The front page article in the Star Democrat on Thursday, October 4, read “Conowingo Muck Causes Bay Issues.” The news article then began with this paragraph:
Why bother? If silt and pollutants from New York and Pennsylvania come gushing out of Conowingo Dam’s gates each time there’s a tropical downpour or hurricane, what effect can clean-water regulations imposed on the Eastern Shore’s small counties have?
Not only was the connotation of that rhetorical question misguided, the article itself was replete with quotes and information that are patently false. It quoted Kent County Commissioner Ron Fithian, for example, as saying,” All the tributaries in Maryland are clear as a whistle.” Moreover the article has generated editorials erroneously repeating that the majority of our pollution problems are caused by sources to the north of us. These falsehoods would have us all abandon our attempts to restore and protect our waters, leaving a legacy to our children of fouled and dead rivers.
Here are some facts: Midshore Riverkeeper Conservancy, through its Riverkeeper scientists and fifty plus Creekwatcher volunteers, tests 84 sites at least monthly in our streams and tributaries, and has done so for the past three years. We test for a range of pollutants such as nutrient levels, for chlorophyll a, dissolved oxygen, water clarity, temperature, and salinity. Before MRC existed, an organization of volunteers, the Talbot Creekwatchers, tested our rivers for a decade. Here is what we have learned: the farther we test up all of our streams, the worse the water quality becomes. This holds true above the tidal zones, where no water infiltrates from the middle of the Bay or from north of us—where no water comes from the Conowingo Dam. This demonstrates that our rivers and streams are polluted from the surrounding land. In fact, all the available science clearly tells us that our rivers and streams are polluted primarily from the land that surrounds them, not from the middle of the bay or from sources to the north.
Here is another vital truth.Testing of the Choptank River since 1984 has shown two key trends: 1) a gradual increase in chlorophyll a, which is an indicator for the concentration of algae in the water, caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus, and 2) a corresponding decrease in dissolved oxygen in the water. The graph below*, courtesy of Dr. Thomas Fisher of University of Maryland’s Horn Point Environmental Center, tells the story. The lower dotted line is the place where no life can survive, where we lose our rivers entirely. That is the direction in which we have been headed.
One aspect of the news article, however, was true and important. There is certainly an urgent need to understand and address the issues surrounding the Conowingo Dam. In fact, there is presently underway a three year study involving the State of Maryland, the Army Corps of Engineers, and conservation organizations designed to better understand the issues of the Conowingo Dam and to develop remediation solutions. The cost of the study is 1.5 million dollars. This is a serious effort that hopefully will lead to a long term remedial plan. And those of us in the conservation community will insist that such a plan is developed.
But to use the Conowingo Dam as an excuse to do nothing here, where we live, do nothing to reduce the pollution coming off our lands, pollution that threatens the very vitality of our rivers, is misguided and harmful to our community. It is an irresponsible approach. As for Ron Fithian’s suggestion that our rivers and streams are “clear as a whistle,” I invite him to come with us on the upper Choptank or the Wye River on any summer’s day, where the water clarity is often less than a foot.
*(Fisher, T. R., T. E. Jordan, K. W. Staver, A. B. Gustafson, A. I. Koskelo, R. J. Fox, A. J. Sutton, T. Kana, K. A. Beckert, J. P. Stone, G. McCarty, and M. Lang. 2010. The Choptank Basin in transition: intensifying agriculture, slow urbanization, and estuarine eutrophication, pps. 135-165, IN: M. J. Kennish and H. W. Paerl (eds), Coastal Lagoons: Systems of Natural and Anthropogenic Change, CRC Press.)
Tim Junkin is the director of Midshore Riverkeeper Conservancy in Easton, Maryland. www.midshoreriverkeeper.org
Nancy Schwerzler says
While I cannot speak to water quality issues in the streams and rivers cited in this letter, I can comment with first hand knowledge of the impact of the Conowingo dam on the upper Chesapeake Bay in Cecil County. I have a front row seat, living right on the Bay close to the Elk River and Susquhanna flows into the Bay. When the dam opens its gates, our bayfront water turns foul, murky and odorous, and is littered with telephone poles, trees, tires and assorted debris. Some longtime residents say they have even seen sofas floating by!
Yes, there are many causes for water pollution and it is naive to suggest that water quality in regional steams is pristine; clearly that is not the case as the data cited above indicates. But the Conowingo dam– and the buildup of silt that is threatening future water quality– is a very significant source of pollution in the Bay. And it is highly questionable that unbiased data will come from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is currently stonewalling southern Cecil County residents on studies indicated the Corp’s dumping of dredge spoil from the Bay’s shipping channel has polluted groundwater and private wells in southern Cecil County.
The Corp is itself a major contributor to pollution of the Bay, as its dumping sites for dredge spoil are located in the “critical area” immediately adjacent to the Bay!