]]>
A new report sounds more bad news for the Chesapeake Bay and the people who work and play on its waters.
"Simply put, we're predicting that it's not going to be a good summer out there for rockfish, crabs and oysters that call the bay home," said William Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which released its forecast yesterday.
The center is basing its prediction on the heavy winter and spring rainfalls that loaded the bay's biggest tributary with the sixth-highest amounts of nitrogen pollution since monitoring began in 1985.
In the past, polluted water from the Susquehanna River has magnified the size of the bay's oxygen-deprived "dead zone" in the deep waters of the bay's channel. The river drains a giant portion of Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.
Nitrogen washed from fertilized farm fields and suburban lawns along the river feeds aquatic algae blooms, which use up the water's oxygen when they die. The bay's dead zone has become a summer staple on the estuary, sometimes stretching more than 100 miles from Annapolis, Md., to the mouth of Virginia's Rappahannock River.
The center is not predicting how far the dead zone will extend this year. Dennison said it will likely reach the state line, at least.
The forecast also foresees "low to moderate" algae blooms in the tidal Potomac River this summer. The Potomac's polluted waters have been a frequent target for red tides -- a type of algae bloom known for its color -- especially near the resort town of Colonial Beach.
It also predicts the recurrence of "mahogany tides" caused by a different algae species north of the Potomac. In past summers, algae blooms in the Potomac and the upper bay have closed beaches because of the threat of respiratory and gastric distress caused by toxic algae species.
Yesterday's forecast marked the fourth year in a row that the center has produced the report. Although its accuracy has varied, its dead-zone prediction has been on target. "That's been our poster child for accurate forecasting," Dennison said.
The prediction underscores the need for Virginia and its bay-state neighbors to control the sources of pollution that are choking the bay, said Mike Gerel, the Virginia scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation environmental group.
The states have been working since the 1980s to restore the bay, with limited success.
"We've got more dirty waters [according to a state report released
last week], there are catch reductions needed for blue crabs, watermen
are struggling and there are fish kills in the Shenandoah and the
James," Gerel said. "This just adds to the list of things that aren't
getting better."
Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.
RICHMOND
Eight-five percent of Virginia’s waterways are polluted with one or more contaminants, according to a six-year assessment released Monday the Department of Environmental Quality.
The report, which state officials said is the largest and most comprehensive assessment they’ve ever done, is required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The areas of impaired or polluted rivers and streams have grown by 1,600 miles of waterways, increasing from 9,002 miles in 2006 to 10,604 miles in 2008, the report states.
The leading cause of pollution in rivers and streams is high levels of E. coli bacteria.
“Agricultural practices appear to be one of the primary sources contributing to the bacteria standards violation,” the report states. “However, urban runoff, leaking sanitary sewers, urban storm sewers, failing septic tanks, domestic animals and even wildlife can also be significant contributing sources.”
In addition, the Chesapeake Bay continues to fail more than ten pollution tests and will not be cleaned up by a 2010 deadline, state officials said Monday.
Officials say a clean up plan, called a TMDL, already is in the works as officials trying to clamp down on new nutrient pollution, PCBs and other contaminants.
For more information, come back to PilotOnline.com later today and read Tuesday's Virginian-Pilot.
]]>Oysters and
watermen in the Chesapeake Bay haven't had good news in a very long time. The
once abundant shellfish population is at historic lows, thanks to disease and
habitat degradation. Crabs are disappearing. So are certain sea grasses.
Pollution in the Bay - nitrogen and phosphorus - is making parts of it
inhospitable for months at a time.
Now, thanks to a
new analysis by The Washington Post that echoes earlier reporting in this
newspaper, the Bay's boosters know that all these years of effort to restore
oysters to the Chesapeake, all the money spent - $58 million, by the paper's
reckoning - hasn't bought any improvement.
In fact, things
are actually worse for the Bay's oysters.
"We're at 1
percent or less (of the oyster's historic population). That's collapsed. We're
still fishing. It's kind of like if we were still whaling on the East
Coast," David Schulte, an oyster expert with the Army Corps of Engineers,
told The Post. "I mean, the population may never recover. It may not
recover now anyway."
