Posts by Erik Michelsen
The Session of the Bay
(Posted by Erik Michelsen)
In preparing for the 2012 Maryland Legislative session, the memories of largely unproductive sessions for the environment in 2010 and 2011 were very fresh. The combined environmental community – the Clean Water, Healthy Families coalition – resolved to be more focused, to pursue a direct request of legislators, and to focus on goals that would have a measurable impact on improving water quality.
Read MoreUsing Development to Drive Bay Recovery
(Posted by Erik Michelsen.)
According to the Chesapeake Bay Program’s estimates, pollution from urban and suburban stormwater runoff is the only sector where nutrient loads are currently growing in the Bay watershed. On much of the western shore of the Chesapeake, including the Baltimore-Washington metro counties, agriculture is an increasingly rare land use, shifting daily to the eastern shore or Midwest. And in Maryland, the Bay Restoration Fund (aka “Flush Tax”) is being used to upgrade wastewater treatment plants to the best available technology. Yet, these areas consistently suffer from some of the worst water quality in the Chesapeake region (see EcoCheck Chesapeake Bay Report Cards).
Read MoreIs It Illegal to Restore the Bay?
(Posted by Erik Michelson.)
After centuries of unregulated wetland filling, land clearing, and shoreline modification, over the course of the past several decades, federal, state, and local regulations have been put in place ostensibly to reverse the trend of the declining health of the country’s waterways. As a rule, these have taken the form of a sequence of three options: “avoid, minimize, mitigate.” So, in the context of a development project, impacts to wetlands or trees in the critical area buffer should be avoided if at all possible, and if not avoided, minimized. Any impacts that do occur, should either be mitigated, or offset, preferably on the same site where they originally occurred, but if not there, somewhere else in the same jurisdiction.
Read MoreThoughts on the 2011 Maryland Legislative Session
Posted by Eric Michelsen.
Perhaps you’ve heard it said that in Chinese the character for “crisis” is the same as the one for “opportunity”. I know I have. A quick search of the internet, that great dasher of self-delusion, suggests that this assertion was probably wishful thinking guided by a poor translation. Nonetheless, I think there’s a great deal of merit to the idea of embracing turbulent times as a vehicle for positive change. And, there’s little question we’re living in turbulent times. 
We Have a Plan, Now We Need Leadership
Posted by Erik Michelsen.
Late last year, when Maryland turned in its roadmap for cleaning up the Chesapeake to the federal government, many of us held out considerable hope that it would not only detail strategies for how we, collectively, are going to clean up our portion of the Bay’s pollutants, but also clearly articulate the ways that the state would finance this multi-billion dollar initiative.
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