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March 4, 2021

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

Ecosystem Eco Homepage

Conservation Group Study Questions Need for Extra Bay Bridge Span

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A transportation consultant hired by an Eastern Shore environmental group said the state has not justified its pursuit of a third Bay Bridge crossing, concluding that the current spans are likely to last several more decades.

AKRF, a Hanover, Md.-based environmental planning and engineering services firm, also questioned the traffic projections the state used in launching its bid to build a new span across the Chesapeake Bay.

Numbers used by the Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) over-stated future growth in the number of vehicles that will be crossing the water, analysts concluded. The authority owns and operates the bridge, and is leading the Hogan administration’s push for a third crossing.

The review of MdTA’s methodology was commissioned by the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association, an environmental group opposed to sprawl. The AKRF analysis, which was presented to the association in December, was provided to Maryland Matters this week.

The report comes amid a delay in the release of a key document, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, a review required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The delay has prompted speculation about the state’s commitment to the project.

Using a “Life Cycle Cost Analysis” that MdTA conducted in 2015, AKRF engineers determined that the existing bridge spans “can be safely maintained through 2065 with currently programmed and anticipated rehabilitation and maintenance work.”

Beyond 2065, the authority found, the bridge may require major rehabilitation but would not be structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

“Based on the conclusions of AKRF’s study of traffic congestion and operations on the bridge, and MDTA’s Life Cycle Study of the bridge’s structural integrity, there will not likely be a need for a replacement bridge by 2040 for either traffic or structural purposes,” the firm concluded.

Shortly after Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) announced plans to pursue a third span in 2016, the state’s analysts predicted that weekday traffic would increase 23% by 2040 (from 69,000 vehicles to 84,000) and that summer weekend traffic would increase 14% (from 119,000 vehicles per day to 135,000).

But AKRF called the state’s analysis into question.

“The MDTA model starts with existing traffic count data from 2017 that leads to biased findings because it only captures one day of weekend traffic from August, which was much higher than an average summer weekend day,” analysts said.

“Our estimates rely on historic growth trends over more than 15 years for summer weekend traffic and the last five years for weekday traffic to present an independent traffic growth forecast,” they added.

MdTA spokesman John Sales said the state data was collected over a two-week period.

“The average weekday data was collected in late April; the summer weekend day data was collected in early August,” he said in an email.

AKRF estimated that bridge traffic would increase only modestly over the next two decades, though the firm conceded that multiple issues — including the growth in telework, the rate of development on the Eastern Shore, and future dips in the economy — make it difficult to project with confidence.

Jay Falstad, executive director of the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association, said the report reinforced his belief that the state’s traffic projections are “over-inflated.”

“The numbers that the state is using are just exaggerated,” he added.

Decision to delay bridge study raises questions 

MdTA was scheduled to release the draft environmental report for the bridge project last fall, but the authority quietly pushed that back to December. Officials then decided to keep the DEIS under wraps even longer.

An agency spokesman told the Capital Gazette in January that officials delayed the the release of the study due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Proceeding with publishing the DEIS and scheduling public hearing would not have been a safe choice while health officials were telling Marylanders they would be safer at home,” Sales told Maryland Matters on Tuesday. “This led us to revisit our roll-out schedule with our federal partners at the Federal Highway Administration.”

That rationale appears to contradict the practice the Maryland Department of Transportation has used on other projects.

The State Highway Administration, an MDOT sub-unit, held a series of public hearings on the I-495/I-270 road-widening project last year. Some were held virtually, others were held in large hotel ballrooms, where staff and the public could maintain proper distancing.

And on Jan. 15, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Maryland Transit Administration (another MDOT unit), the Maryland Economic Development Corporation and Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail released a draft environmental statement for the Super-Conducting Magnetic Levitation train — known as MAGLEV — despite the pandemic.

An MdTA spokesman declined to explain the inconsistency.

He said the authority expects to release the Bay crossing DEIS and open the public comment period in late February, with both virtual and in-person hearings.

Queen Anne’s County Commissioner James Moran (R)

“I don’t believe it, honestly,” said Queen Anne’s County Commission chairman James Moran (R) of the reason for delaying the study. “What that means is Hogan’s going to be able to get out of office without funding Phase 2 of the [National Environmental Policy Act study]. My opinion.”

Moran has advocated for a westbound, beach-season toll, which he maintains would raise enough money to fund the study and reduce summertime backups at the existing bridge.

“I hate to say it’s smoke-and-mirrors,” he said of the authority’s explanation. “We’re trying to be constructive in our dialogue, but it’s a struggle.”

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman (D) also questioned the delay.

“I assumed that the reason was that the governor doesn’t have a plan to fund a third span and that the public doesn’t support spending some $7 billion on a third span after having cut the Red Line in Baltimore, which was less than half [the cost],” he said.

“When you look at the way they came up with their projections of future traffic on the bridge, it was based on a projection of sprawl development on the Eastern Shore,” Pittman added. “Most residents of the Eastern Shore like being a rural area, and they don’t want their farms turned into suburban developments.”

Although the state initially studied 14 potential bridge crossing sites, Hogan declared in 2019 that the site adjacent to the currents spans is “the only one option I will ever accept.”

Pittman, who opposes a third span, said even if in-person public hearings have to be delayed due to the pandemic, MdTA should release its report now. “If the study is done, they should show it to us,” he said. “Nobody likes to have multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded work by consultants hidden from public view, so let’s see it.”