The hope, what
there is of it, for now lies outside the Bay, in its tributaries. But if
scientists like Schulte can get it right, such efforts may hold promise for the
rest of the watershed.
The Lynnhaven,
for example, has a recovering oyster population, one that has taken to living
on riprap and concrete artificial reefs as if born to them. As the population
recovers there, it helps seed other oyster colonies in the Lynnhaven watershed.
There has been
similar good news in the Great Wicomico, according to Schulte and Rom Lipcius,
a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and an advocate for such
artificial reef habitats. Both Schulte and Lipcius, with their eyes on oyster
successes, say they're optimistic about Chesapeake oyster's long-term prospects
in the Bay.
Their solution
isn't particularly complicated: Provide the habitat and the shellfish will come
back. That's different from past strategies, which largely focused on raising
oysters suitable for commercial harvest.
Building reefs,
Lipcius argues, could be as simple as setting concrete blocks underneath
existing docks, where they provide new refuge for oysters and fish. Where docks
don't exist, we could build artificial reefs that don't impede navigation.
The important part, said Schulte, is to build reefs tall
enough to allow oysters to escape the silt and dirt of the Bay bottom.
Yet the state doesn’t allow the
waterman to work all of Virginia’s oyster beds. By working these beds the
waterman would bring the shells back up to the top and as clean shells. These shells
would then have a chance of to have the larvae attach and rebuild the once
abundant fishery. ks
The reefs can be
built out of concrete, as in the Lynnhaven, or out of oyster shell, as in the
Wicomico.
But they must be
off-limits to harvest. Such sanctuaries, if properly built and protected, will
help build healthy oyster populations elsewhere, including in places that can
be harvested.
Expanding such
programs, however, costs money, and requires an expertise and understanding of
the Bay's immensely complicated ecosystem and hydrodynamics. It also requires
spending money to seed even more oysters in places where they can make a
difference.
With little to
show for the $58 million already spent, money might be hard to come by. It shouldn't
be. There is much evidence in the Great Wicomico and in the Lynnhaven of what
works in oyster restoration. Those projects can provide a model for the future.
After all, isn't it better to spend money on oyster restoration tactics that
have worked than on ones that haven't?
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 13, 2008
Whether Chesapeake Bay watermen win a federal disaster declaration, and the money that might flow from it, Maryland and Virginia still have an obligation to see them through the crab crisis the states helped cause and are now trying to solve.
The states have new rules designed to reduce the harvest of female crabs by 34 percent, and to give a crashing fishery the chance to recover from decades of nutrient pollution, toxics and overfishing.
When the states announced new limits on harvests earlier this year, and promised more to come, they were finally reacting to the latest symptom of a long-standing problem. Sadly, for the watermen and for everyone fond of their imperiled catch, the cause of the Bay's problems remain to be addressed with similar vigor.
The Chesapeake's woes are rooted in the fertilizer that farmers put on crops and suburban home-owners deposit on lawns; the outflow from inadequate sewage treatment and broken septic systems; the chemicals that run off roads and parking lots each time it rains; the detergents used to clean dishes and clothes. All that stuff, when it washes into waterways, disrupts the ecosystem of the Bay and the economy it supports.
Until permanent changes are made to the behavior of the watershed's human inhabitants, disruptions like the Bay has seen in the crab population and other species will be unavoidable. In the meantime, however, both states have an obligation to those suffering in the current crisis.
The governors have taken the extraordinary step of asking the Commerce Department for a federal disaster designation, a first step to get Congress to appropriate money for crabbers and the businesses that depend on them. But the Commerce Department could also decide the crisis was avoidable, or a cash-strapped Congress could do nothing.
The federal response doesn't satisfy the obligation Maryland and Virginia and - quite directly - their citizens, have to the watermen downstream from their lawns and businesses and farms. If the federal government won't provide aid, state governments must.
Whether they like it or not, the tremendous growth in the suburbs of both states has done serious harm to the Chesapeake Bay and, by extension, to the watermen. The least all those new citizens can do is help their neighbors in a time of need.
