runoff - Chestertown Spy

Maryland is on track toward reaching its Chesapeake Bay pollution reduction goals by 2025, but advocates say the state needs to plant more trees to address stormwater runoff from farms and land development.

The majority of the state’s pollution reduction has come from modifying wastewater treatment plants, while pollution from agriculture and urban and suburban storm water runoff remain relatively high, Alison Prost, vice president of environmental protection & restoration for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told members of the House of Delegates Environment & Transportation Committee Thursday. Sixty-four of 67 wastewater treatment plants in Maryland have been upgraded already, she said.

“In the future, we really don’t have a lot more to gain from wastewater treatment. Where the lion share of the opportunity is in agriculture,” Ann Pesiri Swanson, executive director of Chesapeake Bay Commission, told state lawmakers. “Agriculture is very, very challenging, requires a lot of technical assistance and a lot of cost-share as well.”

Agriculture cost-share programs provide federal and state funding to help pay farmers’ costs for installing conservation practices, such as planting forested buffers or fencing livestock out of streams.

In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) pollutant reduction target, which requires six Bay states and the District of Columbia to implement plans that would reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution into the Bay by 2025. The goal is not to have clean water by 2025, but to have all the proper practices that will deliver clean water by 2025.

Between 1985 and 2018, total nutrient pollution in the Bay declined by 83 million pounds. But to reach pollutant reduction goals by 2025, an additional 52 million pounds of pollution must be eliminated, according to Swanson.

Although the Conowingo Dam, a 90-year old hydroelectric dam in the lower Susquehanna River in Maryland, was expected to continue trapping nutrients and sediment behind the dam until 2025, water has been running over the dam and into the Chesapeake Bay, even in low-flow storms, Swanson explained.

That adds 6 million pounds of pollutants. And climate change has added another 5 million pounds.

“This is like new calories coming into the body and you’ve got to incorporate them into your diet,” Swanson said, causing Maryland’s share to reach the 2025 pollutant reduction goal to rise from 6.2 million pounds to 7.5 million pounds.

“The place you’re going to find those additional pounds remain [in] agriculture, storm water, [and] septic because for the most part, we’ve addressed wastewater,” Swanson said.

Sixty percent of future nitrogen reductions planned will come from best management practices, tools that farmers use to reduce soil and fertilizer runoff, such as animal waste management systems and planting more trees as buffers, Swanson said.

Since the Bay states began working toward their own pollution reduction goals, Pennsylvania — home to most of the Susquehanna, which empties into the the Chesapeake at the top of the Bay — has consistently lagged in meeting its goals. That led the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other organizations to file a complaint in September against the EPA for failing to require Pennsylvania, as well as New York, to develop plans that sufficiently reduce pollution as required by the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint.

“Unless Pennsylvania gets on track, we’re going to have a tough time meeting 2025,” Prost said.

Only 30% of Pennsylvania’s state legislators represent jurisdictions in the Bay watershed, and Pennsylvania’s political and philanthropic “power centers” are outside the Bay watershed, Marel King, Pennsylvania director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, told state lawmakers. The lack of support in Pennsylvania’s legislature explains the consistent lack of funding from that state to restore the Bay’s health.

Advocates also talked about the realities of climate change and impacts it will have on Maryland’s 2025 pollution reduction goals. Warmer water temperatures cause oxygen levels to decrease, which could expand the Bay’s dead zone areas, Prost said.

To start addressing that impact, Maryland’s legislature could push the Maryland Department of the Environment to update its permits to account for climate change. Currently, MDE’s calculations for storm water runoff are based on numbers from 15 years ago, Prost said. As storms are expected to get stronger and cause more flash flooding in the near future, there need to be stronger controls to prevent runoff from construction sites, Prost said.

It is important that the state have a multi-pronged approach and invest in strategies that address climate change, flooding and water quality together, rather than focus on water quality alone, advocates said.

The state should focus on planting trees as part of the climate solutions bill, Prost said. Not only can trees slow and strain storm water runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, but they can also capture and store carbon dioxide, reducing it in the air.

“The reality is for water quality, for climate, for community resilience, trees is where the investment needs to go,” Prost said. “It’ll help us meet our watershed improvement plan goals, and if we invest more in trees it’s going to help us with those additional pounds that Maryland now needs to find related to climate change.”