Policy consultant Gary V. Hodge, a former elected official in Southern Maryland, said the impact of the pandemic on toll revenues and the lack of traffic congestion at the Bay Bridge — thanks in part to the administration’s transition to all-electronic tolling — has taken the wind out of the project’s sails.

“Best to leave the Sturm und Drang over a new Bay Bridge for the next governor,” Hodge said. “There won’t be any groundbreaking or ribbon-cutting on it in the next two years anyway.”

John B. Townsend II, director of media and government affairs for AAA Mid-Atlantic, also said he was “astonished” by the delay.

“We live in a Zoom world,” he said. “I think you could have held the public hearings that way.”

Townsend said it’s important that the state move forward with plans for a third span, noting that a major bridge collapsed in Minnesota in 2007. “How long do we forsake infrastructure like that? Any span that size, over a body of water like the Chesapeake Bay, cannot last forever.”

Townsend noted that MDOT officials have been consumed with the controversy over delays and cost overruns associated with the Purple Line light rail project, and with the selection of a private-sector partner for the I-495/I-270 project, which is expected to be announced in the coming days.

“I wonder if there is some kind of fatigue going on,” he said. “Just to save the Purple Line took an all-out effort. I think it was demoralizing for the whole department because it was a signature project.”

By Bruce DePuyt

Study Finds Some Water Quality Improvements in Choptank River

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The Chesapeake Bay has a long history of nutrient pollution resulting in degraded water quality. However, scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory are reporting some improvements in the Choptank River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

“The data presented here indicate that public and industrial investments in reductions of atmospheric emissions and upgrades to wastewater treatment plants have improved estuarine water quality in the Choptank,” said University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Professor Emeritus Tom Fisher.

For the last 20 years, scientists have worked with farmers, wastewater treatment plant operators, government agencies, and water quality groups to encourage conservation efforts and to discern trends in water quality in the Choptank basin. In this study, scientists evaluated whether the total maximum daily load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake—established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address degraded water quality— and other management practices to curb atmospheric deposition, clean up point sources for pollution such as waste water treatment plants, and reduce runoff from agriculture have led to improved water quality in streams and in the Choptank estuary.

Fisher and fellow researchers evaluated progress towards water quality goals between 1998 and 2017. They found that both atmospheric deposition and wastewater treatment inputs declined due to these management actions, whereas overall inputs increased due to higher agricultural inputs, despite conservation efforts.

Out of three monitoring stations on the Choptank River, the one nearest a wastewater treatment plant outfall, a few miles downstream from Cambridge, Maryland, showed improvement, indicating that public and industrial investments in reductions of atmospheric emissions and upgrades to wastewater treatment plants have improved estuarine water quality. In surface waters, water clarity increased and the amount of algae decreased. In bottom waters, dissolved oxygen increased.

“An interesting question is why there is improving water quality at the monitoring station near the wastewater treatment plant despite an overall increase in nitrogen and pollution inputs to the estuary as a whole,” said Fisher. “This response suggests that local actions matter; in this case greatly reducing local inputs from the largest wastewater treatment plant in the area improved adjacent estuarine water quality, even when the overall estuary was receiving more nutrient pollution.”

The agricultural sector, the dominant source of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, appeared to provide little contribution to improved water quality during this period, despite efforts to encourage best management practices such as fertilizer management, drainage control structures, or winter cover crops to reduce losses of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers applied to fields. The watershed contains numerous concentrated animal feeding operations, particularly poultry, which produce manure that is applied as organic fertilizer on crop fields. Fertilizer applied to crops such as corn, wheat, and soybeans may also enter the watershed through surface runoff or groundwater.

The Choptank is a tributary of Chesapeake Bay on the Delmarva Peninsula, and its watershed lies primarily in the state of Maryland, with a portion in Delaware. There are strong similarities between the Choptank basin and the Chesapeake as a whole, which enables the Choptank to be used as a model for progress in the Chesapeake.

“The eutrophication of the Choptank estuary is a microcosm of the Chesapeake Bay as a whole,” said Fisher.

The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary which has undergone considerable water quality degradation from human impacts and nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants from the air and land that have impaired use of receiving waters for drinking and recreation, and result in algal blooms and hypoxia. Algae blooms occur downstream in the Choptank and Chesapeake, blocking sunlight and reducing oxygen after the algae settle to the bottom, making it difficult for fish and oysters to survive.

“If reductions in agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus inputs over broad areas do occur in the future, improvements in estuarine water quality larger than those reported here, and more consistently throughout the entire estuary, could be expected. For this reason, it is important to continue monitoring agricultural areas with enhanced management practices,” said Fisher.

The paper “Localized water quality improvement in the Chesapeake estuary, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay” by Tom Fisher, Rebecca Fox, Anne Gustafson, Erika Koontz, Michelle Lepori-Bul, and Jim Lewis of the University of Maryland Extension was published in Estuaries and Coasts.

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science leads the way toward better management of Maryland’s natural resources and the protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. From a network of laboratories located across the state, our scientists provide sound advice to help state and national leaders manage the environment and prepare future scientists to meet the global challenges of the 21st century.  www.umces.edu

Josh Kurtz Named Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Maryland Executive Director

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The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) has named Josh Kurtz as its new Maryland Executive Director. Kurtz joins CBF after serving as the policy and government relations director for The Nature Conservancy in Maryland. Kurtz previously led advocacy campaigns at the Maryland General Assembly and the D.C. City Council to generate support for environmental conservation and policies to reduce climate change.

