“Death by a Thousand Cuts”: Chesapeake Bay’s Disappearing Shoreline

By John D. Wickham | June 3, 2011

(This is the first in a series of reviews of notable films that we feel should be part of any card-carrying environmental activist’s toolkit. We’ve chosen films that we think have made an important contribution to understanding the challenges facing restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. We kick off with a look back at Michael English’s 2008 gem, “Weary Shoreline.” -Eds.)

(Posted by John D. Wickham.)

Weary ShorelineCoastal Maryland, encompassing the state’s capital, Annapolis, the counties of Anne Arundel, Talbot, and Dorchester, and still other areas, is one of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the United States, whose rivers and tributaries feed into the nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. Though picturesque, this border area where land and sea meet has been under relentless pressure from human population growth and real estate development in the last three decades. Estimates put Southern Maryland’s loss of forest cover at more than 160,000 acres in the last fifteen years.

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A New Day for the Anacostia River

By Guest | May 6, 2011

(Posted by Brooke DeRenzis and Walter Smith.)
The Anacostia watershed is one of the most densely populated watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin. Like many urban watersheds, it is severely polluted by stormwater which runs off of roofs, roads, driveways and parking lots—picking up trash, oil, and bacteria along the way—and into the river and its streams. Although urban and suburban development accounts for only 9 percent of the Chesapeake Bay watershed’s land use, the Bay watershed is becoming more developed. In fact, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program, stormwater runoff is the Bay’s only major source of pollution that is increasing.

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