Senator Webb's Contact Page
Please copy and paste the following in your email to Senator Webb or add your own:
The Honorable Tim Webb
Dear Senator Webb,
As you are aware, Governor Kaine has requested that US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez perform a disaster assistance evaluation pertaining to Virginia’s Blue Crab fishery and ultimately declare a Fishery Resource Disaster.
I urge you to support Secretary Gutierrez in his decision. Any funds resulting from such a declaration would help to offset the financial losses suffered by the Virginia Watermen as new regulations, loss of habitat, and rising fuel costs greatly inhibit the watermen’s ability to earn a living.
Additionally, I would like for you to know that I support and Virginia waterman, the work of the Virginia Watermen's Association (http://virginiawaterman.org/), and a clean healthy Bay. Please help to preserve these cultural and natural resources that are vital to Virginia.
Sincerely
Senator Warner's Contact Page
Please copy and paste the following in your email to Senator Warner or add your own:
The Honorable John Warner
Dear Senator Warner,
As you are aware, Governor Kaine has requested that US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez perform a disaster assistance evaluation pertaining to Virginia’s Blue Crab fishery and ultimately declare a Fishery Resource Disaster.
I urge you to support Secretary Gutierrez in his decision. Any funds resulting from such a declaration would help to offset the financial losses suffered by the Virginia Watermen as new regulations, loss of habitat, and rising fuel costs greatly inhibit the watermen’s ability to earn a living.
Additionally, I would like for you to know that I support and Virginia waterman, the work of the Virginia Watermen's Association (http://virginiawaterman.org/), and a clean healthy Bay. Please help to preserve these cultural and natural resources that are vital to Virginia.
Sincerely
]]>John M.R. Bull
Director of Public Relations
Virginia Marine Resources Commission
“Steve Bowman and I wanted to give a head’s up: Gov. Kaine just this morning formally requested that the federal government declare the blue crab fishery a disaster, thus making the watermen eligible for economic disaster relief.
The U.S. Secretary of Commerce would decide whether to issue such a disaster declaration. There is no telling on a time frame. If that happens, a congressional appropriation of unknown quantity of money would be up for a vote.
Maryland today will ask for the same disaster designation for their crab fishery.”
This is good news. My hopes are that this is the first step in recognizing that it is not just the blue crab that is in a state of disaster but the Chesapeake Bay as well.
I have a big wish list and one of those wishes is that the Federal and State will use the waterman and his knowledge in restoring the Bay. This is a win, win for all.
Matt 12:25 (NIV)
Virginia Waterman must unite! Join us. Download Application Join the Virginia Waterman's Association
The crabbers have been accused of overfishing for years but they have started fighting back. Too late but they are fighting.
For over 30 years commercial waterman have been screaming about the degradation of the Chesapeake Bay that has been causing the decline of life in the Bay.
Although the crabbers will take another hit they have united and several environmental organizations have joined with them as they have threated suit.
Lawyers have advised them that they do have grounds for such a suit. This week the Virgina Waterman's Association will meet with an environmental group that has passed word to them that they have already prepared the legal work for such a suit. They have just been waiting for the right group to come along. They think the Virginia Waterman's Association is that group.]]>A group pledged Wednesday to be more proactive in efforts to clean Chesapeake Bay pollution.
By Patrick Lynch | 247-4534
April 10, 2008
KILMARNOCK - The government's failure to clean the Chesapeake Bay has harmed the livelihood of watermen and infringed on their constitutional right to clean water and may be grounds for a class-action lawsuit, a group of watermen decided in Kilmarnock on Wednesday night.
Fed up by declining harvests and tightening regulations that make it increasingly difficult to earn a living on the water, the watermen said it is time to take a more active role in demanding that state and federal governments reverse the pollution that is choking life out of the Chesapeake.
Whether a lawsuit materializes or not, a group of about 50 watermen and supporters, who met in a conference room at the Bank of Lancaster, resolved to be more politically engaged in getting their voices heard.
