Weak laws

Lawmakers stop short of enacting effective environmental safeguards

By Timothy B. Wheeler

September 29, 2008

Second of two parts

If the Chesapeake Bay were a hospital patient, it would need major surgery, not just a tweak to the medicine it's been getting. After 25 years of cleanup efforts, the bay is barely holding its own against the tide of people who have moved into the region - drawn to the very body of water they're fouling.

The prognosis is not encouraging, with Maryland's population expected to grow by another million-plus people in the next 20 years.

The Chesapeake is so large, its ultimate recovery depends on actions by all the states whose waters drain into it. But scientists and advocates say there are steps Maryland could take on its own to revive its rivers - and thus the bay.

Most experts agree, for instance, that there must be a sharp reduction in polluted runoff from farms.

Tough limits on suburban sprawl also are needed, they say, to preserve the forests, meadows and wetlands that naturally filter out pollutants before they can reach the bay. And as part of that, the proliferation of household septic systems that leak pollution into creeks and rivers has to stop.

It's unclear whether those measures will get much consideration in the State House next year, even though no one disputes that they would help the bay. State and local officials have flinched in the past at ordering such steps because of what they would cost. Not just in dollars, but in the restrictions on farmers, builders and homeowners.

Farmers don't want to be told what to do with their land, saying tough regulations will drive them out of business. Builders say restrictions will put housing prices out of reach of working families.

And suburban homebuyers don't want to be told they can't have a house with a two-car garage on a one-acre lot, even if the bay suffers from such outsized development and all the driving it induces.

"We are the problem. All of us are the problem," says Gov. Martin O'Malley, who campaigned two years ago on a pledge to step up the bay restoration effort.

"We all agree conceptually that we shouldn't build on farmlands, woodlands and wetlands," O'Malley said in an interview. "[But] once the development's there and it's our kid that's going through the third grade, we want to be sure there's a new school there. We want to be sure that there's a traffic light and plenty of big roads so that we don't have to wait to get out of our development in the morning."

And so lawmakers in Annapolis compromise. In deference to the bay's popularity, they rarely kill bills to help the Chesapeake, but they water them down to satisfy those whose interests would be hurt. Environmental advocates praise the results as "good first steps," but they have not been enough to improve the health of the bay and its tributaries.

During the past two decades, the water quality of key Maryland rivers - and the bay as a whole - has actually worsened, according to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The amount of sediment in the Patuxent River has nearly tripled, and nitrogen pollution in the Choptank River is twice as high, the U.S. Geological Survey found.

"Everybody's in favor of healing the Chesapeake Bay until it comes to doing their part," observes Del. James W. Hubbard, a Prince George's County Democrat.

The lack of progress frustrates activists, who say Maryland's reputation as a national leader in environmental protection is in jeopardy.

"We simply can't be compromising down as much as we are," says Dru Schmidt-Perkins, director of the environmental group 1000 Friends of Maryland. "We don't have time anymore."

Regulating farmers

Some advocates argue that the Chesapeake will not get better unless the state starts telling farmers what to do - imposing strict limits on how much fertilizer they can apply to their fields, with inspectors actually checking farms to make sure.

It has been a decade since anyone seriously proposed doing that. A scare over fish kills and reports of human illness on the Eastern Shore generated public pressure to crack down on farm runoff, the leading source of river pollution there. But Gov. Parris N. Glendening's proposal drew an outcry from farmers, who said such a law would threaten their ability to earn a living. The General Assembly rewrote the legislation to create an essentially voluntary program in which farms can draw up their own plans for limiting runoff.

Today, with agriculture still the single largest source of bay pollution, some are renewing their call for tough new farm rules to clean up the bay.

"Tell me where something like this has been accomplished without regulations," says Donald F. Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.