Bay Journal

Op-Ed: 36 years after Bay Agreement, Restoration still a Pipe Dream by Gerald Winegrad

January 22, 2020 by Bay Journal 1 Comment

December 9 marked the 36th anniversary of the signing of the first Bay Agreement at George Mason University in Virginia.

As a state senator serving on the Chesapeake Bay Commission, I joined 700 Bay enthusiasts as witnesses. The one-page Chesapeake Bay Agreement was signed by Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania’s governors, DC’s mayor, and the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, all of whom solemnly pledged to restore the Bay. I was also a member of a workgroup that recommended legislative actions for each signer that would aid the Bay’s restoration, including a phosphate detergent ban that I sponsored and was enacted in 1985.

All of the attendees — elected federal and state politicians, scientists, administrators and environmental leaders — were optimistic that the herculean task ahead would lead to the Chesapeake’s restoration. The optimism was fueled by the display of bipartisanship that led to President Ronald Reagan declaring in his 1984 State of the Union address, “Though this is a time of budget constraints, I have requested for EPA one of the largest percentage budget increases of any agency. We will begin the long, necessary effort to clean up a productive recreational area and a special national resource — the Chesapeake Bay.” The formal Bay Program under the EPA was established with $10 million in funding.

In Maryland, under the leadership of Gov. Harry Hughes, 10 major Bay initiatives, were enacted in 1984, including the Critical Area Law, as well as the addition of significant funding and staff to move us forward. Many other laws followed, including those that protect wetlands and forests and ban detergent phosphates.But looking back to our optimism in 1983, if we were to have created a nightmare scenario for the Bay, it would be the one we are living in 36 years later!

Make no mistake — without the Bay Agreement and the Bay Program, the Chesapeake would be much worse. Reductions in nutrients and sediment have been achieved despite significant population growth, from 13 million watershed residents in 1983 to 18.3 million today.

Larval shad swim at the Van Dyke Shad Hatchery in Pennsylvania. The moratorium on shad harvest has been in effect for three decades with little recovery. (Dave Harp)

Still, Bay restoration is floundering and the situation is dire:

We have so poisoned our waters that reports abound of serious flesh-eating infections in humans who come into contact with Bay waters. My Annapolis car mechanic, an avid fisherman, contracted a serious infection while fishing the South River and was hospitalized with a chronic wasting disease eating his leg away. He died a year later. This is not an isolated case of life-threatening infections around the Bay.
Most of the Bay’s waters remain severely degraded with 58% of its waters so polluted they fail to meet basic Clean Water Act requirements.

The dead zone in the Chesapeake grew in late July, covering two cubic miles and making it the second-largest late-July dead zone since 1985. The average size for that time period is 1.34 cubic miles. Overall, the summer dead zone was the third largest recorded.

Collapsed fisheries — oysters, shad and soft clams — are at or near record lows.

Rockfish numbers have seriously declined, leading to a mandate from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to reduce harvest.

The moratorium on shad harvest has been in effect for three decades with little recovery. The shad restoration goal, agreed to by the Bay states in 2000, for returning spawning shad at the Conowingo Dam was abandoned when there was near zero recovery.

Adult oysters, the most important keystone Bay species, declined 50% in Maryland from 1999 to 2018 despite public funding for oyster restoration exceeding $50 million. Oysters are at 1% of the historic levels of the 1880s. More than 70% of the oyster bars in Maryland are useless for growing oysters because of excess sediment flows, mostly from agricultural operations, hindering recovery. In 2019, the spat set was so low there were not enough seed oysters to replant baby oysters in key areas of the Chesapeake. Oysters filter the water and its nutrients as well as serve as “coral reefs” in the Bay: a foundation for thick, healthy oyster bars.

Bay states failed to meet their 2010 deadline for increasing oysters tenfold. In 2014, the states responded by eliminating this goal as oyster populations declined. The time for a closure of the wild oyster harvest is now, with a transition period to move watermen to aquaculture.

Bay grasses, another essential living resource, are at only 56% of the 185,000 acres originally pledged by the states in 2000 to be attained by 2010. The response by the states in 2014: set an interim goal of 100,000 acres in 2017 and declare success when it was met while remaining far from a delayed goal of 185,000 by 2025. Underwater grass acreage will likely end up being significantly lower when results from last year’s survey are complete.

Many toxic hotspots remain.

What happened to our lofty commitments?

The years from 1983 to 2010 were marked by voluntary efforts under new Bay Agreements signed in 1987 and 2000 in which the states committed to take the actions necessary to meet nitrogen and phosphorus reduction goals aimed at restoring water quality. The voluntary efforts resulted in repeated failures to meet these goals with serious consequences for water quality, living resources and humans. But there were no consequences for the elected officials and states that violated their pledges.

In 2010, the EPA was required, in the settlement of a lawsuit, to impose a pollution diet with hard caps on nutrients and sediment called a TMDL (total maximum daily load). The EPA listed potential sanctions — some very consequential — for failure to take the actions to achieve 60% of the pollution reductions by 2017 and 100% by 2025.

Again, the states failed to meet many of these requirements in 2017, especially for nitrogen. The emasculated EPA fecklessly failed to take any action against even the most recalcitrant states such as Pennsylvania.

We have excelled at nutrient reductions from wastewater treatment plants through the expenditure of billions of dollars and tougher federal limits on such dischargers. The reduction from these plants is “the” singular success story of the Bay restoration efforts as reductions occurred despite wastewater flows increasing significantly to serve a much greater population. The phosphate detergent ban helped in these efforts.

Federal Clean Air Act restrictions have also resulted in significant reductions of nitrogen from atmospheric deposition, especially with tougher new emission controls and the decline of coal burning for electrical generation. Unfortunately, President Trump is undoing these Clean Air Act regulations and promoting coal burning.

We have done the easier things even though decisions made to achieve the great reductions in nutrient flows from sewerage plants, such as the phosphate detergent ban and later the Flush Tax, were not easy.

But now that these reductions have been achieved, the states are faced with much more difficult requirements to reduce nonpoint pollutants, especially those from farm operations — the number one source of nitrogen pollution — and stormwater from developed lands. The latter is expensive to achieve as is upgrading septic tanks for better nitrogen removal. Clamping down on farm pollutants, especially from manure, is the most cost-effective choice we can make and yet efforts lag.

The states are reluctant to enact better regulatory measures governing agriculture. This is compounded by much more intensive agricultural operations, especially large chicken and other manure-producing operations and the expansion of nitrogen-intensive crops such as corn and soybeans.

Unfortunately, the EPA, elected officials and most of the environmental community believe the answer lies in throwing more money at famers to pay them not to pollute. Fully 40% of farm income this year comes from federal subsidies. Farmers have been given more than $1 billion in the Bay states from state and federal sources to reduce nutrient and sediment flows. This carrot approach must now be augmented with some sharp sticks strictly regulating farm pollutants.

Consider that Pennsylvania must reduce its nitrogen loads by more than 30 million pounds in the next five years to meet its TMDL goal, a staggering increased rate of 67 times previous annual reductions. With no new meaningful initiatives, there is a near zero likelihood of achievement even though Pennsylvania is responsible for 40% of the Bay’s nitrogen flows.

Maryland must reduce nitrogen flows by 2025 by 9 million pounds, including a ramp-up in its annual rate of farm nitrogen reduction of 6.4 times to meet its TMDL requirement. Yet the state’s watershed implementation plan lacks any new policies or funding to get the job done.

Since the TMDL was established, 84% of Maryland nitrogen load reductions came from wastewater treatment and those reductions will soon play out and may begin to increase over time. During that same period, only 16% of the state’s nitrogen reductions came from agriculture — the cheapest per pound to achieve — but the political will is lacking to better regulate this major pollutant source.

