Rivers – Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

The Only State River Commission in Maryland Just Blinked!

By Fred Tutman | August 14, 2018

Now we have been given a legal opinion* from the Secretary of the State Planning agency that by statute is charged with staffing and assisting the Commission that says we cannot comment on a really ridiculously bad townhouse development project being planned next to the river…

The Session of the Bay

By Erik Michelsen | April 10, 2012 |

(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.

Perdue’s PR Campaign of Deceit

By Bob Gallagher | March 19, 2012 |

(Posted by Bob Gallagher)

A group of legislators, following a script conceived by the public relations machine of Perdue and the Maryland Farm Bureau, have joined in Perdue’s unprecedented effort to derail an environmental lawsuit that has singular importance for the Chesapeake bay watershed. The effort is unprecedented in the extent to which Perdue and its enablers are attempting to use the media and the political process to win a case that they have as yet been unable to win in court.

Here is the story.

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.

Protecting Forests and Increasing Buffers to Restore the Bay and Local Rivers

By Dawn Stoltzfus | November 15, 2011 |

(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)

With all the recent focus on the Chesapeake Bay TMDL and local WIPs, here’s something that may have flown under the radar of Marylanders following Bay restoration efforts: the Maryland Sustainable Forestry Council is developing a set of legislative proposals to achieve a “No Net Loss” of forests in Maryland, due by December 1, 2011. It seems like we could easily be losing sight of the forest for the trees!

Last week, former Maryland State Senator Gerald Winegrad testified before the Council. As Senator Winegrad notes in his testimony [link], “the Sustainable Forestry Council can greatly assist in efforts to restore the Bay by focusing on nonpoint source pollution as forests and wetlands are the greatest protectors of the Bay from pollutants.”

Finally, some good news! Shrinking dead zones linked to nutrient reductions

By Bill Dennison | November 10, 2011

(Posted by Bill Dennison.)

In a recent scientific publication by Rebecca Murphy and Bill Ball from Johns Hopkins University and Michael Kemp at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, an analysis of 40 years of Chesapeake Bay data reveals some important new insights.