The stance is striking because of whom it's coming from. Crabbers and oystermen are often targeted for contributing to the decline of the bay. Environmentalists, government officials and scientists point to commercial overfishing as one of the key reasons for the drastic decline in oyster and crab stocks.
Much of the watermen's enthusiasm for action now stems from the ongoing debate over stricter crab regulations — required because of overfishing, scientists and regulators say — in Virginia and Maryland.
Stepping into that debate, watermen too often split themselves politically, said Ken Smith, vice president of the Virginia Waterman's Association, who organized the meeting.
Hard-pot crabbers point to peeler potters as the problem, and both point to winter dredgers.
The crossfire kills the potential for a united front on larger issues, he said.
"They've got us where they want us," Smith said.
Though crabbers may point to other crabbers as the problem, "Well, it's not. It's the quality of this bay.
"We demand that they fix the problem."
During the meeting, Smith recited a few figures from a recent "report card" on the bay's health from the Environmental Protection Agency-led Chesapeake Bay Program to underline the major problems that are not the fault of watermen.
"Three hundred and eighteen million pounds of nitrogen entered the bay last year," Smith said.
Nitrogen feeds algae blooms, which cloud the water and suck up oxygen, which is vital for marine life. The report card said the bay in a year should get no more than 175 million pounds of nitrogen, which comes from sewage plants and fertilizer washed off farms and lawns.
"Only 12 percent of the bay met the standards for dissolved oxygen in the water," Smith said, referring to one of the most basic water quality standards.
Lee Ann Washington, a White Stone attorney whose father was once president of the state watermen's association, led a discussion on whether the commercial fishermen would have legal standing for litigation.
Washington cited as potential grounds the Virginia Constitution, which states "it shall be the commonwealth's policy to protect its atmosphere, lands, and waters from pollution, impairment, or destruction, for the benefit, enjoyment, and general welfare of the people of the commonwealth."
Washington and others also pointed to the Clean Water Act and the federal court order to Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington to clean up the bay by 2010. The government is not living up to the Clean Water Act and the states will not meet the 2010 deadline, both potential grounds for litigation, they said.
The discussion brought up an alphabet soup of agencies that could be involved. Watermen are most familiar with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission because it sets commercial harvest regulations.
But the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, still a favorite target for watermen, has little to no jurisdiction over water quality.
The watermen also talked about the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Environmental Quality as agencies that have failed to keep the bay clean.
Representatives of U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, Del. Albert Pollard and state Sen. Richard Stuart also attended the meeting.
News from the Office of
Congressman Rob Wittman
First District, Virginia
Date: April 8, 2008 Phone: 202-225-4261
Wittman Calls for Action on Chesapeake Bay clean-up; Supports Virginia Waterman’s Association
(Washington, D.C.) – Congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA) released the following statement on the state of the Chesapeake Bay and offering his support to the Virginia Watermen’s Association:
“The Commonwealth of Virginia is blessed with some of the most pristine natural beauty in world. Many local economies depend on the revenues created by tourists ascending upon Virginia in hope of enjoying our waters, beaches, mountains and forests. The Chesapeake Bay has long provided numerous opportunities for locals and tourists alike to fish, boat and enjoy a day at the beach. Unfortunately, over the years we have failed to adequately protect and preserve the Bay and as a result its health has declined to the point of being in critical condition.
“The Virginia Watermen’s Association, an organization with many members who earn a living working the Bay, has chosen to stand in opposition to the current condition of the Bay. They correctly point out that a lack of action has been ruinous on local small businesses and their employees within the seafood industry. I agree with the Watermen and share their concern that this is a problem that demands we take serious and decisive action to clean up the Bay.
“That is why I have been working with my colleagues in Congress to draft legislation that provides a comprehensive plan to clean up the Bay. Currently, there are several piece meal efforts going on simultaneously, but unless these efforts are strategically coordinated, they will not be successful. I am in the process of meeting with agencies and organizations who are involved in Bay clean-up to get their points of view as I draft the legislation. As a Member of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force, I will continue to support efforts to improve the health of one of our most valuable resources."
