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It took a while to convince the politicians, but Virginians long ago committed to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
By slow steps, the General Assembly put those goals into action, even dedicating millions to clean up sewage treatment facilities, which discharge nutrients into the estuary's tributaries.
The next step has always been doing something about the most intractable pollution: runoff from farms and expanding suburbs.
Much of the nitrogen that pollutes the bay and causes algae blooms and dead zones comes in stormwater that washes over fields, yards and pavement. The dynamics of stormwater flow are well understood, and the role it plays in Bay degradation is abundantly clear.
Doing something about it is expensive, difficult and disruptive. It involves changing the way farmers and neighbors behave. Administrations - Democratic and Republican - have dragged their feet, refusing to invest money or enforcement in the Bay's biggest problem.
Now the McDonnell administration is resisting on new fronts, including one in D.C.
Doug Domenech, the secretary of natural resources, has pledged to be rigorous about the science and modeling of stormwater flow in the watershed. That's the kind of statement that makes already rigorous scientists suspicious about a politician's motives.
In an interview with The Pilot's Scott Harper, Domenech cleared up concerns about his commitment to the Bay, though perhaps not in the way he intended.
"The mitigating factor here is the economy," Domenech said. "It's such a bad time to impose all these new restrictions on farmers, foresters, land developers. It's the worst time to be kicking these guys."
Apparently, though, it is the right time to go on kicking the Bay and protecting a core constituency.
In addition to elevating business over the environment, questioning the well-understood dynamics of stormwater and inviting opponents to sue over environmental regulations, Domenach also argued that the cleanup is already working just fine:
"The Bay is getting cleaner. Why all the fuss about us 'failing' the Bay? We're not failing; the cleanup is working."
Barely. Progress has been agonizingly slow, even by Richmond standards. Worse, had suburban growth in the watershed not slowed because of the recession, the Chesapeake's meager progress would've been slower still.
Assertions like Domenech's, though, are part of a larger effort in Richmond to resist the Environmental Protection Agency's new push for Bay cleanup. Part of the EPA effort will involve restrictions on how much pollution can end up in a waterway.
The EPA's overdue interest in Bay cleanup comes even as the agency has become political enemy No. 1 in the McDonnell administration. Given that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and others are at war with the EPA over its efforts to clean up air, it makes perverse sense for Richmond to also fight efforts to clean up water.
Given that the push to protect the Chesapeake has always been consistently bipartisan, the question is why?
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Good Ol' Boys Pay to Play Chesapeake Bay Cleanup
Rather than spend billions more on sewage treatment plant upgrades. Programs that are of questionable benefit. Instead, dramatic upgrade of Chesapeake Bay water quality can be accomplished faster and much less expensively by removing flood plain dikes, dams, and obstructing pipelines. And enlarging those roadway culverts that currently restrict twice daily tidal flows to invaluable marshland.
And simply by doing any necessary navigation channel dredging by rotary cutter head hydraulic pipeline dredge. And depositing those dredge spoils, by pipeline, on long intertidal slopes just seaward of certain bulkheads and eroded shorelines nearby. Saving hundreds of millions of dollars, involved in transporting navigation channel dredge spoils and placement in US Army Corps of Engineer’s (USACE) vertical dredge spoil sites such as Craney and Popular Islands,
As well as saving future monies planned for other, questionably effective, rehabilitation programs. Like oyster reefs, sewage treatment plant upgrades and Bacterra and Filterra Storm Water Filters. Saving, literally billions of dollars.
Government should rely less on sewage treatment plant upgrades and more on Mother N
Hydraluic Dredge Pipelines for Salt Marsh Restoration
We should cancel the installation of those multi million dollar Bacterra and Filterra storm water filters as they are designed to be bypassed (in times of heavy sanitary sewer overflows) during heavy rains and during storm surges….
The Bacterra and Filterra systems are just more Obama pay to play. We should, instead, let the new living shoreline marsh grasses do it better and cheaper. Saving billions of borrowed Chinese dollars.