Then there is the problem of increasing pollution loads from new developments and the failure to reduce loads from existing impervious surfaces. Stormwater rates, volume and pollutant flows from new development must not be allowed to exceed the pre-development flows from storm events, including those from increasingly intense storm events. Funding to accomplish the massive multibillion-dollar existing stormwater problem must also be achieved.

Exacerbating these grave problems is the lack of political will to restore the Bay. The Trump administration’s first budget proposed eliminating all of the funding for the Bay Program. The U.S. House of Representatives passed riders in 2017 and 2018 to prohibit any enforcement by the EPA of the EPA-imposed limits under the Bay TMDL, though they did not win approval in the Senate. And, the states are not initiating the bold actions needed to address these pollutant flows for agriculture and developed lands.

Now, the situation has grown worse: The hopes that were rekindled when the EPA set the states on a mandatory pollution diet with potential grave consequences for failure to comply have been shattered. Dana Aunkst, the director of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program, has now stated that the TMDL with its 2025 pollution caps is “an aspiration” and not an enforceable deadline. Aunkst stated that “The TMDL itself is not enforceable.” This seems to make the whole TMDL exercise a house of cards now collapsing. Without a court victory, we are back to voluntary efforts. At no point since 1983 has saving the Bay been at a lower ebb.

We know that reducing nutrients and sediment works to restore water quality. We know the sources of these pollutants. We know what needs to be done to restore our treasured Chesapeake Bay.

What is most needed is strong political leadership that is so sorely lacking. Also needed is a more forceful and politically effective environmental community promoting aggressive changes to better regulate farm pollution, development pollution and forest loss. We can get it done but not with the current attitudes and near-sighted leadership.

Gerald W. Winegrad is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy where he teaches graduate courses on Chesapeake Bay restoration and wildlife management. He served 16 years in the Maryland legislature where he was responsible for many Bay initiatives, including the state’s phosphate detergent ban.

Can the EPA Enforce the Chesapeake Bay’s ‘Pollution Diet’?

January 15, 2020 by Bay Journal Leave a Comment

Is the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load and its cleanup deadline enforceable? The answer is complicated.

TMDLs are required for any “impaired” waterbody — one that does not meet standards set by a state to ensure a waterbody is safe for people and aquatic life.

A TMDL sets the maximum amount of a pollutant that the waterbody can receive and still meet those standards. The Bay TMDL maximum “loads” are established for the pollutants nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment.

The TMDL, often called the Bay’s “pollution diet,” allocates those loads among the states and major rivers that drain into the Bay. It also establishes specific limits for entities with a discharge permit.

But, in a strict sense, it is not the TMDL that enforces those numbers for individual dischargers. The permits do that job — but they must be consistent with the TMDL.

“TMDLs are not self-implementable,” said Mike Haire, who helped manage the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s TMDL program for years, and now teaches environmental science at Towson University. “But,” he added, “the bottom line is you can’t write permits that aren’t consistent with the TMDLs.” And if water quality standards are not being met after those permit limits are in place — possibly because unregulated sources of runoff are not meeting their goals — the limits “might have to become more stringent than the requirements in the TMDL,” Haire said.

Likewise, rules governing TMDLs do not establish deadlines, they only state that goals should be achieved in a “timely manner.”

But courts have held that water quality standards are to be met “reasonably promptly,” and the Bay cleanup could face a court-imposed deadline if the effort continues to fail, said Ridgeway Hall, an environmental attorney who has worked on Bay issues and written about its TMDL. (See the related article, MD threatens to sue EPA, PA over lack of action as regional tensions rise.)

While the Bay TMDL sets limits as all TMDLs do, it has several unique aspects. It includes an “accountability framework,” developed by the EPA and the states in the Bay watershed that goes beyond what TMDLs traditionally require. The framework includes a 2025 cleanup deadline that was agreed upon by the state-federal Bay Program partnership in 2007.

The accountability framework also requires states to write plans showing how they will meet cleanup goals, setting two-year milestones to provide “reasonable assurance” that they will meet their goals. Those milestones were suggested by the states.

The TMDL also outlines steps the EPA can take if states fall short of their goals for reducing pollution, including unregulated discharges from sources such as farms. Those “consequences,” such as forcing further reductions from regulated sources, are grounded in the EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act.

“The contingency actions were set up to get people’s attention and to recognize that there is a limited set of actions that the agency can take under the Clean Water Act,” said Rich Batiuk, retired associate director for science with the EPA Bay Program Office and a key architect of the Bay TMDL. “If states want to control their own destiny, we are saying great, but you need to hold up your end of the bargain or there is a price to be paid,” he said.

The Bay TMDL is also unique because its goals were adopted into the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement signed by the EPA and Bay states.

Section 117g of the Clean Water Act, which creates the state-federal Bay Program, includes a requirement that the EPA administrator “shall ensure that management plans are developed and implementation is begun by signatories to the Chesapeake Bay agreement to achieve and maintain … the nutrient goals of the Chesapeake Bay agreement …”

In terms of TMDL authority, “I think 117g presses EPA into a different place than other TMDLs in other places,” said Jon Mueller, vice president for litigation with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

About Karl Blankenship

Karl Blankenship is editor of the Bay Journal and executive director of Bay Journal Media. He has served as editor of the Bay Journal since its inception in 1991.

By Karl Blankenship

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EPA Confirms Shortfalls in PA, NY Bay Cleanup Plans

December 23, 2019 by Bay Journal

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency confirmed on Thursday that plans produced by Pennsylvania and New York fall far short of meeting Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals.

But the agency did not call for any new actions against the states, although their shortfalls — especially Pennsylvania’s huge gap — means the region would miss its 2025 deadline to put in place all actions needed to achieve the Bay’s clean water goals.

Instead, the agency asked the states to provide more details about the actions they would take during the next two years to get their programs back on track.

Meanwhile, the EPA’s evaluation of other state plans, which were submitted in August, found that they met goals, though the review found that most needed more detail to show how they would achieve the dramatically ramped-up rates of action needed to curb polluted runoff from farms and developed lands. The District of Columbia, though, has met its goals.

The EPA in 2010 established a new cleanup program called the Chesapeake Bay total maximum daily load, or “pollution diet,” which set limits on the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that each state sends to the Bay. The nutrients spur algae blooms that cloud its water and fuel oxygen-starved “dead zones.”

Since then, the levels of the water-fouling nutrients have declined — and phosphorus goals likely will be met — but the region remains far off track for nitrogen. Nitrogen reductions are lagging mostly because of shortfalls in Pennsylvania, which is, by far, the largest source of nutrients reaching the Chesapeake, though it does not border the Bay.

The EPA required the new state cleanup plans to show how states will meet nutrient reduction goals by the TMDL’s 2025 deadline. Between now and then, states also must continue to submit additional plans showing the actions they will take in two-year increments to show they are making adequate progress.

“It is critical that we continue the momentum that has led to signature successes and positive signs of resilience in the watershed,” said EPA Regional Administrator Cosmo Servidio. “The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure and its environmental, economic and cultural importance cannot be understated.”

But the agency’s failure to announce any actions against Pennsylvania — whose plan fell 25% short of its nitrogen reduction goal and had an annual funding shortfall of more than $300 million a year— was a disappointment to some.

“EPA has failed to fulfill its obligation to be the referee of the multi-state partnership. It has not held Pennsylvania accountable,” said William Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Rather, it has once again kicked the can down the road, abdicating its Clean Water Act responsibilities and putting the Bay restoration in jeopardy.”

He said the environmental group was considering suing the EPA for not using its regulatory oversight authority to enforce cleanup goals.