Josh Kurtz

In his new role, Kurtz will lead CBF staff in Annapolis and Easton as they work on policies and legislation aimed at helping Maryland reach its 2025 Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint pollution reduction goals. This includes efforts to plant more trees, conserve forested land, help farmers make environmental improvements, green cities, and ensure the state maintains sustainable fisheries. Kurtz will also oversee the Maryland office’s work to add millions more oysters to the Bay and promote regenerative agriculture throughout the state with tree plantings and farm restoration projects. 

“It’s my pleasure to welcome Josh to CBF and our Maryland team,” said Alison Prost, CBF Vice President for Environmental Protection and Restoration. “He brings with him broad experience addressing Chesapeake Bay pollution issues in Maryland at the state and local levels. His work will focus on engaging the community, educating decision-makers, and strengthening the state’s environmental policy and regulations.” 

Kurtz, a Crownsville resident, worked at The Nature Conservancy from 2013 until joining CBF this month. He has a master’s degree in public policy from George Mason University and a bachelor’s degree in wildlife conservation from the University of Delaware. Kurtz will fill Prost’s previous position after she was promoted to oversee CBF’s watershed-wide environmental protection and restoration efforts. 

“Maryland is working hard to meet the state’s 2025 Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals and these next four years will be key to ensuring the progress we’ve made so far becomes permanent,” said Kurtz. “We need to protect forested land, plant trees, minimize stormwater runoff in cities and towns, and ensure farmers continue to reduce polluted runoff flowing off agricultural land. I’m honored to have the opportunity to join the Maryland team in this important work.” 

Chesapeake Bay Receives D+ for Second Year in a Row

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The health of the Chesapeake Bay remains poor, due in part to insufficient management of the Bay’s rockfish population, according to a recent report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Out of the 13 health indicators, the rockfish score alone declined by 17 points, which is “the largest decline in any indicator in more than a decade,” the foundation said in its report, which was released Tuesday.

The Bay’s rockfish population began declining in the 1970s and 1980s from overfishing, but returned to healthy levels by the early 2000s, thanks to conservation efforts. However, the rockfish population has been under threat again within the last few years. The presence of adult female striped bass dropped by 40% from 2013 to 2017.

In response, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission required Maryland and Virginia to reduce their striped bass, or rockfish, harvest by 18%, and restricted the catching of menhaden, which is a primary food source for striped bass, in 2019.

Still, there need to be stronger actions that help stimulate stiped bass’s population growth, according to the report — especially in Maryland.

“The state needs to take more effective measures to stem the decline in striped bass. While other states chose to close the striped bass fishery during key times when the species is most threatened, Maryland took a piecemeal approach that we believe had limited effectiveness,” Alison Prost, the vice president for environmental protection and restoration of CBF, said in a statement.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has been releasing biennial reports since 1998, relying on 13 health indicators, including water clarity, forest buffers, blue crabs and oyster populations.

The bay’s health remained at a D+ since its last report in 2018. It scored 32 on a 100-point scale, one point lower than in 2018. If the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, which calls for six Bay states and the District of Columbia to meet pollution-reduction targets by 2025, is successful, then the Bay’s health should reach a score of 40 by 2025, according to the report.

A score of 70 would represent a “saved” Bay, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said, and a “saved” Bay would provide $130 billion a year in natural resource benefits to the region.

Not all health indicators were negative this year. For instance, the Bay witnessed lower nitrogen and phosphorus pollution over the last two years, which decreased the size of dead zones, or areas of water that have little to no oxygen. This year, the Bay had the seventh smallest dead zone in the last 35 years.

However, forest buffers, which help slow down nutrient runoff into waterways, are still low, partly due to changes in federal law that used to help fund many of the buffers in the Bay region. The health of underwater grasses, which provide food and habitat for fish, also declined because of heavy rainfall from the last two years, which affects water clarity.

The Bay can be restored by enforcing the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, CBF representatives said, but this heavily relies on Pennsylvania, which has lagged behind other Bay states, to meet its share of pollution reduction goals.

“If Pennsylvania does not meet the obligations it’s promised to meet by 2025, there is no doubt that the Chesapeake Bay will never be saved. It’s that basic,” William Baker, the president of CBF, said during a news conference Tuesday.

Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia and several organizations sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in September, accusing the federal government of failing to hold Pennsylvania accountable for its portion of the Bay cleanup.

“The stagnating score shows that we are witnessing apathy take hold and political will wane,” Baker said in a statement. “We can still save the Bay and deliver the promise of clean water to the next generation, but only if our elected officials redouble their clean water commitments and invest in finishing the job.”

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) lambasted the Trump administration for failing to hold Pennsylvania accountable.

“While Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has increased the federal resources available to protect the Bay, the Trump Administration has refused to hold Pennsylvania more accountable for failing to meet their pollution reduction targets under the Chesapeake Bay Agreement,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “Everyone needs to work together and I look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration EPA to meet our mutual goals of Clean Water in the Chesapeake Bay by 2025 by holding all partner states accountable.”

