Chesapeake Bay Action Plan
After decades of effort, the voluntary, collaborative approach to restoring the health and vitality of the Chesapeake Bay— the largest estuary in the United States—has not worked and, in fact, is failing.
A diverse group of 57 senior scientists and policymakers have joined forces to save the Bay. This is our plan.
Va. Rep. Goodlatte Aims to Quash Bay Cleanup
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)
As has been rumored for many months — yesterday Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would undercut the clean water act and essentially quash the multi-state Chesapeake Bay “TMDL” pollution diet cleanup process. This would be devastating, as many Bay scientists and advocates are hopeful that the TMDL and each State’s Watershed Implementation Plans could finally provide a solution to making our waters, and the Bay, fishable and swimmable again.
When Farmers Talk
(Posted by Roy Hoagland.)
When farmers talk, legislators listen. And when a farmer talks in support of new farming regulations, legislators really listen.
Two Maryland farmers recently told a committee of their state legislators that they wanted to see stricter and better controls on farms. In particular, they supported new proposals that included halting the spreading of manure on farm fields during the winter.
‘We Must Preserve an Economic Asset’
(This ninth installment in our series, What’s It Going to Take?, looks at how the environmental community can regain the initiative and build the political will necessary to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.)
In this exclusive interview with the Bay Action Plan, Chesapeake Bay Program Director Nick DiPasquale says that the costs of cleaning the Chesapeake Bay are significant, but manageable.
“No time is a good time when you’re talking about trying to implement very costly pollution control measures,” DiPasquale said. “But when you spread that cost over the life of a project… you find that the cost to individual households is a few dollars a month. Compare it to cellphone or cable costs, it puts things into perspective.”
Glendening, Scientists: Untreated Manure Poisons Chesapeake Bay
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.) On Tuesday, February 21, 2012, members of the Senior Scientists & Policymakers for the Chesapeake Bay made their case for reducing pollution from agriculture at a hearing before the Maryland Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee. Former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening provided a strong statement (PDF) in support of SB…
The Biggest Problem for the Bay: Animal Waste
(Posted by Sen. Gerald Winegrad. This op-ed first appeared in The Baltimore Sun on February 20, 2012.)
Millions of tons of one of the Chesapeake Bay‘s largest sources of pollution continue to be dumped onto farm lands without proper regulation. Farm animals produce 44 million tons of manure annually in the bay watershed, and most of it is collected and disposed of on farmland — or left where it falls.
This ranks the bay region in the top 10 percent in the nation for manure-related nitrogen runoff, and the problem of proper management of this waste is exacerbated by the fact that three highly concentrated animal feeding operation areas contribute more than 90 percent of the manure. The Delmarva Peninsula, one of these three areas, has some of the greatest concentrations of chicken farms in the country.
Manure to Hit the Fan on Maryland SB 594
(Posted by Sen. Gerald Winegrad.)
Everyone knows that human excrement must be sanitarily and environmentally treated before discharge into our waterways or when taken from septic tanks. What most people don’t know is that millions of tons of farm animal excrement are put into the environment totally raw and untreated. Much of the polluting nutrients and bacteria wind up in the Chesapeake Bay’s creeks and streams or in groundwater destroying water quality.
When 13 million people in the Bay watershed flush their toilets, the wastewater flows through miles of pipes and many pumping stations to the nearest treatment plant. These plants must meet stringent federal and state standards for destroying disease-causing organisms and for removing environmentally harmful chemicals and nutrients. The plants must keep comprehensive records and are repeatedly inspected for Clean Water Act compliance. The public has full access to all such records and can even sue should any plant violate its strict permit limits.
Former Md. Governor Says It’s Time to Push Back
(This eighth installment in our series, What’s It Going to Take?, looks at how the environmental community can regain the initiative and build the political will necessary to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.)
In this exclusive interview on the state of the Chesapeake Bay, former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening tells the Bay Action Plan that it’s time to broaden the base of citizens willing to speak out on behalf of the Bay:
Nutrient Trading, Poultry Farms and Planetary Finitude
(Posted by Stuart Clarke)
(This is the seventh in an ongoing 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.)
The Town Creek Foundation will be spending out our endowment and closing our doors in the next ten years. As we approach our sunset, we are working to blend our concern with achieving tangible progress restoring the Chesapeake Bay with our desire to help catalyze the systemic transformations necessary to make that progress sustainable.
We believe that Maryland’s efforts to restore the Bay have evolved to the point where a special window of opportunity has opened for substantial progress. With the Chesapeake Bay TMDL and the Watershed Implementation Plan process, Maryland has established clear goals, an ambitious timetable, and reasonably robust planning processes. Much work remains to be done to sustain this effort where it is strong and to strengthen it where it is weak, and over the next ten years we will be investing in this work.
We are senior Chesapeake Bay scientists and policymakers from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania who have concluded that after decades of effort, the voluntary, collaborative approach to restoring the health and vitality of the largest estuary in the United States has not worked and, in fact, is failing. Our group unanimously recommends that all states draining into the Chesapeake Bay adopt our 25 action items in their Watershed Implementation Plans (WIP) and implement them to improve the Bay’s water quality and to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act.
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