Population growth is among problems hindering the effort
Friday, Apr 04, 2008 - 12:09 AM
By LAWRENCE LATANE III
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Population growth is undermining modest gains in the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, according to regional reports released yesterday.
Furthermore, pollution decreases in most of the bay's major tributaries are still too small to prevent Virginia and its bay-state neighbors from missing a federal deadline to improve water quality.
The reports by the Chesapeake Bay Program, of which Virginia is a part, and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, add to the drumbeat of warnings that the bay can't be saved at the current pace.
"We are disappointed we don't have better news to report this year," said Bill Dennison, vice president for science applications at the University of Maryland center.
The bay's health actually improved slightly last year, according to the university's second annual assessment of the estuary. Scientists there graded it C-, compared to last year's D+. "But, we were expecting more," Dennison said, because dry summer weather should have reduced the flow of polluting nutrients reaching the waterway.
Both reports underscore the hurdles Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the federal government face in a 20-year clean up campaign regarded as a model for watershed and water-quality protection.
Budget woes are compounding the problem.
In Virginia, for example, a proposed $100 million fund to help farmers adopt the best management practices such as planting trees along streamsides and other controls to reduce farmland runoff, was reduced to $20 million in the General Assembly this year despite broad political support.
"Nobody will tell you that the environment is not important," said Assistant Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Jeff Corbin. "But, if you've only got $1 and you have $3 of things to fund, the environment always seems to be low on the list."
The bay-program report said 12 percent of the bay and its tributaries met dissolved-oxygen standards last summer. That means 88 percent of the estuary was inhospitable, possibly deadly, to crabs, oysters and fish.
The same report shows that underwater grasses in the bay increased to almost 65,000 acres, up from 59,000 in 2006, but still far short of the 185,000-acre goal for 2010 the cleanup partners set in 2003.
That report also said that only 12 percent of the bay had acceptable water clarity in 2007.
State governments in the region agreed in 2000 to take steps to remove the bay and its tributaries from a federal dirty waters list by 2010. The bay-program report reiterated the conclusion by governors in the region late last year that the deadline will be missed.
The report highlighted how population growth and development is thwarting the cleanup.
The population of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed has jumped from 8 million in 1950 to almost 17 million, with associated roads, buildings and other "impervious surfaces" growing even faster.
About 130,000 people are added to the region every year, the report said. During the 1990s, the population climbed 8 percent, while impervious surfaces jumped 41 percent.
That means more rainwater runoff from suburbia carrying pet wastes, seepage from septic tanks and lawn fertilizers and other pollutants.
Dennison said he remains optimistic the bay can be restored.
For the second year in a row, water quality has improved near the head of the bay, spurring dense growth of environmentally important submerged grasses.
"It's a great example of what kinds of improvements we can get if we take actions needed to reduce urban and suburban storm-water runoff and agricultural runoff," he said.
Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.
Loss of eelgrass threatens crabs
Chesapeake Bay vegetation that supports marine life is dying off
Sunday, Mar 23, 2008 - 12:08 AM
By LAWRENCE LATANE III
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
GLOUCESTER POINT -- Summer fun used to mean soft crabs and jimmies for Tom Powers, who merely had to wade into the Chesapeake Bay to catch his fill.
But that ended in 2005 when the 30-acre eelgrass bed he crabbed in disappeared.
"It died and it still hasn't come back," the Poquoson resident said.
That bed at Hunt's Point and thousands of other acres of eelgrass vanished when water temperatures climbed beyond normal in the lower Chesapeake Bay. Temperatures spiked temporarily between 2.5 and 3 degrees above normal during the summer of 2005.
Now, scientists at Virginia Institute of Marine Science are fearing more die-offs.
Years of research have proved that once eelgrass beds are gone, they don't come back, said Ken Moore, who has written studies on the stresses confronting eelgrass beds in the Chesapeake.
The underwater plant sends ribbonlike leaves sprouting from the bottom. They form dense green thickets of vegetation in the shallows that harbor a bounty of marine life.
Few species have as great a stake in eelgrass as the blue crab. The crab supports a multimillion-dollar commercial fishing industry, which is in trouble because of sharp declines in the crab population. Eelgrass beds provide welcome shelter for blue crabs shortly after they hatch in the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia Capes.