What will be most important for Maryland, however, is to make sure that lawmakers continue to allocate enough money in the budget for the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, Prost said. Investment in pollution controls for agriculture will also be important, since it is one of the areas that Maryland is relying on the most to reach its pollution reduction goals by 2025, CBF officials said.

Another priority for the upcoming General Assembly legislative session will be the Climate Solutions Act, which is a multifaceted bill that addresses the intersection between climate and water quality, Prost said.

By Elizabeth Shwe

The Shore Voice for Clean Water and, with your Help, Limitless Impact by Jeff Horstman

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In just three years, ShoreRivers has brought nearly $10 million of taxpayer money back to the Delmarva to reduce pollution in our waterways. ShoreRivers works for cleaner rivers by stopping pollution at the source—before it enters the water—and by engaging individuals to make small, compounding changes to create a landscape of collective action for a healthier environment.

At this pivotal moment in our nation’s history, we can clearly see the power an individual can add to a movement through their vote. At ShoreRivers, it is evident that we—and you—are part of something greater: each Riverkeeper is a member of the global Waterkeeper Alliance; your single home yard is part of a conservation corridor creating climate resilience; your sustainable farm is a piece of the two million farmed acres in Maryland; each child is part of the next generation of professionals prioritizing green choices across all sectors; and your gift is one of thousands for cleaner, more accessible water. With your help, ShoreRivers has grown its impact from limited to limitless.

We set a goal to become the clean water voice for the Eastern Shore, and we have done it.

We are a multistate technical provider with the expertise and passion to design, fund, and execute pollution-reducing projects on the micro and macro scale. We are not only “boots on the ground” specialists meeting with farmers to find ways to reduce pollution and increase yield; we are also influencing federal farm policy on behalf of clean water. We are not only teaching in the classroom; we are at the table with the superintendent. We are not only on patrol as Riverkeepers; we are leveraging our credibility to bring in well over $250,000 in pro bono legal and expert support to defend our waterways from polluters. We are not only committed to greater inclusion, access, and justice for diverse communities in the environmental movement; we are emerging as a leader on the Eastern Shore in this work.

With federal, state, local, and individual support, ShoreRivers has taken action against this area’s most destructive pollutants by installing 162 projects—the majority on farmland—that prevent 110,000 pounds of nitrogen, 14,600 pounds of phosphorus, and more than 4 tons of sediment from washing into our waterways every single year.

But the work is not over. On the contrary, in many ways, it is just beginning. This year marks my retirement as well as the retirement of two influential ShoreRivers board members. John Vail and Tim Junkin founded two of our legacy organizations and planted the seeds for ShoreRivers’ success today. To nourish and sustain this momentum, we look forward to fresh, talented, and energetic leadership with Isabel Hardesty at the helm.

I will enthusiastically continue to support ShoreRivers and I truly hope you will as well. Our communities deserve it. And remember: We will clean these rivers.

Jeff Horstman
Executive Director, ShoreRivers

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

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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

After Hours of Testimony, Board of Public Works Approves Eastern Shore Pipeline Permit

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The Maryland Board of Public Works on Wednesday unanimously approved a critical permit for a controversial Eastern Shore pipeline project that would extend natural gas to Somerset County, with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and the Eastern Correctional Institute as its two main beneficiaries.

The wetlands permit for the second part of the pipeline project will go before the Board of Public Works for a vote in the future.

Supporters of the pipeline pointed to the economic injustice that Somerset County has faced for decades as one of the three counties in the state that does not have access to natural gas. The county, which is 41% Black and the poorest county in the state, has lost out on many economic opportunities because of this, local leaders told Board of Public Works members.

“We desperately need this opportunity,” implored Craig Mathies, president of the Somerset County Commissioners. “We’re not looking for a hand-out. We’re just looking for a hand to advance the opportunity for our citizens to become self-sufficient and have a better means of supporting their families and enjoy a better standard of life.”

On the other hand, environmental advocates pointed to the environmental injustice of the pipeline, which will run through majority minority and low-income communities that could be exposed to any detrimental leaks or damages from the pipeline.

Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr.

Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-36) pushed back on this claim, arguing that residents may not have been beset with poverty if they had the proper infrastructure critical to economic development.

“Maybe the reason [residents] are poor is because they don’t have the infrastructure in place to bring businesses into Somerset County,” Hershey said in an interview with Maryland Matters. “So let’s look at bringing this type of infrastructure and see if we can create jobs as a result of that and then maybe that’s the best way to lift people out of poverty.”

Currently, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore uses fuel-oil and propane, while the Eastern Correctional Institute burns wood chips, both of which are dirtier sources of energy that natural gas can replace, local advocates emphasized. Not only would natural gas be a more cost-effective energy source, but it would also help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 38% at UMES and 65% in ECI.

Support of this natural gas pipeline and support for renewable energy sources are not mutually exclusive, local advocates said. Sen. Mary Beth Carozza (R-Somerset), pointed to other alternative energy projects that UMES has invested in, such as a 2.2 mega-watt solar farm that contributes to 12% of the campus’s energy consumption and a geothermal system in two campus buildings.

Lt. Gov. Boyd K. Rutherford (R), who chaired the meeting in place of Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R), also noted that Somerset County also has one of the highest asthma rates in the state, so it would be unjust to deny residents a cleaner energy source and let them continue to breathe dirty air until a renewable energy plan works out.