The agency has the ability to take a variety of actions against states failing to meet their goals, such as increasing oversight, extending regulatory authority over more entities, and requiring more pollution reductions from dischargers with permits, such as wastewater treatment plants.

In its evaluation, though, the EPA focused on providing assistance rather than meting out punitive measures, pledging to provide Pennsylvania with more technical support, continued grant funding, and help identifying places where runoff control measures would be most effective in meeting Bay goals.

As written, Pennsylvania’s plan would be about 9 million pounds short of its nitrogen reduction goal. New York’s plan was about 1 million pounds a year short.

That gap is more than a fifth of the 47 million pounds of additional annual nitrogen reductions the region needs to achieve to meet Bay water quality goals.

Most of the nitrogen reaching the Bay from Pennsylvania — and all of it coming from New York —flows down the Susquehanna River, the Bay’s largest tributary. Nutrients from the river, which empties near the head of the Bay, have an enormous impact on the Chesapeake’s water quality. Failure to come close to meeting nitrogen goals in the Susquehanna means that most of the Bay would be unlikely to meet clean water objectives.

Achieving nutrient reductions in Pennsylvania has been a struggle because most of its nitrogen comes from agriculture and stormwater runoff — sectors that all Bay states grapple to control. Pennsylvania has far more farms — 33,000 — than the other states, though, and most are small, making both oversight and outreach difficult.

Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia have made progress largely because they have reduced nutrient discharges from large wastewater treatment plants, and Pennsylvania has few of them. Since the TMDL was established, 85% of the nitrogen reductions in the Bay watershed have come from upgrading wastewater treatment plants across the region. But there are few plants left that need upgrades.

All states must now significantly ramp up efforts to control runoff from farms and developed lands at rates far beyond what they have demonstrated they can achieve in recent years. From now to the end of 2025, state plans cumulatively call for about 82% of the remaining nitrogen reductions to come from agriculture and 5% from developed lands.

While plans from other states generally described programs that would reach their goals, the EPA said more details are needed to boost confidence in that outcome. Its analysis said that states should provide estimates about the number of on-the-ground nutrient control actions they plan to take during the next two years.

In some cases, state plans call for the implementation rates of runoff control practices to be increased tenfold beyond recent levels. In comments submitted earlier this year about state plans, many local governments and conservation districts expressed skepticism that such an aggressive ramp-up could be achieved.

By Karl Blankenship

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Coalition to Think Beyond State Borders to Offset Conowingo Flows

October 30, 2019 by Bay Journal

A coalition of nonprofits is developing a plan to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution that now flows over the Conowingo Dam. (Dave Harp)

Write and enact a plan to eliminate millions of pounds of nutrient pollution washing into waterways.
Do it without duplicating the pollution reduction plans that states will be using to meet their own goals, which typically contain the cheapest and potentially most effective options.
Oh, and come up with a way to pay for it, too.

Surprisingly, people have signed up for this seemingly impossible job. A coalition of nonprofits is developing a plan to reduce nutrient pollution to the Upper Bay to offset the impact of the Conowingo Dam — and to pay for it.

They hope to identify highly effective ways to reduce agricultural and stormwater runoff, which carries nutrients into waterways, and use them in places not already being targeted by states for Bay cleanup efforts. They also aim to tap new funding sources, including the private sector, to help pay for the plan.

“It is certainly a challenge,” said Byran Seipp, a watershed manager with the Center for Watershed Protection who is helping to coordinate the effort. “There is no doubt about that. It is something people have been wrestling with for quite a long time.”

The 94-foot-high Conowingo Dam, located just 10 miles up the Susquehanna River from the Chesapeake, has been casting a shadow over Bay cleanup efforts for years. Scientists had long known that once its 14-mile-long reservoir was filled, it would no long trap pollutants and they would begin to flow downstream.

But that day of reckoning was thought to be far in the future — at least past the 2025 Bay cleanup goal. As a result, impacts from the filled reservoir were not factored in when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assigned nutrient reduction goals to states in 2010.

Recent studies, though, determined that the reservoir has filled and is spilling more nutrients — nitrogen and phosphorus — into the Chesapeake than previously thought.

Computer models estimate that an additional 6 million pounds of nitrogen and 260,000 pounds of phosphorus would need to be controlled to make up for the dam’s lost trapping capacity. That would require roughly 15% more nutrient reductions beyond the stated 2025 cleanup goals — more than some states in the region have to accomplish individually.

With states already struggling to meet those goals, the state-federal Bay Program partnership last year decided to seek proposals from outside parties to develop a strategy to make up that gap.

Proposals were collected earlier this year, and the EPA recently awarded grants totaling nearly $600,000 to the Center for Watershed Protection, Chesapeake Bay Trust and Chesapeake Conservancy to tackle the job. They, in turn, will enlist the support of nearly a dozen other nonprofits, university partners and private sector consultants.

They’ll be working in partnership with a steering committee of state and federal representatives to coordinate the effort and ensure that their plan does not rely on practices states are counting on to meet their own cleanup goals.

The hope is that the Conowingo group will bring new insights that help tackle problems where progress has been elusive.

While the region has succeeded in reducing nutrient pollution from wastewater treatment plants, which can be addressed through regulation and technology, it has struggled to reduce nutrient-laden runoff from farms and developed lands. Progress remains far off the pace required to meet Bay water quality goals.

The Conowingo team will look to new high tech tools, new ideas and new financing strategies to accelerate progress.

“There is a real opportunity to create a sort of case study of how these states can come together to solve these basinwide issues in a cost-effective way,” Seipp said.

One of the first tasks is determining, geographically, the best places for making additional nutrient reductions. While the dam is located on the Susquehanna, reductions from nearby areas of Maryland’s Eastern and Western shores would have similar impacts on Bay water quality. The group is working with computer modelers to more precisely identify those areas.

The ability to explore that type of question is one reason that this plan will be unique. Unlike states, which are constrained to reducing nutrients within their borders, the Conowingo team can make reductions across jurisdictional borders.

Once those regions are identified, the team will use high-resolution satellite data and other tools to identify more precisely specific sites where runoff control practices will have the greatest benefit to water quality.

Many state and federal cost-share programs tend to rely on farmers signing up on their own to participate. By identifying specific sites, or groups of farms, they envision using more proactive outreach to targeted groups of farmers and other landowners, based on priority locations.

“It is not working an acre here and acre there,” said Jeff Allenby, director of conservation technology with the Chesapeake Conservancy. “You can actually put together some significant initiatives that achieve larger results than they would if you were just working project by project.”

The team also will explore barriers, whether financial, technical or cultural, to different nutrient reduction techniques. Some stream restorations, for example, meet resistance from landowners or local governments because the work requires more land than they are willing to make available or can acquire. The new tools can help identify opportunities for such projects that require less land.

Allenby said the group also might identify effective but underused manure treatment technologies to try to figure out how to boost their adoption.

Ultimately, though, the effort will require more money.

Some could come from Exelon, the utility that owns the dam. The state of Maryland recently announced an agreement with Exelon, in which the company will pay $200 million toward pollution reduction and habitat improvements over the next 50 years.

Even so, the Conowingo plan will require more money and creative ways to find it. A group of financial advisers will be recommending ideas, including private sector involvement.

One possibility is to view some agricultural efforts as infrastructure projects, and fund them through bonds. That would bring money to address problems more quickly, but allow those improvements to be paid off over time.

Also, the plan will likely involve the use of nutrient “trading,” and other market-based tools that encourage private investors to install nutrient control practices for credits that can be sold to jurisdictions or businesses needing to offset pollution impacts in other places. And that needs to happen across state borders, said Dan Nees of the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability.