By Elizabeth Shwe

Leaders from six Chesapeake Bay watershed states, the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have failed to address recent reports highlighting how some Bay states are not on track to meet their pollution reduction goals by 2025, environmental groups said Tuesday.

The Chesapeake Executive Council, which includes the leaders of Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, D.C. and the EPA, met virtually Tuesday for its annual meeting. Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) announced that the council had adopted a diversity statement, pledging to improve equity and a culture of inclusion throughout the states’ efforts to clean up the Bay.

“Just as natural ecosystems depend on biodiversity to thrive, the long-term success of the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort depends on the equitable, just and inclusive engagement of all communities living throughout the watershed,” the council’s statement said in part. “…For this effort to be successful it will require us to honor the culture, history and social concerns of local populations and communities.”

Hogan then turned the gavel over to Gov. Ralph S. Northam (D) of Virginia.

“Over my past three years as chair, we have worked together to implement real, bipartisan, common sense solutions to the challenges facing the Chesapeake Bay, and the results speak for themselves,” Hogan said. “Maryland remains fully committed to this historic partnership as we continue making strides to preserve this national treasure.”

However, the leaders did not address reports issued in the last few days by the Environmental Integrity Project and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, both of which found that Maryland and Pennsylvania are regressing on their efforts to mitigate stormwater pollution runoff into the Bay. Both reports found that Pennsylvania in particular was far from meeting its pollution reduction goals by 2025.

“Once again this year, Bay restoration leaders ignored the elephant in the room. Pennsylvania’s plan to meet the goals that all agreed on is woefully inadequate and implementation is seriously off-track,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker said in a statement.

“Unless the Commonwealth finds a way to meet its commitments, the investments that the other Bay states are making will improve local water quality, but the Bay will not be restored,” he continued.

In 2010, the EPA established the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), which requires Bay states to implement plans that would reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution into the Bay by 2025. The federal agency is responsible for establishing accountability measures to ensure that each state meets its cleanup commitments.

A report released last week by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation found that although Maryland is on track to achieving its 2025 pollution reduction goals, it must focus more on reducing urban and suburban stormwater pollution runoff, as this will be Maryland’s second largest source of nitrogen pollution by 2025.

Although Pennsylvania has successfully reduced pollution from wastewater treatment plants, the report found that it needs to focus on reducing pollution from agriculture, which makes up 93% of the total remaining nitrogen reduction necessary to meet pollution reduction goals by 2025.

Another report by the Environmental Integrity Project released Monday found that Maryland’s 2019 Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan allows 1.5 million more pounds of nitrogen pollution from urban and suburban stormwater runoff into the Bay by 2025, or 20% more pollution, than its 2012 commitment.

Similarly, Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan will allow 7 million more pounds of nitrogen pollution from stormwater runoff by 2025, a 87% increase from its 2012 plan.

“It was disappointing that today’s annual meeting of Chesapeake regional governors – only two of whom even bothered to show up – did not discuss the Bay’s serious pollution problems with any candor or depth, and did not even bring up the backsliding by Pennsylvania and Maryland on controlling urban and suburban stormwater pollution,” said Tom Pelton, spokesman for the Environmental Integrity Project.

“Governor Hogan praised the ‘incredible progress’ the states have made in cleaning up the Bay. But, in fact, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s most recent report card on the Bay showed that the estuary’s overall health rated a terrible 44 out of 100 in 2019, which was an even worse score than the 47 out of 100 score in 2010, when the current Bay cleanup efforts began,” Pelton continued.

The leaders from the Chesapeake watershed also did not mention Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia’s recent declaration that they intend to sue the EPA for its failure to enforce state pollution reduction plans, specifically Pennsylvania and New York.

“Once again, Pennsylvania’s progress has fallen short, and, once again, EPA has failed to hold them accountable. This should not be surprising, since this administration has spent the past three and a half years rolling back environmental regulations and enforcement mechanisms,” Kristen Reilly, director of Choose Clean Water Coalition, said in a statement.

“We would like to remind EPA that their role in this restoration effort is to hold the states to the commitments they have made to clean their local rivers, streams and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.”

By Elizabeth Shwe

Md. Could Reach Bay Health Goal by 2025, But Success Hinges on Curbing Runoff

Environmentalists Bash Leaders of Chesapeake Bay States for Backsliding

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