Opponents further argued that investing in a natural gas infrastructure is a short-sighted decision, predicting that the pipeline would become obsolete within the next decade as the renewable energy industry gains speed.

Even if the use of natural gas does diminish in the next few decades, public officials are nevertheless responsible for helping Somerset County residents grow economically, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, supporters said.

Rutherford highlighted that most of the opponents were from areas of the state that have natural gas and thus were speaking from a point of privilege.

“What a number of these people are doing is denying the choice of the residents and the business…in the poorest community in the state,” Rutherford said. “It goes to the elitism of people who live in an area where they can make choices that are trying to make choices for people who don’t.”

Although Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot (D) initially lambasted the board’s narrow authority to consider only the impacts on the tidal wetlands that the pipeline would go through, he concluded at the end of three hours of public testimony that requiring a dramatic shift solely to renewable energy may not be productive or fair for Somerset County.

Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot

“The fact that Somerset County has not had access to natural gas is quite frankly an economic injustice to residents that live there,” Franchot said. He mentioned the Great Bay wind project that was planned for Somerset County in 2014 but failed as it hit political obstacles in the General Assembly.

“The folks in Somerset need something now, not five years from now,” Franchot continued. “I strongly believe that this project will be somewhat of an immediately beneficial help to the environment by lowering emissions from the university and prison significantly, all the while adding only a small amount to the state’s natural gas use.”

State Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp (D) said that the pipeline could be seen as a “bridge” towards renewable energy and should not be used longer than necessary. She highlighted that the state’s goal of at least 40% greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2030 cannot be achieved with natural gas.

Franchot also emphasized that this vote should not be seen as an endorsement for fossil fuels or preclude development of renewable energy in Somerset County. Rather, it is a “temporary measure and must be treated as such.”

By Elizabeth Shwe

Zoning Change Denied for Eastern Shore Salmon Farm

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A Norwegian company’s plans to bring land-based salmon farming to Maryland’s Eastern Shore hit a snag Thursday night when one of the sites it had chosen for raising the commercially valuable fish failed to gain needed local approval.

The Dorchester County Board of Appeals denied AquaCon Maryland LLC a special zoning exception that would have allowed it to build a massive indoor hatchery and fish grow-out facility on a defunct golf course bordering the Choptank River.

The board’s decision came at the end of a 3.5-hour meeting where neighboring residents and others suggested the industrial-scale aquaculture operation would be unsuitable in the still largely rural area just west of Cambridge. Some also voiced concerns that its wastewater discharges, though treated to a high level, might hurt the Choptank River’s water quality, undermining recent signs of improvement.

“Is there a better location?” Choptank Riverkeeper Matt Pluta asked at one point.

The 114-acre site, formerly home to the Cambridge Country Club, is one of four locations AquaCon has selected for its planned facilities on the Shore, each expected to produce up to 15,000 metric tons of salmon annually.

AquaCon had previously declared its plans to build a facility on the outskirts of Federalsburg, a small town in Caroline County on a tributary of the Nanticoke River. The other two sites are in Cambridge and Denton, also in Caroline County, company representatives told the board.

Ryan Showalter, an Easton lawyer representing AquaCon, said it is pursuing multiple sites at the same time with the intent to start construction next year on whichever one first receives regulatory approvals. AquaCon is one of several mostly European companies rushing to build land-based salmon farms in the United States that use new developments in recirculating aquaculture technology.

Showalter touted the economic benefits for largely rural Dorchester County, noting that the company plans to invest $300 million in each facility and that each would create 150 jobs, a number of them high-paying profession and technical positions.

“When constructed, this will be an industry-changing, world-leading facility,” he said.

Bob Rauch, the company’s Easton-based engineering consultant, stressed that each would be an “all-green” facility. Unlike most open-water salmon farming operations in Europe, these fish would be raised indoors in tanks, with nearly all of the water recirculated and filtered to remove waste. They would not be fed antibiotics or be at risk of escape into the wild, two issues with pen-reared fish.

Solar panels would be placed on the rooftop of the massive 27.5-acre buildings to help offset the facilities’ energy needs. The solid waste produced by raising 3 million fish a year would be converted to energy-generating biogas via anaerobic digestion.

Showalter acknowledged that the size of the building — the largest on the Shore — was daunting. But he said the company pledged to plant a thick buffer of trees around it that in about 12 years should have grown tall enough to hide it from view from the road or neighboring properties.

Several of those attending the meeting praised the company’s efforts to minimize environmental impacts, but they voiced concerns about the wastewater it would generate. The facility would use 70,000–80,000 gallons of groundwater daily and pump an equivalent amount of pretreated wastewater to Cambridge’s sewage treatment plant.

The proposed Dorchester facility would also have withdrawn up to 2.3 million gallons of water daily from the Choptank and discharged the same amount back into the river. That water would cycle through tanks where the salmon would be held just before being harvested so they can be purged of naturally occurring microbes that can give their flesh an unappetizing musty odor and taste.

Rauch said the Choptank water would be treated before being returned to the river, with the discharge meeting the state’s limits for nitrogen and phosphorus.

Tom Fisher, a professor at the Horn Point laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which is next door to the proposed country club site, expressed some concerns about the potential impact on the lower Choptank. The river is suffering from excess nutrients from agricultural runoff and wastewater, but Fisher said it has shown water quality improvements recently in the wake of an upgrade of the treatment plant in Cambridge.