“Somehow, we have to agree that geopolitical boundaries are not going to work when it comes to finance,” Nees said. “There needs to be an opportunity for revenue to flow back and forth where it has the greatest economic value, and that is through markets and water quality trading.”

Such techniques have been talked about for years in the Bay region, but have never had widespread adoption. Because of its cross-border approach, Nees said the Conowingo plan is ideally suited to pilot such concepts.

“We’ve been talking about this for too long,” Nees said. “We have to actually do it.”

A draft strategy is expected by March, with a final plan in June.

There is one key difference between the Conowingo cleanup plan and those written by the states. The EPA can take action against the states if their plans fall short, because they are legally required to meet Bay water quality standards. There’s no such legal requirement for the groups working on the Conowingo plan.

“We are working toward being able to devise a plan and have the funding to implement it and the tools to track it,” Seipp said. “But if that doesn’t happen, the people who ultimately hold the regulatory responsibility is the states.”

Warmer Temperatures Could Have Chilling Effect on Fall Foliage

October 25, 2019 by Bay Journal

Autumn leaf peepers in Chesapeake Bay states may be disappointed by more muted colors because of climate change, scientists say. A study says the effects of climate change may lead to more muted autumn foliage colors for leaf peepers. (Ad Crable)

“Dull falls” may be added to the string of detriments climate change may bring, according to a 2018 report by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “Climate change is disrupting the timing of natural cycles, such as trees’ emergence from dormancy, leaf development and blooming,” the agency said in a recent statement highlighting the problem.

“It can get very complicated, and it can have negative impacts to the vibrancy of the foliage,” added Kerry Campbell, environmental manager for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection energy office.

Leaf color is affected by an interplay of conditions, including excess rainfall or drought, high or low temperatures and frost. Climate change is expected to have an influence on all of them. Among the changing conditions that could lead to a fall foliage letdown: a dry, hot summer caused by rising temperatures and disrupted rainfall patterns that can result in browning or early leaf drop.

Climate change also is expected to make conditions more hospitable for diseases and invasive insects, which can further stress trees and lead to more muted colors.

Also, scientists are predicting that the dominate range of some tree species will move northward to escape warming temperatures. Among the likely candidates are sugar maples, which provide one of the most brilliant autumn displays.

“In ecology, everything is connected,” said Chris Firestone, a plant botanist with DCNR. “Climate change can impact small things that we don’t think about, and we don’t always know how those things may play out.”

By Ad Crable
Bay Journal

Bay Scientists Studying Environmental, Economic Uses for Hemp

October 22, 2019 by Bay Journal

Christopher Harnish, left, and his brother, Bryan Harnish, both of Lancaster County, PA, examine their first-year crop of hemp plants, which can grow to 20-feet tall. (Dave Harp)

A Gold Rush mentality has erupted across Chesapeake Bay states as the lacy fan-shaped leaves of more than 50,000 acres of industrial hemp spring from the landscape for the first time since World War II. Bay states and the federal government are removing barriers to growing the misunderstood plant, which was a staple crop from Colonial times and then banned for little more than its likeness to a mind-altering cousin, marijuana.

Now, hemp is again being embraced amid bold claims that include a possible economic life preserver for struggling farmers and an environmentally friendly cash crop that could help reduce nutrient pollution in the Bay. Nearly 2,800 farmers and entrepreneurs had hemp in the ground this summer in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and New York.

Hemp backers are convinced that the plant is a sustainable alternative to plastics, cotton and fossil fuels, touting the possibility of more than 25,000 natural products that range from plant-based concrete and pain-salving lotions to animal feed and biofuel.

But much is still unknown about hemp’s future economic and environmental impact. In the Bay watershed, scientific research is under way to determine if high-quality hemp can even be grown in the region’s climate and soils and to learn whether it is indeed a miracle plant that offers all of the Earth-friendly benefits and human health claims promoted by supporters.

Advocates say that the plant stores more carbon than it needs to grow, which makes it a possible tool for fighting climate change. Early research also suggests the plant is better than mainstream crops in sucking up phosphorus from manure and poultry litter spread on fields before it can wash off and pollute local waterways.

Hemp grows fast, tall and thick, outcompeting weeds and reducing the need for herbicides, proponents boast. In Pennsylvania, it is being planted on abandoned strip mines to see if it can take root in the depleted soil. Minnesota has a state-run pilot project studying hemp as a mass-produced alternative to corn and soybeans to improve water quality.

Because it grows fast and profuse with a robust root system, hemp may make an excellent streamside buffer to stabilize banks and catch manure and soil runoff, some have claimed.

Samuel Fisher, an Amish farmer in Chester County, PA, walks among the rows of his first hemp crop. (Dave Harp)

But some studying hemp aren’t seeing it as an environmental panacea for the Bay states.

Ryan Davis of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay said that the group took a look at hemp for riparian buffers but rejected it because hemp is a seasonal crop and dies back in winter. Also, a monoculture of one plant is not good for an ecosystem, he said.

“I have concerns about the crop itself. The mid-Atlantic is a tough place [to grow hemp] because of the weather and climate. We have a lot of humidity and warm evenings that promote disease,” said Andrew Ristvey, an Extension specialist for commercial horticulture with the University of Maryland.

Ristvey added that he is encouraged by research showing that hemp grown for fiber may remove phosphorus, a type of nutrient, from the soil. But whether hemp proves to be a better plant for the environment in Bay states will depend on the amount of fertilizer and chemicals needed to grow quality plants. For now, those are unanswered questions.

And, because hemp grows around the same time as mainstream crops such as corn and soybeans, it cannot be used as a winter cover crop to help reduce nutrient runoff.

As for needing fewer pesticides, Eric Williams, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, noted that when hemp is grown for its flowers and CBD oil, which constitutes the great majority of plantings so far, plants are spaced farther apart and weed growth can be a problem.

Samuel Fisher, a Plain Sect farmer in Chester County, PA, who is growing hemp for its flowers as a source of CBD oil, said his experience so far shows that the crop needs plenty of nutrients from fertilizer. Insects have not proven a problem but threats of fungus and bacteria have been.

“For dairy farmers who are struggling, it could either keep them in business or put them out of business very quickly,” Fisher said. “You can’t just plant it in a field and pretend it’s going to grow and come out two months later to harvest it. We have two to three people in the field every day.”

“I think we’re going to quickly learn that it’s like a lot of crops we deal with. Insect and disease pressure will be prevalent,” added Lancaster County hemp farmer, Christopher Harnish, who is growing a little more than 3 acres in a field used last year for corn.

Dr. John Fike, a Virginia Tech associate professor of crop and soil environmental sciences who has researched the plant, said there are a number of “hemp mythologies.”

He said claims of reduced pests and less fertilizer needed are simply not true.

Referring to studies on growing hemp on compromised land to clean up the soil, such as polluted industrial sites and strip mines, he said, “You can grow it on marginal land but you get a marginal crop.”

He said hemp can be grown with no-till farming methods but that herbicides are needed to control weeds.

Some have expressed concerns that if hemp becomes a profitable cash crop that farmers and landowners will pull out of government conservation programs that set aside farmland for streamside buffers and instead plow the land for hemp.

But officials in Bay states say that is not happening, at least not so far. Most hemp is being grown in former tobacco and alfalfa fields and other areas already in production.

“No one is clearcutting wooded acres for hemp,” said Shannon Powers, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

The hemp boom comes at the same time that the region’s dairy and tobacco farmers are reeling from low prices, tariffs and falling demand. Though they are a savvy and conservative bunch, some can’t help but hope that the arrival of hemp is a fortuitous blessing.

“I’ve had more than one dairy farmer say ‘I’m going to grow this stuff to try to save my dairy operation,’ ” Fike said.

But it’s too early to predict how much of a lifeline hemp might be for farmers.