Note: Breaux Tidal Marshland restoration projects in Louisiana …that is pipeline dredging of shipping channels in the Mississippi River and placement of dredge spoils, on a long 1:6 intertidal slope seaward of eroded shorelines so as to reestablish fringe marshes. Within one year, without marsh grass planting, and without rip rap sills, new living shorelines can be established (reestablished)’. Note: the sediment, turbidity and pollution in the Mississippi River far exceeds that of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
And if hydraulic pipeline dredge projects have worked in the Mississippi River, surely they can work in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. In fact the beautiful salt marshes in the Indigo Dunes area were created, years ago, u
Doing Bay Clean-up Cheaper and Faster
And NASA’s BC Wolverton’s studies…new (living shoreline) marshes can remove sediment, nitrogen, raw sewage, Hepatitis A viral particles, heavy metals, coliforms and PCBs from the waters that flow through them. During twice daily tidal cycles. Accordingly, water clarity is markedly improved and thus the “…ability to grow submerged aquatic vegetation…”…is enhanced!
Using the above proven watershed rehabilitation programs, the Chesapeake Bay watershed rehabilitation could be done much, much better than currently planned programs. And much faster. And it could be done for one tenth the cost. And, thus, it could be done without borrowed Chinese dollars!
But this would be too simple. Too fast. And the good ol’ boys with their pay to play scams like oyster reefs, Bacterra and Filterra storm water filters and sewage treatment plant upgrades….why the good ol’ boys would be left out in the cold. And we can’t have that, can we?
George Meredith MD
Virginia Beach
Keep government out of the bay
Even though people on their own will not change their habits to save the bay having the government intercede will surely draw complaints by libertarians and the tea party. The reason government exist is because some people can not be trusted todo the right thing.
Goals, yes; tactics, let's be careful
There is one important point; the Bay must be restored, both for the environment and for the Bay based economy. How to do this, and how fast, are legitimate questions. As a real estate developer, we are pleased to develop our projects in full recognition that federal, state, and local ordinances and regulations now apply to all new real estate projects, and we are not contributors to increased run off nor degradation of the Bay. However, legacy development, that is, old homes, businesses, and public infrastructure, developed before stormwater management and quality regulations were promulaged, are one of the major sources of pollution in the Bay. So stopping new development is exactly the wrong thing to do, yet that has been proposed as recently as the Kaine administration. The key is to stop suburban sprawl, and encourage the redevelopment of legacy property that for decades has piped its pollution directly into streams, rivers, and bays.
Solutions
I have just had the plaque removed from my upper teeth, so I can forget about having to pay for getting the lower teeth done. Partial cures are just fine, so get those dentists ads off my TV.
Perhaps its partisan because the issue is more important
than the solution. The Democrats seem intent on using the environment as a club to beat the Republicans and will just keep moving the goalposts to preserve the issue.
The bay is noticeably healthier now than it was even 5 years ago to anyone who fishes there. The grass beds are far more extensive and turbidity is noticeably less.
While the left seems happy to pound away at industry and agriculture, the real problems are municipal sewerage, runoff from lawns and the failure to protect the bay's filter feeders.
So, if the Democrats want to be sincere, how about correcting those problems first. Start with abandoning the desire for fescue lawns, which require heavy fertilizer, in favor of summer grasses which don't. And any Democrat with a lawn which is green in December can just shut the heck up.
And so should libertarians
And so should libertarians and republcians.
Come to think of it
What kind of lawns is Runneymede putting in in its new developments?
If we could get major developers to switch to summer grasses that would be a big help.
Agreement
Tabor, for once, you and I are in complete agreement; the Bay must be cleaned up. In answer to your question, our goal in the commercial projects we develop is no grass at all; we prefer native plantings and avoid any grass as much as we can. However, legacy subdivisions and commercial projects do not have any stormwater management except a direct concrete pipe to the outfall into the Bay. That is why new development and redevelopment of legacy projects under strict requirements for stormwater management and quality is so essential for the health of the Bay.