While the added wastewater coming from the municipal plant and the aquaculture facility’s direct discharge to the river would be treated to reduce nutrient levels, Fisher said he was concerned that the Choptank’s recovery might be undermined by the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus remaining in those additional discharges.

“Even if there’s a tiny concentration of something in that water, it’s going to contribute to the impairment,” warned Fred Pomeroy of Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth.

Pomeroy suggested the company focus first on developing its site in Cambridge, which has industrial land in need of redevelopment. Showalter, the company lawyer, said the city site isn’t suitable at this time because it doesn’t have access to the Choptank for purge water. The company is working on a way to eliminate the musty odor in the fish without needing river water, but that’s not ready yet.

Alan Girard of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation questioned how the facility would manage the stormwater runoff coming off the 27.5-acre rooftop. Rauch said the company has at least at least three different approaches in mind, including possibly using the old golf course’s irrigation system to cycle the runoff back into the ground. That portion of the property borders the river, though, where land use is strictly controlled by the state’s Critical Area law, and company representatives said they were still working out how to meet those requirements.

County appeals board members voiced some doubts about the stormwater and the municipal treatment plant’s ability to handle the aquaculture facility’s wastewater, even though company representatives said it had ample capacity to do so.

In the end, though, the appeals board decision seemed influenced most heavily by nearby residents’ complaints about the impacts on their quality of life of such an operation.

“It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it,” said David Rineholt, who said he and his wife Kathleen had built a home next to the old country club 25 years ago.

The site is accessed by a narrow two-lane road, which company representatives acknowledged might need some upgrading to handle 30-35 trucks per week. Otherwise, they said, the traffic generated by the 150-person workforce would be roughly equivalent to what the country club had experienced.

“It will tax traffic,” said board member Charles Dayton, Jr., a sentiment echoed by the rest of the board.

He and a couple of other board members seemed to suggest they might reach a different conclusion if presented with additional information and studies to address concerns raised at the meeting.

Afterward, though, AquaCon representatives indicated they wouldn’t try to win the board over but instead focus on getting regulatory approvals to go forward in Federalsburg and Denton.

“We have other sites,” said Showalter. “We redirect.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

Oyster Farming in Maryland Might Get Harder

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DNR to propose rule that could reduce areas for aquaculture leasing

The Hogan administration is moving to block Maryland oyster farmers from leasing spots in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries where there’s still a smattering of wild oysters — a step that aquaculture advocates warn will stifle the state’s small but growing industry.

The Department of Natural Resources has announced that it plans to propose a regulation that would enable it to deny a lease application wherever it finds even a very low density of wild oysters on the bottom or when “physical, biological and economic conditions” warrant reserving the area for the public fishery.

The move comes in response to complaints from watermen, who contend that their livelihoods are threatened by having any more potentially productive oystering areas leased to private shellfish cultivation.

“We’ve given up enough bottom already,” Queen Anne’s County waterman Troy Wilkins said at a recent virtual meeting of the DNR Oyster Advisory Commission.

Watermen have long chafed over the state’s move a decade ago to greatly expand its oyster sanctuaries, which put some reefs off-limits to wild harvest. They also have repeatedly protested aquaculture lease applications, citing potential conflicts with crabbing or wild oyster harvests.

DNR officials say they want to establish a process for creating or expanding Public Shellfish Fishery Areas, which are reserved exclusively for wild harvest.

“There are occasions — and they’re rare — when a lease application comes forward, and there are populations of oysters [there that] the fishery has been working on or could be working on,” said Chris Judy, director of the DNR shellfish program.

But oyster farmers contend that the DNR has already been withholding approval or forcing changes to some lease applications when watermen or others object. The rule will only make it easier, they say, for watermen to block them from leasing good spots for cultivating shellfish.

“This is basically a big land grab to the detriment of aquaculture,” said Tal Petty, owner of Hollywood Oyster Co. in St. Mary’s County, where he raises bivalves in cages in a creek off the Patuxent River.

There are already 180,000 acres of the Bay and its tributaries that since 2009 have been officially designated as Public Shellfish Fishery Areas. There are another 110,000 acres that are unclassified but still open to wild harvest.

In comparison, about 325 leases encompassing about 6,500 acres have been issued over the past decade, according to the DNR. A few are used for raising clams or scallops, but the vast majority is for farming oysters. There are about 100 applications pending with the DNR seeking to lease another 2,000 acres. Protests have been filed against awarding about 15 of those pending leases.

Petty, a board member of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, said the rule would severely limit the state’s aquaculture industry, which has grown since 2010 and produced about 60,000 bushels of oysters in 2019, according to DNR figures. The wild harvest during the 2018-2019 season was 145,000 bushels, though it nearly doubled in the most recent season ending in March.

“The tragedy is that Maryland is about to significantly reduce the leasable area for aquaculture, using nonscientific methods and measures,” Petty said.

Oyster density debate

DNR officials say they’re not expecting to create vast new areas off-limits to aquaculture but want to correct a regulatory imbalance. Under current rules, oyster farmers may petition to declassify a Public Shellfish Fishery Area so that it can be leased, but there is no comparable procedure for creating new or expanding one.

Judy said the DNR was considering denying a lease application if a survey it conducts finds as few as 5 wild oysters per square meter on the bottom. But watermen have insisted that the threshold for denying a lease be set even lower, to block a lease for a site if there is even one oyster per square meter on the bottom.

