Idled watermen deserve relief

Whether Chesapeake Bay watermen win a federal disaster declaration, and the money that might flow from it, Maryland and Virginia still have an obligation to see them through the crab crisis the states helped cause and are now trying to solve.

The states have new rules designed to reduce the harvest of female crabs by 34 percent, and to give a crashing fishery the chance to recover from decades of nutrient pollution, toxics and overfishing.

When the states announced new limits on harvests earlier this year, and promised more to come, they were finally reacting to the latest symptom of a long-standing problem. Sadly, for the watermen and for everyone fond of their imperiled catch, the cause of the Bay's problems remain to be addressed with similar vigor.

The Chesapeake's woes are rooted in the fertilizer that farmers put on crops and suburban home-owners deposit on lawns; the outflow from inadequate sewage treatment and broken septic systems; the chemicals that run off roads and parking lots each time it rains; the detergents used to clean dishes and clothes. All that stuff, when it washes into waterways, disrupts the ecosystem of the Bay and the economy it supports.

Until permanent changes are made to the behavior of the watershed's human inhabitants, disruptions like the Bay has seen in the crab population and other species will be unavoidable. In the meantime, however, both states have an obligation to those suffering in the current crisis.

The governors have taken the extraordinary step of asking the Commerce Department for a federal disaster designation, a first step to get Congress to appropriate money for crabbers and the businesses that depend on them. But the Commerce Department could also decide the crisis was avoidable, or a cash-strapped Congress could do nothing.

The federal response doesn't satisfy the obligation Maryland and Virginia and - quite directly - their citizens, have to the watermen downstream from their lawns and businesses and farms. If the federal government won't provide aid, state governments must.

Whether they like it or not, the tremendous growth in the suburbs of both states has done serious harm to the Chesapeake Bay and, by extension, to the watermen. The least all those new citizens can do is help their neighbors in a time of need.