmentalists had four legislative goals: Mandate that counties create storm water fees to fund retrofitting impermeable surfaces like paved parking lots, curb sprawl and reduce nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay by limiting septic systems, increase to the flush tax to fund waste water plant upgrades, and tighten the rules for the types of septic systems allowed.

Parts of three waterways have been opened to shellfish harvesting after tests showed declines in bacteria there, the Maryland Department of the Environment announced Monday. An area of the Wicomico River on the Eastern Shore, at the border between Wicomico and Somerset counties, is now approved for commercial harvests. Waters below Bay Point had been closed because of high bacteria levels in the water. The headwaters of Broad Creek in Talbot County have been conditionally approved, meaning that oysters and clams can be harvested there except after a heavy rainfall.