Some watermen who use power dredges or patent tongs to harvest oysters contend they can get their limit of 10 to 24 bushels per day, depending on the number of license holders on a boat, even if there are fewer than 5 oysters per square meter on the bottom.

“If you give me 2 or 3 oysters a meter, I’ll put a deck-load on my skipjack,” said Russell Dize, a skipjack captain from Tilghman. Skipjacks, which use sail or motor power to haul dredges, are allowed to harvest up to 100 bushels a day.

Watermen also complain that letting oyster farmers lease areas that already have some wild oysters effectively gives them a windfall, allowing them to make some quick money harvesting and selling those bivalves. But oyster farmers point out that they’re required by state regulations to plant and cultivate far more oysters in the leased area, which requires substantial investment up front in gear and supplies. It takes at least two to three years before they realize any income from raising those planted oysters large enough to harvest.

Two DNR advisory panels dominated by watermen and their supporters have voted to endorse the watermen’s position that leases should be denied if there is even one wild oyster per square meter on the bottom. An aquaculture advisory commission urged the department to set the lease denial threshold much higher, at 25 oysters per square meter.

“It appears to be a one-sided proposal to increase the oyster harvest at the expense of restoration and aquaculture efforts that are helping to bring Maryland’s oysters back,” said Allison Colden, a fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Though outvoted, several members of the DNR Oyster Advisory Commission argued that the DNR should hold off on the rule and include it as part of a broader effort by the commission to forge a consensus among watermen, oyster farmers and environmentalists over how the state’s oysters ought to be managed.

Tom Miller, director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, questioned the scientific basis for the rule. Miller, a fisheries scientist, said it’s the DNR’s purview to decide where to allow commercial harvest, but he said research shows that oyster populations need to be much denser than even 5 oysters per square meter to be likely to reproduce successfully and sustain themselves.

Ann Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, pointed out that experts working to restore the Bay’s severely diminished oyster habitat only consider a reef capable of sustaining itself when it has at least 50 oysters per square meter of varying ages and sizes covering at least 30% of its surface.

Long history of friction

The friction between watermen and oyster farmers in Maryland has a long history.

“Watermen have wanted all of the Bay bottom from the time the first lease law was passed in 1830,” said Don Webster, a Maryland Sea Grant aquaculture specialist and advocate for the industry.

Watermen, who once wielded considerable political clout, succeeded in getting laws passed that from the early 1900s until the early 2000s severely restricted leasing. All a waterman had to do to block a lease then was to swear that he had harvested oysters there sometime in the previous five years.

That changed in 2010, with the passage of a new law that made large areas available for leasing. The Bay’s oyster population had been decimated by then by diseases, overharvesting and habitat loss. A study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that there were only 36,000 acres of productive oyster habitat left in Maryland’s portion of the Bay.

State lawmakers decided it was time to encourage aquaculture to take harvest pressure off the struggling oyster population, and they also expanded Maryland’s network of oyster sanctuaries, which now cover about 250,000 acres. Watermen have since complained that the expansion took away many productive harvest areas. Though some may have once brimmed with oysters, a review of DNR data show that only about 10% of the state’s overall wild harvest came from those new sanctuaries in the year before they were set aside.

At the same time it moved to boost aquaculture and enlarge sanctuaries, the DNR also established Public Shellfish Fishery Areas that would be reserved for wild harvest. Those areas encompassed three-quarters of the remaining productive oyster habitat, according to a DNR report.

While harvests have rebounded some in the past decade, they remain well below their historic level, and watermen have pressed to get at least some of the sanctuaries reopened. The DNR in the Hogan administration attempted to do that but was blocked by the legislature amid an outcry from environmentalists.

Oyster farmers say the DNR has been conferring for a year or two with watermen and advocates for waterfront property owners to address their complaints about aquaculture. Meanwhile, they say they have had a harder time getting leases when watermen or property owners object.

JD Blackwell sorts through baby oysters at his aquaculture operation on the Potomac River is St. Mary’s County. Photo by Dave Harp

“DNR has decided to kill oyster aquaculture,” contended JD Blackwell, an oyster farmer who leases sites in St. Mary’s County. “The excitement that existed in 2011 and 2012 to give birth to a new industry is gone. Oyster aquaculture will wither and die from this point forward. Opportunity missed.”

Critics of the rule also say it’s self-defeating for watermen, because a growing number of them are getting into aquaculture to supplement or replace wild harvests.

One of those is Rachel Dean, a Calvert County waterwoman. She applied more than three years ago to lease 26 acres in the Patuxent River to raise oysters on the bottom. At least one waterman and a homeowner objected, she recalled. And when the DNR sampled the bottom there, it found “at least some” oysters on half of the proposed lease site, with an overall density of about 2 bivalves per square meter, according to a 2019 DNR memo.

The memo, signed by the DNR’s Chris Judy, proposed roughly halving the size of the lease to exclude what it called a “functional oyster bar.” Dean said the reduction would diminish the viability of the site for raising oysters, so they resisted it. The application remains on hold, and Dean said the department has not responded when she has asked whether it was formally denying the application.

Neither Judy nor Karl Roscher, head of the DNR’s aquaculture division, responded to requests for interviews or information.

