Tainted waters

Despite a generation of efforts to clean up the Chesapeake, development and farming along Maryland's rivers still foul the bay

By Rona Kobell

September 28, 2008

BENEDICT - First of two parts

Walter Boynton knows all there is to know about the Patuxent River - how to find its guts and marshes, where it shifts from suburban stream into bay-like vastness, when the tide is slack and when it rises.

But you don't need to be a University of Maryland biologist to see that the river is in trouble. As Boynton steers his boat underneath the Route 231 bridge near this Charles County town, a thin white film covers the water - part of a miles-long algae bloom.

He lifts a dredge from the water to examine a sample of the bottom. His crew recoils at the stench, like that of rotten eggs. Nothing is living in this muck - none of the small clams, crabs or oysters that used to make the river their home. It is the deadest part of a dead zone, with oxygen levels far below what's needed to sustain life.

"Frankly, in all my years, I don't ever remember seeing the oxygen that low here," said Boynton, 61, a researcher at the university's Center for Environmental Science. Nitrogen pollution is feeding the noxious algae, which suck oxygen from the water and suffocate creatures below.

In the 25 years since Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia signed a historic agreement to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, the three states and the federal government have spent several billion dollars on the effort. Yet, the bay in many respects is as bad as or worse than when they started. Maryland researchers give its water quality a score of 40 out of 100 - a far poorer grade than the 55 it got for 1986.

The degradation of Maryland's rivers is a main reason for this decline. In Anne Arundel County, bacteria and nitrogen from human waste pour into the Severn River from thousands of septic tanks. In Southern Maryland, development now lines the shores of the Patuxent, sending nitrogen-laden runoff into the river. On the Eastern Shore, fertilizer from farms continues its assault on the Choptank.

Maryland's leaders have long blamed other states for the Chesapeake's problems. They point out that much of the bay's pollution flows in from the Susquehanna River, largely from Pennsylvania farms. Another source is the Potomac, which meanders through Virginia, West Virginia and Washington.

But several of the bay's most impaired rivers are almost entirely within Maryland. And the blame for their precarious health, scientists say, rests squarely on the shoulders of state and local politicians who have allowed harmful land-use practices to flourish.

"I'm not worried about the pace of the cleanup. I'm worried that we're not even moving in the right direction," said William Dennison, a vice president at the Center for Environmental Science.

In 1985, the Patuxent was taking on about 14,000 pounds of sediment. By 2006, that figure had shot up to nearly 40,000 pounds, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The nitrogen flowing into the Choptank totaled about 200,000 pounds in 1985. In 2006, the river had more than twice that amount.

The Severn and its sister rivers in Anne Arundel have fared no better. University of Maryland researchers estimate their water clarity would have scored 38 out of 100 in 1986. Twenty years later, that grade dropped to a 23.

The impact of this pollution is not simply a matter of environmental righteousness, a sense that residents of the watershed must save the bay because it's the right thing to do. A bay on the brink is a bay where people cannot swim, where boaters won't sail, where no one wants to catch the few fish still alive.

Already in the Chesapeake, watermen are pulling up pots of dead crabs from fouled water. Many kinds of fish, such as yellow perch, are largely gone from the rivers where they once spawned. Nearly every major species that once made the bay a great protein factory has dwindled - costing the region at least $135 million in lost catch alone, according to University of Maryland economist Doug Lipton.

It is clear, scientists say, what steps should be taken to improve the bay's health. But the proposals rarely get serious consideration in Annapolis.

Environmentalists have pushed for limits on how and where new houses can be built, but home-builder groups and local governments are loath to give up control. Some lawmakers pushed for mandatory limits on farm pollution, but lobbyists and rural legislators gutted the bill. And a measure to require nitrogen-removal technology for new septic systems was dead on arrival in the Capitol.

Some in Annapolis say government is doing what it can to protect the Chesapeake. "We all treasure the bay. We all want to do the best we can to stop its deterioration. But it's difficult because all of these things cost money," said Jim Peck, director of research at the Maryland Municipal League.

Gov. Martin O'Malley argues that realistically, measures to stem pollution require consensus-building and compromise, that change takes time and is accomplished in stages that span administrations.

"It's like building a cathedral," O'Malley said in an interview, citing as part of the work several measures he has pushed. "Each of us tries to build our piece of this activity."

But Gerald Winegrad, a former state senator who has pushed for pollution-control reforms, argues that state officials have roundly failed to take forceful action to rescue the bay. "We haven't done the bold things yet," Winegrad said. "How bad does it have to get before we get bold?"