Legum’s New Line

There was a fascinating piece in the Washington Post this weekend about how we are substituting “green gestures” for the political action necessary to clean up our environment. This is particularly true when it comes to the deteriorating Chesapeake Bay.

But perhaps things are changing.

Today, Maryland’s Waterkeepers, including my friend Chris Trumbauer, filed a petition with the EPA demanding they enforce the Clean Water Act on the Chesapeake Bay. Details from the Capital:

The waterkeepers who patrol Maryland’s rivers and bays said the state is failing to enforce clean-water laws, and the federal government should take over the task.

The waterkeepers – including the four riverkeepers who monitor Anne Arundel County’s waterways – filed a petition seeking the move with the federal government this morning.

“The Clean Water Act is not being enforced,” said Chris Trumbauer, the West/Rhode Riverkeeper. “We need to do something bold to set this on the right course.”

The 58-page petition filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asks the agency to take back authority to issue and enforce water-pollution permits. That authority is generally delegated to the states.

The waterkeepers claim in their petition that the Maryland Department of the Environment has done a sub-par job in handling water-pollution permits and carrying out the intent of the Clean Water Act.

You can read the full article here.

You can also check out the Riverkeepers full petition to the EPA here.

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Yesterday, I went on a cruise of the West and Rhode rivers in Maryland to celebrate the release of Prof. Howard Ernst’s new book, Fight for the Chesapeake Bay.

Below is a brief exceprt from a conversation with Howard I recorded on the boat. He reveals how he answered a question you wish didn’t need asking — What’s cleaner: used toilet water or the Chesapeake Bay? Watch it:

In his book, Ernst explains why after 25 years and $6 billion dollars the Bay is worse than ever. Worse, in some cases, than your toilet (particularly after it rains).

One of the reason is there has been a failure to create real enforceable standards for water quality across all the states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which includes not just Maryland and Virginia but also Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

That could change soon, thanks to a bill introduced last week by Sen. Ben Cardin and Congressman Elijah Cummings. The bill, called “The Chesapeake Bay Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act,” would require all states to bring the pollution they contribute to the Bay under acceptable levels, called the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), by 2025. States that fail to do so would be subject to substantial penalties, including loss of federal funds by the EPA.

This is the kind of bold action necessary to turn the Bay around.

You can contact your members of Congress and urge them to support the bill now.

Cross-posted at HuffPost.

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Naval Academy Professor Howard Ernst’s first book, Chesapeake Bay Blues, was a remarkably prescient critique of the politics of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. In the book, written in 2003, Ernst argued that not nearly enough was being done to make meaningful progress cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. Five years later, the front pages of newspapers around the country confirmed that he was right.

Now Ernst is back with a follow-up volume, The Fight for the Bay, which focuses on what needs to be done politically to restore the Bay to health. The Capital provides a preview:

…Ernst packs in analysis of how environmentalists, politicians and journalists have failed the bay, and how they can make a difference. It wraps up with essays from environmentalists recalling some of their biggest struggles to help the bay.

Ernst, who teaches political science at the Naval Academy, argues that politicians and environmentalists are too quick to compromise, adopting what he calls a “light green” mentality…

Politicians often fall into light-green mode, passing compromised bills that don’t do much, Ernst said.

I haven’t read his new book yet, but plan to pick up a copy at a book party aboard the Richard Lee this Saturday night in Shady Side, MD. You can find info on the event here.

If you can’t make it, pick up a copy online.

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Yesterday, the EPA released a preliminary report outlining a new federal effort to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay. The Washington Post highlights the key change in the EPA’s approach:

In the fight against such problems, the EPA now serves as a kind of shepherd — prodding and cajoling a group of state and federal agencies that are charged with forcing or nudging ground-level polluters to make changes. If a state misses its pollution goals, nothing happens.

Now, the EPA said, it wants to function as a taskmaster. States will be given a certain amount of pollution to reduce and will have two years to submit a plan for doing so. If they don’t make a plan, or if the plan isn’t good enough, the EPA can cut their federal grants or reject permits for new shopping malls, sewage plants or suburban developments.

EPA officials said they have had this power for years but have not used it in this way. Doing so will be politically difficult — the federal government, and the state officials who have to cut pollution at individual farms and sewage plants, are both likely to face heavy lobbying…

Howard Ernst, a political science professor at the Naval Academy who studies Chesapeake Bay politics, highlights the challenge:

“The powers have been sitting on the books for a generation. Why weren’t they enforced for a generation? Because powerful interests have worked to keep them not enforced. And those interests haven’t gone away.”

I’m running for State Delegate to stand up to the powerful interests and help restore the Bay to health.

You can read the full EPA report here.

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A new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reveals that the Bay has become so polluted that swimming in it may be hazardous to your health. From the report:

The combination of warmer waters, nutrient pollution, and other factors in the Chesapeake Bay are contributing to the growth of bacteria called Vibrio that can cause life-threatening skin and blood infections and intestinal illnesses, according to Dr. Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation and current
Distinguished University Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and University of Maryland, College Park. Although infrequent, the number of annual Vibrio infection cases reported in both Virginia and Maryland has increased in recent years…

Nutrient pollution and warmer weather also stimulate the growth of harmful algal blooms. Blue green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, can cause liver disease, skin rashes, nausea, and vomiting…

During the summer, polluted runoff, animal waste, and sewage often create high bacteria levels at swimming beaches. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Pennsylvania had 22 closures at 17 swimming areas last summer; Maryland had 44 no-swimming advisories or closures at 31 beaches during the same period; and Virginia had 10 advisories at 6 beaches. But even these numbers might not reflect the true prevalence of pathogens at beaches, according to a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researcher.