"They have a chemical sensitivity" that allows them to detect the beds and hide from predators there once they enter the bay, VIMS scientist Jacques van Montfrans said. "We typically find 10 to 100 times more crabs in eelgrass than unvegetated sites."
When they can't find eelgrass, the baby crabs swim to the marshy fringes of the bay's tributary creeks and rivers, said Rom Lipcius, another VIMS scientist. But those bare mud bottoms are like a lion's den of hungry striped bass, croaker and bigger blue crabs.
Eelgrass acreage in the bay has dropped by more than half since its high of about 30,000 acres in the mid-1990s, according to a VIMS survey. About 13,500 acres were found in 2006.
Thousands more acres grew in the saltiest waters of the bay before June 1972, when Tropical Storm Agnes uprooted eelgrass colonies, smothered them with sediment and clouded the water with debris and pollution. Eelgrass died because sunlight couldn't penetrate the water.
As Moore's research found, the grass has never returned in Maryland, where Agnes hit hardest, probably because pollution limited the grasses' ability to survive, he said.
Intense efforts to replant eelgrass seedings and scatter eelgrass seed in Maryland waters have failed.
"I gave up trying to plant it," said Court Stevenson, a professor at the University of Maryland's Horn Point Laboratory on the Eastern Shore. "I'm not terribly optimistic about eelgrasses' future in Maryland."
Now a new threat is emerging in the lower bay with a rise in water temperature and a decline in water clarity, Robert J. Orth, a biologist at VIMS said.
"The bay's warming up. Eelgrass is a cool-water species and we're close to the southern limit of its range," he said.
Secchi disk readings, made by measuring the depth at which a white disk disappears when lowered into the water, show a gradual decline in water clarity in the bay's mainstem near the Maryland-Virginia line, said Mark Trice, who oversees water-quality data for Maryland.
Figures he supplied show average visibility readings from May through July last year were 1 meter -- about 39 inches -- or a half-meter less than the previous 20-year average.
Water pollution -- in the bay's case, nutrients from fertilizer run-off, septic-tank seepage and sewage-plant discharges -- feeds microscopic algae and bacteria that make the water less transparent.
As water temperatures rise, the eelgrass's metabolism speeds up, demanding the plant to produce more food through photosynthesis. Such a double-whammy is leaving eelgrass stressed in the lower bay, which scientists once considered a haven for the aquatic plant, Orth said.
Like his Maryland counterparts, Orth has ceased attempts to replant eelgrass beds, which also disappeared from the Virginia tributaries after Agnes.
On the other hand, he has had tremendous success on the seaside bays along Virginia's Eastern Shore.
A planting of eelgrass shoots about 10 years ago has regenerated 750 acres in South Bay. The difference between that coastal inlet and the Chesapeake is that it is open to cooler, pollution-free water from the Atlantic.
"What we're seeing is nature taking over," he said.
NORFOLK, Va. -- Virginia's crab pot season started Monday under recently tightened rules, with commercial crabbers knowing that more restrictions likely are on the way.
Next week, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission will consider whether to enforce no-harvest sanctuaries for a longer time as part of efforts to restore the diminishing blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay, said John M.R. Bull, commission spokesman.
And next month, the commission will vote on cutting by as much as 30 percent the number of crab pots a waterman may put in the bay and its tributaries during the season, which runs through Nov. 30.
Watermen fear being regulated out of their livelihoods. They argue that the changes are targeting overfishing but that pollution and other environmental problems are a much bigger threat to blue crabs.
Many watermen already have cut back the time they spend crabbing or have found other work because owning, maintaining and operating a boat is so expensive that it's hard to make much of a profit, said C.D. Hancock, president of the Coastal Virginia Waterman's Association, in Hampton.
"Fishing pressure as a whole has dwindled to the point where it's just a joke," Hancock said.
"I'm not opposed to any regulations, as long as they're well thought-out," he said. "There's a lot of environmental things going on that aren't being considered."