Markets and processing facilities for most of hemp’s projected uses, especially the line of products derived from fiber and seeds, have not emerged on a wide scale yet. Research is still taking place to determine which varieties can be grown in Bay states and how successfully.

And everyone is still waiting to see how the federal government will regulate hemp, now that it is no longer considered a dangerous, controlled substance. To date, the federal Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved the use of any pesticides to treat hemp or decided which CBD health claims can be verified. And while the 2018 federal Farm Bill made hemp eligible for crop insurance, the guidelines have yet to be put in place.

Skittish ag-lending banks are not yet handing out loans for harvesting and processing equipment.

Most of the growers in the Bay states are experimenting with hemp on only a few acres. When and if hemp takes off, will farmers in the region be able to compete with 500-acre spreads in the Pacific Northwest where the industry has a head start by years?

“There’s just an awful lot of unknowns,” Fike stressed. “Will this be a flash in the pan or the next big thing or just another crop? That remains to be seen.”

Even hemp cheerleader Erica Stark, chair of the National Hemp Association, advised caution, though she sees hemp’s future footprint as huge. “Certainly, we love the enthusiasm out there and we want to get everybody excited, but we also need to be realistic. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Ristvey offers his own prediction. “It won’t be a magic bullet. I suspect it will be just one of those crops that will add to the palette of agriculture that we have in the United States.”
Hemp Cultivation in the Bay Region (Data provided by the state agricultural agencies)

Maryland

847 growers, 161 processors, 36 dealers
8,500 acres of hemp cultivation permitted
2019 is the first year Maryland has allowed cultivating hemp for commercial use.
Many growers are struggling tobacco farmers.

New York

490 growers, 118 processors
19,932 acres of hemp cultivation permitted
The state is spending $10 million on research and economic development.
June 2019 legislation gives farmers the first chance at permits to grow commercial hemp.

Pennsylvania

324 growers at 828 locations
Struggling dairy farmers and Plain Sect farmers who embrace labor-intensive crops hold a significant number of permits.

Virginia

955 growers, 191 processors, 55 dealers
10,000 acres of hemp cultivation permitted
The cultivation of hemp for commercial use was approved in March 2019.
The biggest concentration of growers are tobacco farmers hit hard by declining sales and tariffs imposed by China.

West Virginia

158 growers
2,531 acres of hemp cultivation permitted
Hemp licenses tripled in 2019, the second year hemp was allowed to be grown commercially.

Potential Uses for Industrial Hemp

Advocates of hemp say there are more than 25,000 possible uses of industrial hemp beyond the current considerable and growing CBD oil market. Here are some most likely to see a market.

Hemp CBD oil can be used to treat a variety of ills including anxiety, inflammation, chronic joint pain, epilepsy, headaches and sleep disorders.
Hemp seeds and oils can be used for cooking oil, baking flour, yogurt, beer, snacks and high-protein animal feed for pets and livestock.
Hemp fiber is similar to but lighter than plastics for packaging. The automobile industry is exploring products such as dashboards, door panels and mirror frames to reduce plastics and install a lighter material that could improve gas mileage.
Hemp fiber can be used for clothing, animal bedding, kitty litter and to absorb oil.
Hemp fiber is used as a core for insulation, paneling and home building blocks. It is being sold as Hempcrete.
Fast-growing and tall hemp can be planted in streamside buffers.
Hemp is touted as a biofuel.
Heating hemp plants produces a soil amendment known as biochar that absorbs water and stores greenhouse gases.

Can Bacteria Help Restore the Chesapeake Bay’s Oysters?

October 21, 2019 by Bay Journal

Ryan Hoover teaches sculpture making at the Maryland Institute College of Art. So, why is he developing a product that could help oysters grow in the Chesapeake Bay?

“That’s a fine question,” he said, laughing.

The answer is that he prefers to make art that has a function. In this case, he’s using new technology to build better artificial reefs for oysters — with an assist from nature itself.

The Chesapeake’s oyster population is believed to be at approximately 1% of its historic abundance. Scientists say habitat loss is partly to blame. In many places, dredging has reduced oyster beds to thin, half-buried sheets of dead shells that offer little support for new generations of bivalves.

Restoring oyster reefs is one of the top goals of the multistate and federal Bay cleanup program. Oyster shells are widely believed to be the best perch for attracting and growing young oysters, but it’s hard to find enough shells — dead or alive — to use for restoration. Fishery managers have substituted other materials, such as granite, with mixed success.

Hoover is collaborating with the University Maryland Center for Environmental Science on developing a cement-like substance that, they hope, will provide growing strata for oysters and approach the productivity of natural reefs.

Well, UMCES is only one of his collaborators. The other is a common type of bacteria that doesn’t cause disease and lives in the soil.

When mixed with nutrients, Sporosarcina pasteurii spits out calcium carbonate crystals, one of the main ingredients in oyster shells. Hoover and his team combine this mixture with sand. The crystals grow to fill the space between the grains, binding them together.

The result is sandstone-like material known as biocement.

The project puts the team at the front lines of a field still in its infancy. Biofabrication, as it’s called, harnesses biological organisms to make new products.

Hoover describes the process this way: In manufacturing, humans start with something nature has made, cut it up into smaller pieces and reassemble it into a product. One example: sawing a tree into boards and putting them together to form a chair. Biofabrication revolutionizes that process.

“What if we could take the tree cells and assemble those into the shape of a chair?” Hoover asked.

The field has made headlines for promising advancements in medicine, such as efforts to make organs with 3D printers.

Several universities and startups across the country have been racing in recent years to develop and manufacture products with biocement on a large scale.

Possible applications, backers said, include using it to harden important historic buildings, store carbon underground and make a grout that shores up soils in earthquake-prone areas. One of the uses closest to being realized involves a North Carolina company working with the U.S. Air Force to build aircraft runways in out-of-the-way places where traditional construction is unwieldy.

Hoover is no newcomer to biofabrication. He developed a biofabrication lab at MICA a few years ago, where he and students have developed a range of uses, from colorful petri dish art to vegan wool.

The lack of natural shells for restoring reefs has been an ongoing challenge in the Chesapeake. In Maryland, efforts to dredge buried shell have been greeted by criticism from anglers and environmentalists, who say the practice destroys valuable fish habitat. Restaurants and seafood businesses have partnered to conserve and reuse shells. But the total returned to the Bay hasn’t been nearly enough to offset the shells lost to harvest and ensure a ready supply for restoration sites.

Fishery managers have turned to shell alternatives, such as concrete, granite and even porcelain toilets. But young oysters, known as spat or larvae, generally have had greater trouble latching onto the artificial materials. They also tend to grow at a slower rate.

Because biocement consists of some of the same ingredients as natural shell, Matthew Gray, Hoover’s partner at UMCES, thinks spat will be more apt to settle on it and grow compared with other artificial alternatives.

“Larvae are particular about what they want to settle on,” said Gray, an oyster researcher at the center’s Horn Point Laboratory near Cambridge.

Since biocement eventually dissolves when exposed to water, Gray and Hoover hope it proves more palatable to watermen and boaters, who have voiced concerns for years that concrete and other types of artificial reefs posing permanent navigational hazards.

“Nobody is really excited about dumping a bunch of concrete in the Bay,” Hoover said. “It’s essentially there forever.”

It’s also important to consider the environmental impacts of concrete production, he said. Worldwide, manufacturing concrete generates about 8% of all carbon dioxide emissions, studies show. Biocement doesn’t have that problem, Hoover added.

Hoover said his interest in biofabrication grew out of taking a class at the Baltimore Underground Science Space, a nonprofit makerspace for synthetic biology. An UMCES graduate student sat in on a biofrabrication lecture by Hoover and later introduced him to Gray.