CBF President William C. Baker stressed that the report does not mean that “one should never swim in local rivers or the Bay.”

Nevertheless, the report underscores that if we allow the Bay’s health to continue to deteriorate, a major source of economic activity for the state is likely to suffer. Conversely, if we take the steps necessary to restore the Bay to health, there will be significant long term economic benefit to Maryland in terms of tourism, recreation and related industries.

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As part of its new, more aggressive posture, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper are threatening to sue the present and former owners of the Sparrows Point steel mill, the EPA and Maryland Department of the Environment for failing to clean up pollution at Sparrows Point. From the release:

“Sadly, federal and state agencies have not met their responsibilities at Sparrows Point,” said Will Baker, president of CBF. “The owners of the plant signed a legal agreement to clean up the site more than a decade ago, but authorities haven’t enforced it. Meanwhile, people live nearby, and fish and crab in waters where sediments are laced with toxic contaminants.”

The agreement, called a Consent Decree, was signed in 1997 by the original owner Bethlehem Steel Corp. and the federal and state agencies. The terms of the agreement have not been met.

Past and recent investigations at the site have found: Carcinogens in soils at the mill site at levels many times the Maryland soil cleanup standards; high concentrations of toxic metals, petroleum by-products, and solvents in groundwater onsite; water pollution discharge permit violations at the steel mill’s wastewater treatment facility; various air pollutants; and expansions of the Grey’s Point landfill in violation of the Consent Decree.

If the owners of the site don’t address the issues within 90 days, the groups plan on filing an action in federal district court.

You can read the full letter from CBF announcing their intention to sue here.

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Maryland, Virginia and the EPA are preparing to set a new deadline to complete the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay: 2025. The last two deadlines 2000 and 2010 were missed. That experiences illustrates that it’s more important to put in place policies that will improve the health of the Bay than to set deadlines.

More from the Sun:

After failing repeatedly over the last 25 years to meet self-imposed deadlines for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, state and federal officials appear ready to set a new-drop dead date — 16 years from now. But they say what really matters is what they pledge to do in the next two years.

Top aides to the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia and other officials involved in the cleanup effort have recommended that 2025 be set as the ultimate “end date” for reducing pollution so that the water is fit again for the fish, crabs and oysters that used to teem in America’s largest estuary, according to officials involved in the decision. Officials said they did not want to be quoted, upstaging decisions to be announced on Tuesday.

Gov. Martin O’Malley, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and officials from the District of Columbia and four other states plan to gather Tuesday at Mount Vernon in Virginia to chart what they have vowed will be a more aggressive and more accountable course for restoring the bay. In addition to a new cleanup deadline, the leaders are expected to announce steps they plan to take in the next two years to accelerate the cleanup and achieve interim goals, or “milestones.” And in an acknowledgment that past cleanup pledges have not been met, they will agree to have an independent body of experts track their progress.

You can read the full article here.

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Yesterday, Gov. Martin O’Malley and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack agreed to increase payments to farmers that plant trees rather than crops along streams or construct fences to keep livestock away from water. These measures help reduce that amount of fertilizer and pesticides that washes into the Bay.

The Baltimore Sun has the details:

The funds are meant to enhance participation in a 12-year-old federal-state conservation program that has enticed Maryland farmers to set aside 74,000 acres of cropland and pasture for environmental purposes. Officials hope the added incentives will increase the set-aside to 100,000 acres. Under the program, about 8 million trees have been planted statewide along streams. Of the federal funds, $165 million is to go toward paying farmers rent for leaving cropland fallow for as much as 15 years. Another $33 million is earmarked to help farmers pay for conservation practices such as fencing and watering troughs for livestock to keep them out of streams.

This is no doubt a positive development as agriculture remains the #1 source of nutrient pollution in the Bay. But it’s also a continuation of the voluntary, incentives based approach to controlling agriculture pollution that has been employed for decades with little success. It’s the kind of thing, unfortunately, that has made it seem like we are doing a lot to improve the Bay, even as things get worse.

At some point we will have to do more or the health of the Bay will continue to deteriorate.

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If you missed Tuesday’s PBS special “Poisoned Waters,” an arresting documentary on the state of the Chesapeake Bay, don’t fret. The entire program is now available online.

You can watch it here.

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Essential viewing tonight for anyone concerned about the health of the Chesapeake Bay. PBS is running a documentary, “Poisoned Waters,” that details the Bay’s perilous condition and outlines the types of changes needed to restore it. Watch the preview:

More details from the press release:

Through interviews with scientists, environmental activists, corporate executives and average citizens impacted by the burgeoning pollution problem, Smith reveals startling new evidence that today’s growing environmental threat comes not from the giant industrial polluters of old, but from chemicals in consumers’ face creams, deodorants, prescription medicines and household cleaners that find their way into sewers, storm drains, and eventually into America’s waterways and drinking water.

“The environment has slipped off our radar screen because it’s not a hot crisis like the financial meltdown, war or terrorism,” Smith says. “But pollution is a ticking time bomb. It’s a chronic cancer that is slowly eating away the natural resources that are vital to our very lives.”

In Poisoned Waters, Smith speaks with researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who report finding genetically mutated marine life in the Potomac River. In addition to finding frogs with six legs and other mutations, the researchers have found male amphibians with ovaries and female frogs with male genitalia. Scientists tell FRONTLINE that the mutations are likely caused by exposure to “endocrine disruptors,” chemical compounds that mimic the body’s natural hormones.

You can learn more about the Bay (and the mutant fish) tonight on PBS from 9PM to 11PM.

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