Despite conservation measures taken over the past decade, the crab population in Virginia is now 30 percent of what it was in 1991, according to VMRC.
In January, a panel of blue crab scientists from Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina who studied the issue for 10 months recommended that regulators act quickly to help the blue crab.
In February, VMRC members voted unanimously, despite protests from watermen, to approve a number of rule changes that took effect immediately.
These short-term measures are just the first steps, said Robert O'Reilly, deputy chief of VMRC's fishery management division.
"Clearly, there's a rebuilding effort needed," O'Reilly said. "That's what the commission has already started: a rebuilding approach."
The tightened rules include requiring escape hatches to remain open on crab pots to let smaller female crabs get free to spawn and increasing the minimum size limit for peeler crabs. Peelers are crabs about to shed their shells; they are sold for eating as soft-shell crabs.
In addition, only one other person may be authorized to work a waterman's crab pots, instead of the many previously allowed, and the number of watermen permitted to dredge crabs from the bay's bottom as the crabs hibernate during winter was capped at 53.
At its April 22 meeting, VMRC may shorten the winter dredge season from three months to one or ban winter dredging entirely. The commission also will consider cutting the number of pots allowed per waterman by between 10 and 30 percent.
Before that, on March 25, VMRC will discuss and vote on a proposal intended to make more crabs available to start spawning in mid-May.
Currently, crabbing is not permitted within a spawning sanctuary area from June 1 through Sept. 15. VMRC will consider closing that area as early as April 15.
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 10, 2008
A polluted Chesapeake Bay kills creatures and chokes plants. It also destroys human lives, a fact made all too clear during a Virginia Marine Resources Commission deliberation on how to save the blue crab.
The VMRC instituted regulations on Feb. 26 to limit the crabs watermen take from the estuary. "We're not going to survive this," said Charles Pruitt from Tangier Island. "You might as well throw us out now; we've been regulated to death already."
That has been the all-too familiar reaction from fishermen and oystermen on a Bay decimated by pollution and disease.
Everyone knows the stories about the first explorers finding a Chesapeake Bay so crowded with wildlife that they could walk across on the backs of rockfish, eating oysters the size of dinner plates.
The modern Bay is a different place. Starved of oxygen for months at a time, filled with nutrients and pollutants, the oysters are almost gone, and the crabs are in trouble. After decades of effort, the rockfish have rebounded, thanks to the same kind of draconian management the watermen now decry for crabs and oysters.
The Bay has been destroyed by suburban sprawl, by overtaxed sewer systems, by destructive farming techniques. Its enormously complex, and badly understood, ecosystem has been knocked completely out of whack.
There's no way to be precise, but estimates blame two-thirds of the nutrient pollution in the Bay - nitrogen and phosphorus - on sloppy crop farming, on suburban runoff, on animal waste. Fertilizer and other nutrients wash into the watershed, essentially from any place it rains.
The stuff causes algae blooms, which rob waterways of oxygen. Which in turn kills the Bay and the animals and plants in it, and everything that depends on them.
"Water quality is the key," said Kelly Price, an Eastern Shore crabber, at the VMRC meeting. "Without that, you lose habitat. And without habitat, you're done."
The state has spent and is spending money to deal with the ancient and faulty municipal sewer systems that surround the Bay. That is a significant part of the Bay's problem - probably a third or more. But Virginia has yet to deal in a meaningful way with runoff from farmers and homeowners.
The reason is simple: Such "nonpoint source" pollution is hard to control. The state would have to do expensive things like help more farmers put up fences to keep animals out of creeks and rivers. It would have to do unpopular things like force farmers to maintain buffers to collect field runoff, or find a way to get homeowners to stop putting fertilizer on their lawns. The state would have to find a better way to control stormwater runoff, which washes fertilizer and pollutants directly into the Bay.
And it would have to pass laws to punish people and cities that don't or won't do those things.
All of which would be politically difficult - at a time when the state budget needs to be trimmed. But the effort is undeniably necessary at a time when 170,000 people move into the Chesapeake watershed each year, bringing more pollution and more damage.