“We’ve got to find a balance,” Dean said, between oyster farming and the wild fishery. “If this regulation goes through,” she added, “there will be no more bottom leases.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

Hogan Signs Regional Compact to Promote Offshore Wind — But Md. Projects Move Slowly

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The headline news is that the governors of Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia signed a compact on Thursday to collaborate and advance offshore wind projects and to promote the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast as hubs for the industry.

In reality, it’s another twist in the tortured debate over bringing wind turbines to Maryland’s waters.

The announcement by Maryland Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) of his pact with Virginia Gov. Ralph S. Northam (D) and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) was pure Hogan, on-brand with his oft-repeated message of bipartisanship and collaboration.

“Maryland has been leading the charge when it comes to real, bipartisan, common sense solutions and we are proud to continue setting an example for the nation of bold environmental leadership,” Hogan said in his statement. “Joining this multi-state partnership to expand offshore wind development will further our strong record of supporting responsible energy projects that provide jobs, clean air benefits, and energy independence.”

Creation of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Regional Transformative Partnership for Offshore Wind Energy Resources (SMART-POWER) provides a framework for the three states to cooperatively promote, develop and expand offshore wind by removing regulatory burdens and providing economic incentives for the industry and related construction and supply operations.

It’s a nod to the potential of offshore wind energy at a time when states are scrambling for economic rejuvenation and job growth and are feeling intense pressure to address climate change.

“Harnessing the power of offshore wind is key to meeting the urgency of the climate crisis and achieving 100% clean energy by 2050,” Northam said.

The governors cited a U.S. Department of Energy study estimating that Atlantic Coast offshore wind projects could support up to 86,000 jobs, $57 billion in investments, and provide up to $25 billion in economic output by 2030. Virginia leaders in particular have aggressively promoted offshore wind in recent years, and the state’s largest power company, Dominion Energy, signaled this year that it plans to put more resources into developing its clean energy portfolio.

In a statement, the Sierra Club hailed the agreement.

“This partnership between Mid-Atlantic States is only the start of unlocking the region’s massive potential for clean affordable offshore wind energy,” said David Smedick, the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal senior campaign representative. “The region must move quickly to attract investment in this burgeoning industry and help ensure we bring clean energy and family-sustaining, union jobs to Maryland.”

But Hogan’s own record and rhetoric on two long-proposed offshore wind projects off the coast of Ocean City have been decidedly mixed — and some environmental groups have grumbled for years that he and his administration could be doing more to promote offshore wind. A year ago, when the Maryland Department of Environment issued a detailed draft proposal about how the state would reduce greenhouse emissions, environmentalists and their allies in the General Assembly argued that offshore wind notably received short shrift — a contention that state Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles pushed back on.

Maryland has two offshore wind projects under review by the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Skipjack Wind Farm Project, to be built by Ørsted Offshore North American, is set to be located 19.5 miles off the coast of the northern part of Ocean City and adjoining Delaware beach towns.

Also under consideration is the MarWin Wind Farm project, which would be situated roughly 17 miles off the Ocean City coast, proposed by U.S. Wind.

Both projects were enabled by the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013, which was heavily promoted by then-Gov. Martin J. O’Malley (D) and passed by the Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly after a years-long legislative fight. But after receiving approval from the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) in 2017, the wind projects have proceeded at a sluggish pace — and amid increasing vocal opposition from political and business leaders in Ocean City, Maryland’s No. 1 tourist town.

Ocean City hired Bruce C. Bereano — arguably the most enthusiastic Hogan supporter in the Annapolis lobbying corps — to try to derail the proposals or push them farther offshore, and hired Timothy F. Maloney, a former state lawmaker and close Hogan friend, for some legal work related to the wind turbines, even though Maloney had no prior experience arguing cases before the PSC.

In the past year, Ørsted has had to fend off a challenge in the PSC after the company announced that it would be using larger turbines than it had originally said it would — to meet changing standards in the industry. The PSC, whose commissioners all have been appointed by Hogan, could have simply noted the change but instead initiated a lengthy hearing process to gauge community opinion — a process endorsed by the Hogan-controlled Maryland Energy Administration.

In August, the PSC signed off on Ørsted’s bigger turbines, at the MEA’s recommendation. But the PSC proceeding may have delayed the project’s completion by almost a year.

Without knowing how long the federal regulatory process will take — and the outcome of the presidential election could make a difference — both Ørsted and U.S. Wind said they hope to turn the turbines on in 2023, which seems like an optimistic estimate.

Both Ørsted and U.S. Wind issued statements Thursday that applauded the three-state wind energy compact.

Brady Walker, Ørsted’s Mid-Atlantic manager, hailed the governors’ “forward-thinking approach,” and said the company is “excited to engage with their effort to grow this new American industry.”

Salvo Vitale, the U.S. Wind country manager, said the agreement will be good for both Maryland and the region.

“We believe this strategic multi-state partnership will be critical leverage right now as many regions compete to attract the larger economic development that comes with the full offshore wind manufacturing supply-chain,” he said. “Locally based supply chain options will bring cost savings to Maryland rate-payers as we expand offshore wind development. We stand ready to be a creative and dynamic partner, with global expertise, as we work together to meet Maryland’s renewable energy goals, while creating high-quality jobs and driving significant local investment in the Baltimore area and across Maryland.”

Notably, neither company said Thursday’s announcement would improve the prospects for their projects in Maryland’s waters.

By Josh Kurtz