Dead Zone in Our Chesapeake Bay

We here in Maryland have a natural treasure living right nearby. It is the Chesapeake Bay:

Water that streams into the Chesapeake comes from a watershed that includes areas within six states and the District of Columbia:

New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware,
Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia
form the Chesapeake Bay's Watershed Community

For many years the watershed area has streamed water into the bay that is heavily polluted by nitrogen and phosphorus, elements contained in lawn fertilizers and in manure generated on farms such as the chicken farms on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Storm water runoff takes those elements with it, and those so-called "nutrients" wind up creating huge "dead zones" in Chesapeake Bay where fish, crabs, clams, and oysters will die.

The dead zones occur because the nitrogen and phosphorus feed large "blooms" of algae growth in the bay. After completing its life cycle, the now-dead algae form a black glop that robs the water below of oxygen. The creatures living in that water either relocate or die. Many, such as oysters, cannot relocate. Others try and fail. The result is a widespread natural tragedy that happens like clockwork every summer.

Here is a map showing in red the dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay in 2003:

In this year of 2011 the dead zone is especially large, says this recent article from The Washington Post:

This year’s Chesapeake Bay dead zone covers a third of the bay, stretching from the Baltimore Harbor to the bay’s mid-channel region in the Potomac River, about 83 miles, when it was last measured in late June. It has since expanded beyond the Potomac into Virginia, officials said.

Especially heavy flows of tainted water from the Susquehanna River brought as much nutrient pollution into the bay by May as normally comes in an entire average year, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources researcher said. As a result, “in Maryland we saw the worst June” ever for nutrient pollution, said Bruce Michael, director of the DNR’s resource assessment service.

This is not just a local problem:

A similar phenomenon is taking shape in the Mississippi River Valley, where tons of chemical fertilizer run off huge industrial farms, the Nature Conservancy announced recently. Findings by researchers at Texas A&M University support predictions that remarkably heavy rains and snow melt in the valley will create the largest-ever dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dead zones run the length of the Atlantic Coast. Environmentalists say they are a testament to reports that pollution loads from ever-expanding cities and suburbs are growing and, in some cases, creating a monster.

Heavy snowmelt and rains make for great quantities of heavily polluted runoff ... and, of course, they cause "100-year" floods such as we saw on the Mississippi River earlier this year. This is all part of "global weirding," a byproduct of global warming. The fishermen, crabbers, and oystermen on the Chesapeake Bay will have an even smaller catch than usual this year as a result of it.

The Post article goes on:

In December, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a “pollution diet” to dramatically reduce the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that states can allow in the bay from municipalities and farms.

The plan is more aggressive than its predecessors in past years that were criticized as ineffective. Under the plan, Chesapeake Bay watershed states — Virginia, Maryland, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania — and the District were required to draft and submit strategies to the EPA for reducing nutrient pollution.

The final plans will cost billions to improve municipal water treatment plants that contributed to nitrogen runoff, and to improve conservation efforts by farmers, particularly large animal-feed organizations where phosphorus runs into the bay when rain washes away manure.

You can read about Katharine Antos ...

... the 31-year-old employee in the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program Office who got the various states to agree to their new "pollution diets," in this recent Post story. Antos worked to assemble the plans agreed to by the states just in time to meet a court-imposed deadline for 15-year plans to dramatically reduce Chesapeake Bay pollution.

But the overall "roadmap" that was agreed to has been challenged, says the first article ...

... by two powerful lobbies and other groups that are seeking a court order to block it. The American Farm Bureau Federation argued that costly conservation requirements could drive farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed out of business, and that states — not the EPA — should determine pollution limits.

The group’s lawsuit in a federal district court in Harrisburg, Pa., asks a judge to stop the plan from going forward. The National Association of Home Builders recently joined the suit.

At stake here for the plaintiffs is not just what gets done to curb pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, but also the extent to which the Chesapeake plan might be ...

... a harbinger for far-reaching requirements in the Mississippi River basin, where industrial farms are responsible for chemical runoff that lead to huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Association of Home Builders joined the suit because:

... Housing developments with paved driveways, streets and roofs without greenery are another source of nitrogen runoff because they send more rain across lawns than can be absorbed, washing lawn fertilizer into the watershed. Environmentalists say builders have resisted calls to create greener communities with permeable stone and grassy areas that soak up rain.

The forces that oppose the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan are powerful and rich, says the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The CBF is ...

... part of a coalition that sued the EPA in 2009 after decades of weaker anti-pollution measures failed to clean the bay, lambasted the farm bureau’s suit to stop the EPA’s plan.

“Farmers, the chicken council, fertilizer institute, hog people, turkey people . . . these are big Washington lobbying associations,” said Will Baker, the foundation’s president. “They’re not mom-and-pop farmers. If you look at the amount of money they’ve given to candidates and lobbying, it’s in the hundreds of millions.”

Sadly, this controversy is playing out pretty much beneath the radar screen in these days when news coverage is dominated by the federal debt crisis. Yet how the suit is eventually decided could spell the demise of the agreed-to roadmap for the Chesapeake Bay's cleanup. It could also keep cleanup efforts for the Mississippi River from coming to full fruition. That dire outcome could deal a death blow to two of our treasured natural waterways in America, the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River.

Yet the plaintiffs in the suit clearly have a lot at stake, too. They make or grow such things as new houses for us to live in and chickens for us to eat at Popeye's.  True, they are not mom-and-pop outfits. They are big corporations, and they have outsized legal and political power.

Still, if the suit is decided in favor of the EPA, the plaintiffs will have to pay for much of the bay and river cleanup. Not necessarily directly, but in terms of having the states impose on them more costly regulations that would force them to clean up their act. For example, homebuilders would have to build greener developments, which would reduce the number of houses per development and make the developments more expensive to build. Some of those added costs would be passed on to homebuyers, and some the developers would have to eat. The costs passed on to homebuyers would make the homes more expensive.

Meanwhile, fewer homes built would mean fewer jobs for carpenters and plumbers and electricians. And fewer building materials purchased from suppliers. There would be a ripple effect that would be felt widely in the local and even the national economy. Fewer people would be able to afford all that many chicken meals at Popeye's then ... and the prices of those meals would be going up as well.

It would cost us a lot more than we may think to clean up our waterways.

Still and all, what about those Chesapeake Bay watermen ...

... whose numbers have been dwindling for decades as the bay has gotten too little attention from state and local governments in the watershed area?

At the end of the day, I personally think it will be very unlikely that the tug of war between competing, admittedly legitimate interests will succeed in restoring the Chesapeake or the Mississippi, unless and until we come to feel a spiritual, sacramental connection to the earth we live on. That and that alone would tip the balance in favor of Mother Nature.