Legum’s New Line

Recently I wrote about the West/Rhode Riverkeeper’s annual report card and the poor scores those rivers received. Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler’s annual audit on the Chesapeake Bay, which was released this past week, helps explain the cause of the problem. According to Gansler, Maryland is inadequately prepared to deal with the environmental problems facing the Bay and its watershed. The three overriding concerns were specified as:

– pollution related to agriculture and growth

– insufficient agency resources to investigate and prosecute polluters

– inadequate penalties and fines to deter polluters

Gansler did an in-depth review of several rivers, including the West and Rhodes Rivers, both of which are in the district I am running to represent. Specific concerns in this area include:

– Nitrogen problems from septic systems which can be resolved by either connecting private homes to public sewage or installing nitrogen-removal systems for private septic systems. According to sources, there are funds available to repair or replace aging and failing septic systems from several different funds but they aren’t being used.

– Serious Critical Area violations including issues with construction, unlawful boat discharge and other blatant disregard for the laws.

– A high presence of sediments in local creeks showing that sod farms are contributing runoff.

– Considerable deficiency in funding which is due, in part, to insufficient law enforcement, particularly in regard to the collection of fines.

In general, there is a lack of awareness of environmental regulation laws, including boating behavior, farming techniques, sewage treatment, building development and a variety of general precautions for preserving the Bay. We also need to be more stringent about reporting violations, enforcing penalties and appropriating the funds we have available.

I’m running to help fix these problems and bring new energy and urgency to the task of cleaning up the Bay.

You can read the full AG audit here.

Comments Off

There was fresh evidence this week that we aren’t doing nearly enough to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, particularly the rivers in the district I’m running to represent.

The West/Rhode Riverkeeper released its annual report card this weekend of the two Southern Anne Arundel County rivers. It wasn’t pretty.

You can check out the entire West/Rhode Riverkeeper report here.

The South River, which is also in my district, also received poor scores in a recent report card. You can check out the report card for the South River from the South River Federation here.

The Chesapeake Bay Program, a state/federal partnership tasked with restoring the Bay, had similar news for the Bay as a whole. Despite progress on some specific indicators, the overall condition of the Bay remains bleak.

A key graph:

Water quality, for example, is only at 24 percent of its goals. …Bay Barometer also shows that much more progress is needed to reduce nonpoint source pollution from agricultural, suburban and urban runoff.

You can read the full report from the Bay Program here.

There are three report cards but there is one overriding message: what we are doing now isn’t working.

Comments Off