“When I talked to Ryan he was like, ‘Oh, I think I could make oyster shells, if that would be useful,’” Gray recalled.

They started working together in January 2018, at first trying to reproduce a whole oyster shell in biocement form. Hoover initially forged the proper oblong shape of an oyster with a 3D printer, but it lacked the subtle ridges and other surface details of an authentic bivalve. So, they switched to growing the material in silicone-rubber molds. It takes anywhere from four days to 1 ½ weeks for the bacteria-sand mixture to grow to full size, Hoover said, adding that he hopes to find efficiencies to accelerate the process.

Then, it was Gray’s turn to test their creation with live larvae in a lab. The results were promising. More baby oysters attached themselves to natural shells than on the biocement, but his work showed that biocement was significantly more successful than the third material, granite. He counted just 15 larvae on granite versus nearly 200 on biocement.

Why the difference? Gray speculates that the presence of carbonate in the biocement and natural shells may be a cue to young oysters that they’ve found a suitable place to settle. The carbonate also may affect the water chemistry, giving oysters a better chance at success.

Gray and Hoover aren’t alone in putting bacteria to work to create oyster reefs.

Biomason, the company with the Air Force runway contract, applied last year for a patent on a technology in which the S. pasteurii bacteria transform fabric, such as burlap, into a hard strata for the bivalves. The method allows the strata to be formed into virtually any desired shape before it hardens, according to patent documents.

As for the Maryland project, several questions remain unanswered. What is the best way to grow and shape the biocement? What factors influence the larvae attachment to the material? How does it perform in the real world? And how much will it cost to make?

Molding biocement to mimic individual oysters may not be the best method going forward, Gray said. To provide more surface area for the floating larvae to find, he envisions forming it into veneers that attach to “oyster castles,” the artificial reefs typically made from individual blocks of recycle shell and concrete. An entirely biocement oyster castle could be time-consuming to make and potentially costly.

He would like to get environmental bang for the buck by collecting the nutrients needed for the carbonate creation from sewage treatment plants.

But that’s well into the future. For now, Gray and Hoover are trying to gather funding. They have applied for $140,000 from Maryland Sea Grant, which would cover two years of research. They expect to hear whether they received it this fall.

Their application included a letter of support from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Biocement offers a flexible design that could make it suitable for restoration at both public harvest grounds and at sanctuaries undergoing restoration, said Allison Colden, the group’s Maryland fisheries scientist.

“We believe the study would provide ‘proof of concept’ for an approach that would address one of the biggest limiting factors to oyster recovery in Chesapeake Bay and could improve our own restoration program,” she said in the letter.

In a way, biocement and other types of synthetic biology represent a shift in thinking about humanity’s relationship with nature, Hoover said. Most of recorded history has seen an “extractive relationship” between the two, but it could become more symbiotic in the future.

“What if we collaborate with these bacteria to restore these oysters?” he asked. “It’s sort of a multi-genus collaboration here.”

By Jeremy Cox
Bay Journal

Low Salinity Wallops Oysters in Chesapeake

October 9, 2019 by Bay Journal

The rains have finally let up, but they’ve dealt a serious blow to the Chesapeake Bay’s oysters — and to the people who make a living harvesting, cultivating or restoring them.

Scott Budden, foreground, along with Sean Corcoran, center, and Sam Saviertka, all with the Orchard Point Oyster Company, cull oysters for market on Shipping Creek near Stevensville, MD. (Dave Harp)

Oysters need at least a little salt in their environment to live and a bit more to thrive. The record-setting downpours that began last year and continued through the first half of this year flushed so much freshwater into the Chesapeake that salinity sank to abnormally low levels.

In some places in Maryland and on the Potomac River, where the water turned almost completely fresh for months on end, oysters died in droves. Those that survived elsewhere didn’t grow much, and reproduction was spotty.

“What a rough beast of a year that was,” said Martin Gary, executive secretary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. “Everybody got hammered by it.”

The condition of the Bay’s oysters matters economically, ecologically and culturally. They’re a money maker for the region’s seafood industry. They’re important water filterers, and the reefs they build provide habitat for fish and other Bay creatures. And, they’re part of the traditional fabric of life around the Bay, a staple at many family, church and community feasts in fall and winter.

Now, with commercial harvests of wild oysters down in both Maryland and Virginia, watermen in the two states face new catch restrictions this fall, imposed at least partly to give the beleaguered bivalves a chance to recover from their freshwater woes.

Oyster farmers, meanwhile, are bracing for another off year, after seeing a dip in production in 2018 — breaking what had been steady growth in each of the two states’ aquaculture industries.

And government agencies and environmental nonprofits had to delay or scale back oyster restoration work, as low salinity disrupted the supply of hatchery-bred oyster larvae for seeding rebuilt reefs.

Hatchery hiccups

Oysters are like Goldilocks when it comes to salt — they don’t like too much, or too little. They’re happiest in brackish to moderately salty water, with salinity ranging from 10 to 28 parts per thousand.

But oysters don’t reproduce well or grow much if salinity drops below that floor. And they can die if it stays under 5 ppt for weeks or months at a time.

At Stingray Point near Deltaville, VA, salinity was 8 ppt in March, half of what’s normal that time of year. Up the Bay, where the water tends to be fresher, salinities dropped to deadly levels late last year and stayed that way well into the spring.

Hatcheries, which draw local water to spawn oysters in captivity for use in aquaculture and ecological restoration, struggled to produce larvae or get them to survive long enough to settle on shells as “spat” or “seed.”

No hatchery had more trouble than the one run by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science at its Horn Point laboratory near Cambridge. The facility, one of the largest on the East Coast, produced a record 1.8 billion spat in both 2016 and 2017.

But this year, persistently low salinity in the Choptank River delayed spawning until August, said Stephanie Tobash Alexander, who manages the operation. As a result, Horn Point only managed to produce about 10% of its usual output.

“That’s science for you,” Alexander said. “We made the most of what we could.”

She hopes next year will return to normal. By late September, the salinity had risen to 12 ppt but it was too late to help this year’s class much. The facility spawned its last oysters of the season on Sept. 18.

The hatchery woes at Horn Point and other private facilities around the Bay had a ripple effect for aquaculture, oyster restoration and even the public fishery.

Spat on oyster shells were loaded in mid-September at the Horn Point Lab oyster hatchery in Cambridge, MD, destined for the sanctuary on the Tred Avon River. Hatchery problems, attributed to low salinity, delayed restoration plantings. (Dave Harp)

“People didn’t get seed as early as they wanted to get seed. In some cases, they didn’t get as much seed as they wanted to get,” said Mike Oesterling, executive director of the Shellfish Growers of Virginia. “So that puts everyone a little behind.”

Oyster farmers scramble

Oyster farmers in both states felt the impact. In Virginia, the top producer of oysters on the East Coast, the harvest from aquaculture was down by one third, to 248,347 bushels, according to preliminary figures from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. Growers surveyed by the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences reported that heavy rains and unusually low salinities were impacting their oyster plantings and sales.

Maryland’s smaller oyster farming industry grappled with even lower salinities. Growers there managed to produce just 57,543 bushels last year, down 22% from 2017, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. That was the first drop in production seen since Maryland revamped its shellfish leasing laws around 2010 to revive aquaculture. Until then, the industry’s output had been growing so steadily that it was on track to overtake the state’s fading wild harvest.

Robert T. Brown, Sr., president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association and an oyster farmer himself, said he lost close to 95% of the market-size oysters he had growing on leased bottom in the Potomac, where salinities dropped below 5 ppt in the spring. Closer to the river’s mouth, where salinities were a little higher, mortality was around 35%, he said.

The small, young oysters weathered the freshet better, he said, with only about 5% dying.

