Crabcakes, Football, and the Chesapeake Bay: That's What Maryland Does!
In this prior post, I provided commentary on a listening session that the EPA held with members of the building and development industry on President's Obama's Executive Order on restoring and protecting the Chesapeake Bay. A major concern voiced by the industry during that meeting was that new development would bear the brunt of any changes in stormwater management practices as a result of the EPA report. There is now a second listening session scheduled to take place on October 27, 2009 for local home builders and developers to discuss EPA's draft recommendations for the Bay. I will be attending this meeting and will be sure to share my observations with you next week.
In preparation for the meeting, I’ve reviewed the Chesapeake Stormwater Network’s (CSN) recent Chesapeake Bay Stormwater Report Card – and, as the CSN notes, the grades are pretty dismal. In fact, for the ten core stormwater implementation categories recognized by the CSN, Maryland scores a D+ or below in 6 categories and earns an overall grade point average of a D+.
So what is this Report Card and how was it scored? Well, according to its author:
The basic approach I took was to grade each state on how well it was doing in ten core areas of stormwater implementation — how effective were they in protecting or restoring the Chesapeake Bay watershed from the impacts of past or future land development? When the issue is framed this way, it is possible to define quantitative “Bay-friendly” benchmarks that can be graded and compared among the states. The simple benchmarks measure whether existing state programs foster real on-the-ground implementation of sustainable stormwater and restoration practices that can make an incremental difference in solving the Bay stormwater problem.
The complete Report Card goes on to cite some statistics that readers of this blog may find particularly interesting (and worrisome):
- The continuing wave of land development constitutes a major threat to the quality of tributary streams and the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Consider the following:
Stream habitat and biological diversity in 10,000 stream miles of the Bay watershed has been degraded by past development, and hundreds more stream miles are at risk from future development. Scientific studies have documented that as little as 8 to 10 percent impervious cover causes major degradation in streams in the ridge and valley, piedmont and coastal plain provinces. Other research has linked severe degradation of fish and benthos communities in small estuaries of the Bay, when as little as ten percent of land is developed in their contributing watersheds. - Urban land constitutes the fastest growing nutrient load source in the Bay watershed. In 1985, developed lands produced less than 5% of the nutrient load to the Bay. In 2005, the total nitrogen and total phosphorus load produced by developed land climbed to 19 and 30% of the total load delivered to the Bay, 6 respectively. The sharp increase in urban nutrient loads reflects both increased urban sprawl and recent nutrient reductions from wastewater treatment plants, and to a lesser extent, croplands.
- Developed lands currently produce nearly 20% of the annual sediment load to the Bay, primarily due to urban streambank erosion and construction site runoff.
- Bacteria levels in urban stormwater runoff routinely exceed water quality standards, and cause closure of streams, beaches and shellfish harvesting areas after significant rains throughout much of the watershed.
- Pesticides have been detected in 95% of urban streams and fish tissues sampled, and stormwater runoff from urban lands has created a distinct pollution signature of trace metals, PCBs, hydrocarbons and other toxic compounds in the sediments urban Bay estuaries.
Wow. It will be interesting to see if the release of this Report Card impacts the EPA's final report or if it comes up for discussion at the next listening session. I'll be sure to keep you posted.
