Action Plan – Page 6 – Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

‘One Big Dead Zone’

By admin | January 12, 2012 |

(This is third in a series of posts on What’s It Going to Take?: A look at how the environmental community can regain the initiative and build the political will necessary to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.)

“Unless we are very aggressive in the next few years, we could easily lose the Bay. It could be one big dead zone.” – Maryland State Senator Brian Frosh.

Despite decades of efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, rapid population growth has offset much of the progress. Some people are beginning to lose faith that a restored, healthy Bay is even possible. Sen. Brian Frosh explains in this exclusive Bay Action Play video:

Change You Must Believe In

By Guest | January 10, 2012

(This is the second in a series of posts on What’s It Going to Take?: A look at how the environmental community can regain the initiative and build the political will necessary to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.)

(Posted by Doug Siglin.)

What's It Going to Take? The New York Times’ Leslie Kaufman recently reported that in the wake of Congress’ failure to enact carbon-limiting climate change legislation, several national environmental organizations are changing tactics. She wrote: “On the strategy front… a three-prong approach is emerging: fight global warming by focusing on immediate, local concerns; reinvigorate the grass roots through social media and street protests; and renew an emphasis on influencing elections.”

I hope she’s right, although with a couple of exceptions, I don’t yet see much evidence that national groups are really moving in the direction of the locally oriented political work that Kaufman cites.

2012: Changing the Dialogue About Chesapeake Restoration

By Bill Dennison | January 4, 2012 |

(This is the first in a series of posts on What’s It Going to Take?: A look at how the environmental community can regain the initiative and build the political will necessary to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.)

(Posted by Bill Dennison)

Our New Year’s resolution for 2012 should be to improve our public dialogue about Chesapeake restoration. Instead of public arguments, recriminations, and debates about the watershed models, we should be talking about innovative approaches to reducing nutrients reaching the Bay. Instead of arguing about how restoring Chesapeake Bay will be too expensive, we should be embracing the new jobs that restoration activities create (see the Chesapeake Bay Foundation report “Debunking the ‘Job Killer’ Myth: How Pollution Limits Encourage Jobs in the Chesapeake Bay Region”). Instead of bemoaning the difference between current conditions and the “good old days,” we should be celebrating the achievements that are being made with respect to realistic, short term targets.

Partnering for a Clean Bay: Providing Locals the Necessary Resources to Achieve Success

By Guest | December 21, 2011 |

(Posted by Brenton McCloskey)

It takes the dedication and hard work of communities, businesses, individuals and – most of all, committed partnerships – to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. With the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) prescribed “pollution diet” mandating new reductions in the Bay watershed, partnerships are essential now more than ever. In order to meet the EPA’s target date to improve the Bay by 2025, the combined efforts of these concerned citizens and organizations is essential to successfully fulfilling these goals.

Local governments have been asked by the State, via federal mandates, to submit individual Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) to meet local water quality goals. With the EPA requirements on a fast-track, it is important that Maryland maximize its available resources to ensure the Bay is healthy and economically viable now and into the future.

Gilchrest: Jobs & Clean Water for Rural Maryland

By Dawn Stoltzfus | December 12, 2011 |

(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)

Check out this great op-ed piece that ran in Sunday’s Easton Star Democrat, authored by former Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, a member of the Senior Bay Scientists & Policymaker’s Executive Council. As Maryland Senator Pipkin’s “war on rural Maryland” naysayers gather on Lawyer’s Mall in Annapolis this morning, to decry policies that benefit both urban and rural areas, these words of common sense couldn’t be more timely.

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Jobs and clean water for rural Maryland
By WAYNE T. GILCHREST

Peaceful. That’s the word that came to mind on this December afternoon as I looked across Kent County’s rolling fields. Many of them glowed with the soft, new-green growth of recently planted wheat, barley and rye.

Then, the decidedly unpeaceful rhetoric of some of my representatives to the General Assembly came to mind. They say there’s a war on rural Maryland. If this is a land at war, it is the most enlightened conflict I’ve ever witnessed. We are being bombed with efforts to create jobs, build healthier streams and rivers, and ultimately to improve our fisheries.

O’Malley Piles On

By Tom Horton | November 22, 2011 |

(Posted by Tom Horton.)

Governor Martin O’Malley presumably thinks he’s helping Maryland poultry growers and processors by pressuring the University of Maryland’s environmental law clinic to drop out of a lawsuit aimed at stopping chicken farms from polluting.

But the pollution is real, it’s substantial and it’s not going to get better until the governor and agricultural interests acknowledge we have a problem with too much poultry manure.