“They didn’t grow, but they didn’t die,” he said. They started growing again in August, he noted, as the salinity levels rebounded. But he doesn’t expect many to reach marketable size until sometime next year.

In Virginia, the Bay’s salinity is generally high enough that oysters reproduce well in the wild. Growers there only have to put down shell before spawning begins in late spring to catch freshly hatched larvae. But in Maryland, conditions are less favorable, and many oyster farmers get their spat from hatcheries, often the one at Horn Point. But its troubles this year forced many growers to approach other, private hatcheries, with limited success.

Some had to do even more. Scott Budden’s Orchard Point Oyster Co. raises bivalves in the Chester River, where salinities aren’t that high even in normal years. Early this year, as rains kept coming down, he saw salt concentrations dropping into the danger zone.

“I’d never seen salinity levels that low in winter,” he recalled.

Some of his oysters in the Chester died, but Budden tried to save as many as he could. He pulled 500 bags of oysters out of the river and hauled them by boat and trailer — 40-plus road miles — to another leased area off Eastern Bay. The slightly higher salinity levels there gave the bivalves “a shot in the arm.”

By late spring, as rains began to ease, salinity started creeping back up, and he and his crew moved the oysters back to the Chester. But Budden continues to use Eastern Bay as a place to grow out oysters just before taking them to market.

Restoration setbacks

The hatchery hiccup also set back oyster restoration efforts in Maryland, which with Virginia has pledged to rebuild the bivalve populations and habitat in five tributaries in each state by 2025. Virginia generally counts on natural reproduction to stock the reefs it has built or expanded, but in Maryland, federal and state agencies depend on Horn Point to for larvae or spat on shell.

Officials had at one point planned to plant spat this year in all five of the Maryland tributaries targeted for large-scale restoration. The Little Choptank and Tred Avon rivers need a final round of seeding to finish up projects that began three to four years ago. Harris Creek, though essentially completed in 2015, was in line for some light overseeding of thin spots. Officials even hoped to begin plantings in the St. Mary’s and Manokin rivers, where restoration plans are still being fleshed out.

Much of that work got scaled back or shelved until next year. So did Marylanders Grow Oysters, the popular program under which about 1,500 waterfront property owners voluntarily raise young oysters in cages from their piers for planting in sanctuaries.

“Most of the sanctuary spat are typically produced in the first half of the hatchery season,” explained Chris Judy, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources shellfish program manager, “but this was when the hatchery had zero production.”

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation had hoped to contribute to the effort by producing 25 million spat on shell, said senior scientist Doug Myers. Four-fifths of that was to go on the Maryland sanctuary reefs, under a $3 million, three-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The other 5 million spat were planned for CBF’s oyster gardening and other initiatives.

CBF normally buys oyster larvae from the Horn Point hatchery and sets them on shell or reef balls at a facility in Southern Maryland. The problems at Horn Point left CBF 13 million spat shy of its goal, Myers said, despite scrambling around to find other sources of larvae.

“It’s been a rough year,” said Stephanie Westby, NOAA’s oyster restoration program manager. “But you know, with climate change, these kind of extreme weather episodes may be the new normal, unfortunately.”

Faltering fisheries

Public fisheries in Maryland and Virginia also suffered.

In Maryland, the DNR works with local watermen’s committees to replenish reefs thinned by harvest. But Horn Point’s problems reduced the amount of hatchery-spawned juvenile bivalves available. Nearly 49 million spat got planted on 48 acres, about a third less than last year, according to the DNR’s Judy.

Meanwhile, salinities north of the Bay Bridge and upriver in major tributaries declined to the point that shellfish in the water grew very little — or died.

In the Potomac River, the extended freshet devastated a promising experiment in rotational harvesting, said Martin Gary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. Since 2013, watermen had been planting juvenile oysters annually on reefs or bars above Cobb Island, he said, with plans to harvest them in three years and then every four years afterward.

Virtually all of the bivalves planted there got “crushed,” as Gary put it. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ annual survey of oyster reefs in the fall of 2018 found more than 90% of the oysters in that area of the river had died.

Gary said he’s waiting for the DNR survey crew to return in October to find out if any of the oysters there are still alive.

Downriver, near the Potomac’s mouth, low salinity inhibited the oysters’ growth but didn’t kill them.

“We were thankful that we didn’t lose any down there,” Gary said.

Farther south in Virginia, reef surveys found that many oysters didn’t grow much over the last year, either, and some in deeper water had died.

Last season’s wild harvest was the state’s smallest since 2012–13, with just 209,032 bushels landed, according to preliminary data gathered by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

Hoping to give Virginia’s oysters a chance to recover, the commission took steps in August to scale back harvests a bit.

The public fishery season traditionally opens Oct. 1, and that’s when watermen using hand or patent tongs can start plucking oysters from the bottom. But the commission delayed until November when watermen can work reefs over with dredges or mechanized hand-scrapes.

The delay gives the oysters more time to reach the 3-inch minimum marketable size, officials explained.

Virginia’s new harvest rules also require that dredge boats stop working by noon on two out of the four months when they’re allowed on the water. Last year’s season allowed them to continue until 2 p.m.

“Generally,” said Andrew Button, who oversees the state agency’s conservation efforts, “it’s a more resource-conservative season.”

Most watermen seemed resigned to the restrictions, but some complained it was unfair to cut back on only certain types of harvest gear.

“If we’re in that bad of shape with the oysters, let’s just shut it all down in October,” said Charles DeMarino, a waterman based out of Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore.

New restrictions took effect this fall in Maryland as well, mainly in response to a study last year that found a long-term decline in the fishery, with most areas being overharvested.

The DNR reduced from five to four the number of weekdays when oysters could be harvested throughout the season, which ends March 31. The agency also scaled back the daily maximum number of bushels that could be harvested by 20% to 33%, depending on the type of gear used.

The limits were aimed at making the fishery sustainable in eight to 10 years, but the freshwater woes figured explicitly into at least one rule change.

The DNR temporarily barred harvests in several places around the Bay, including much of the area north of the Bay Bridge, where few oysters survived the freshet.

The DNR projected that its package of restrictions could reduce the harvest by as much as 26%. Last season’s harvest of 137,000 bushels was already down 25% from the 2017–2018 catch.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation expressed skepticism about the efficacy of the restrictions. The environmental group had urged tighter limits and pointed to the DNR’s own analysis, which found that reducing the harvest by one day a week would have “little conservation value.”

Just one in four watermen harvest oysters five days a week at the start of the season, according to a DNR presentation, while by the end of the season only 5–10% do.

But, watermen say they’re expecting a leaner harvest from the DNR rules, and that the minority who work the water full-time may feel the pinch more than the part-timers.

“The majority recognized some belt tightening was going to be needed,” said Jim Mullin, executive director of the Maryland Oystermen Association, “especially after the tremendous amount of freshwater events of last year that set the Bay and restoration activities back severely.”

Still, Mullin and other watermen say they’re frustrated by the emphasis on curtailing harvests instead of doing what they contend could help sustain or improve the fishery. They have pushed for reopening some of Maryland’s 51 oyster sanctuaries to rotational harvest and for replenishing worn-down harvest reefs with large quantities of old shell dredged from the Bay bottom. Environmentalists have opposed such moves, arguing that by themselves they won’t make the fishery sustainable long-term.

Meanwhile, with oysters still reeling from the prolonged surge of freshwater, the seafood industry in both ends of the Bay is preparing for another gloomy year.

“We’re not going to have as many market oysters this year,” said Tommy Kellum of W. E. Kellum Seafood in Weems, VA. “It’s a Mother Nature event. It’s not like an occurrence we could have prevented or managed for.”

But most say they think that with a little more “normal” — meaning drier — weather, the Bay’s oysters will rebound, along with aquaculture, restoration and perhaps even the fishery.

“Long term, this is just a bump in the road,” said Stephan Abel, executive director of the Oyster Recovery Partnership, a Maryland nonprofit that works on restoration with state and federal agencies and other nonprofits.

By Jeremy Cox & Timothy B. Wheeler
Bay Journal

High Flows to Chesapeake Continued in July, Triggering Large Dead Zone

August 14, 2019 by Bay Journal

The Susquehanna exceeds its banks at Port Deposit during a high flow period in September 2018. Bay Journal photo by Dave Harp

The Bay continued to be on the receiving end of high river flows in July. The flows have been higher than normal for 13 out of the last 15 months, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

The pollution carried into the Bay during that span has led to worse than normal water quality and last month triggered a large oxygen-starved “dead zone” in the Bay.

In July, the USGS reported that the estimated cumulative flow into the Bay from its nine largest rivers — which account for more than 95% of the freshwater entering the Bay — averaged 54,000 cubic feet per second. That was the 15th highest flow on record for the month since the agency began tracking river flows into the Bay in 1936.

So far this year, the flows were above normal in five of the first seven months of the year. That followed an eight-month period from May through December last year when flows were above normal every month.

The USGS considers a flow to be above normal if it is among the top 25% for a given month.

The data is available on a new USGS web page.

High freshwater flows are typically bad news for Bay water quality because they carry large amounts of water-fouling nutrients and sediments, which are flushed off the landscape and into the Chesapeake.

In the Bay, nutrients fuel algae blooms that cloud the water. As the blooms die and decompose, they are consumed by bacteria in a process that depletes water of oxygen. Sediment also clouds the water and smothers bottom habitats.

Scientists have been worried that the protracted period of high flows will lead to a decline in underwater grass beds, which need sunlight to survive. Earlier this year they predicted that the huge influx of nutrients would lead to a greatly expanded dead zone.

Indeed, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported that the area of low oxygen, or hypoxic, water was significantly worse than average during its two July water quality monitoring surveys.

In early July, the DNR reported a dead zone of 1.92 cubic miles in the Maryland portion of the Bay, compared with an average of 1.36 cubic miles. In late July, scientists found 2.01 cubic miles of low-oxygen water, compared with the late July average of 1.34 cubic miles.

Along with pollution, high flows added a surge of freshwater to the Bay that kept salinity low near the surface, causing strong stratification between the surface and higher salinity bottom waters. That essentially traps oxygen-starved water on the bottom and prevents it from mixing with the oxygen-rich surface.

DNR scientists said conditions also were aggravated by temperatures that warmed Bay waters to nearly 90 degrees. Warmer water holds less oxygen than cool water.

The department’s monitoring reports are available here.

By Karl Blankenship

Leave it to Beavers by Bay Journal’s Tom Horton

August 7, 2019 by Bay Journal

Notes to myself on preparing to teach my Chesapeake Bay course at Salisbury University for the 10th year:

A pair of young beavers perch atop their lodge in a Nanticoke River wetland. Bay Journal photo by Dave Harp

Teach oysters? Always, but this time I’m also going bigger, with beavers. Both are “keystone” species, and Castor canadensis, aka the North American beaver, is potentially the more important, even if restoring bivalves gets more press.

Sewage treatment? Can’t ever ignore 17 million toilet flushers, but as with beavers over oysters, I’m moving inland, traveling upslope, emphasizing the lands of the Bay’s watershed vs. the Bay itself.

And that word, “watershed,” let’s reimagine it — it only entered the language around 1800, by which time we’d already eliminated most beavers and their dams and ponds throughout the Chesapeake region. And, that fundamentally altered and accelerated the way water moved off the landscape.

So what’s a better word — waterkeep? Waterseep? Waterooze? Waterhold? …Something to get us back conceptually to the way it was when the Bay was healthy, its lands more fiercely retentive of life (water equals life).

You want to tell students everything you know. But when you have just 16 three-hour classes a semester, and you’re trying to spend four or five of those sessions outside with watermen and farmers and scientists, or paddling through climate-changed landscapes, you have to choose.

Land use most of the ballgame

Recently, my choices have moved upslope, come ashore, for a couple of reasons.

Land use is most of the ballgame in our estuary, more so than almost any other on Earth. The watershed/waterkeep is about 16 times the area of the tidal waters into which it drains. And the Bay is so shallow that there’s astoundingly little volume of water given its long, broad surface — clearly too little to dilute the runoff from 48 million acres.

The other reason is that the advanced sewage treatment and air pollution control technologies that have carried the Bay restoration to its current, modest success don’t have enough juice left to get us to our 2025 cleanup goals.

This is especially so in light of a growing population — and in light of no population-control policies at any level of government, or even among most environmental groups.

Success by 2025 is going to depend more and more on how well we can halt pollution running from the land — specifically the land that our population radically alters wherever it goes.

Stormwater controls from developed landscapes are better designed than ever, but expensive. It’s uncertain they will be deployed, maintained, inspected and enforced anywhere near 100%. Sediment control, for example, decades after it became law in places like Maryland, remains inadequate.

Farming

Agriculture, a far larger pollution source, is moving in some good directions with a new phosphorus-based manure control mandate in Maryland and the increasing use of winter cover crops that suck up fertilizers from groundwater before it carries them to the Bay.

But this is not happening everywhere, particularly not in Pennsylvania; and even where it is happening, we still don’t have convincing evidence that we’ll get big enough pollution reductions from the intensive row cropping and concentrations of animals that typify modern farming.

Add to this the real possibility that national policy may soon call for greater use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline. It saves little or no energy and would likely result in clearing more acres around the Bay for more corn.

There are promising programs to counteract polluted runoff, such as planting thousands of miles of vegetated buffers along rivers and streams. But those efforts are far behind schedule, and they don’t specifically call for the vegetation to be forest, the best buffer.

When beavers ruled

And while such greening of the Bay’s lands is good, we know that far better would be green and wet; and that’s where we need to reconsider and actively restore the beaver.

No creature on Earth, save for modern humans, has more capacity to transform a landscape; and in designing a landscape that produces excellent water quality, the beaver has no equal.

Beavers ruled the hydrology of North America for a million years or more, until just the last few centuries, when fur trapping reduced populations from an estimated 100 million or more to less than half a million. In the Chesapeake, from millions to thousands is a fair estimate.

Through damming and ponding, beavers stanched the shedding of water from the watershed, cleansed it, filtered it, held back floods, let rain soak in to keep water tables high and streams running even in drought. They created luxurious habitats for a stunning variety of amphibians, fish, waterfowl and mammals.

In recent decades, beavers have come back to the point where a solid body of science in Canada and the United States confirms they were this continent’s most important keystone species — a species whose functioning underpins a whole ecosystem.

My class this year listened to a young man in the stream-restoration business say that in many cases, the work that his company does might be done as well or better by just releasing beavers.

But it is illegal to do that, he said.

That’s a mindset that needs to change. It will take education to overcome prevailing views of beavers as tree-chewing, property-flooding nuisances. They can be, but there are technologies to help us coexist — piping that keeps beaver ponds deep enough for the animals without flooding, for example.

You will hear more about beavers in my future columns — and in the news, I hope. A good place to start: Should the Chesapeake restoration effort include a beaver goal?

In the meantime, we must emulate the animal any way we can, creating wetlands throughout the landscape wherever there is opportunity, moving rapidly toward a “slower” watershed, one that sheds water only grudgingly.

Tom Horton has written about Chesapeake Bay for more than 40 years, including eight books. He lives in Salisbury, where he is also a professor of Environmental Studies at Salisbury University.

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