"For all of the progress we have made upgrading sewage treatment plant technologies, we're losing ground on impervious surfaces: rooftops, driveways, roads - all of which carry sediment," said Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr. "I would say we're having a hard time now achieving the environmental protections to offset that kind of rapid growth. We can't conserve land fast enough to offset some of the other stuff."
General Assembly committees this year passed a bill to spend $100 million, but the bill died, a casualty of the economic slowdown. So, once again, Virginia faced a budgetary choice, and the choice was to spend money on things other than the Bay.
Under the threat of federal sanctions, the state committed years ago to cleaning up the Chesapeake by 2010. Virginia will not meet that deadline, and a gutted Environmental Protection Agency is unlikely to punish Richmond. But that doesn't invalidate the state's obligation.
Virginia's spending on the Bay must begin to meet its promises, no matter what happens to its finances. The solution to economic vagaries is to remove Richmond's choices, to create an irrevocable fund devoted permanently to Chesapeake cleanup. Maybe it's a penny of the sales tax, as has been proposed in the past. Maybe it's a new flush tax. But it should be something that can't be revoked.
If it wants to get serious about saving the crabs, the oysters and the watermen, Virginia must dedicate real money to the cause of the Chesapeake Bay, money that can't and won't be the first to disappear when the economy heads down the tubes.
Key vote on Chesapeake Bay cleanup
The Maryland House appropriations committee is set to vote tomorrow (Thursday, March 13) on a proposal to cut by half a new $50 million Chesapeake Bay cleanup fund.
The Chesapeake Bay 2010 Trust Fund (formerly called the "Green Fund") was created during the General Assembly's special session last fall to pay for programs to reduce polluted runoff from farms and urban stormwater drains. This runoff pollution is one of the bay's biggest problems, because it contains fertilizer that feeds algae, which then dies and creates fish-killing low-oxygen dead zones.
Last year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other environmental groups proposed a $100 to $150 annual fund to pay for runoff control programs through a new fee on blacktop and sprawl. But then that was pared back this fall to a more modest $50 million fund, drawn from car rental and gas taxes.
Recently state Sen. Ulysses Currie, chairman of the senate budget and taxation committee and a Democrat from Prince George's County, and other lawmakers amended the proposal to cut it back again to $25 million. The House appropriations committee will discuss the idea tomorrow among other proposed state budget cuts. Despite recent tax increases by the O'Malley administration, the economic downturn has made it tough for the state, with a lot of programs and state agencies facing trims.
Kim Coble, Maryland Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, is urging lawmakers to stand firm in their support of the full $50 million annual fund. "We are simply once again urging compromising the health of the bay, and we've been doing it for decades," Coble said. "When is cleaning up the bay going to be a top priority for Maryland?"
On Tuesday, Coble joined with Michael Phipps, president of the Maryland Farm Bureau, and John Kortecamp, CEO of the Maryland Home Builders Association, environmentalists and more than 20 others in writing to House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Mike Miller urging them not to cut the new cleanup fund. "Please, do not reverse Maryland's long overdue pledge to funding healthy water and clean air. While we understand the need to address our fiscal deficit, Maryland's ecological deficit has been overlooked for far too long," the letter says.
Crab blues
Regulators step in to save the blue crab by imposing tougher harvesting rules on watermenDate published: 3/2/2008
THE CHESAPEAKE BAY'S water-
With no anticipation of a healthier bay any time soon, and reports of the lowest crab harvest in Virginia history in hand, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission has done the only thing it could do: It has said it will set new rules limiting the number of crabs watermen may remove from the bay and the periods of time in which they may do it.
Maryland followed suit with new restrictions of its own, knowing that the two states must work in tandem to prevent the blue crab's numbers from dwindling to a point from which it cannot recover. Researchers say the bay's blue crab population is a third of what it was just 15 years ago.
Once the two states determine later this month what the exact limits will be, the result will be as intended: Astronomical prices for crabs will curtail demand. And more watermen will be looking for alternative work.
The sad truth, however, is that setting harvest limits for crabs is akin to prescribing aspirin for a cancer victim. It fails to address the real issue and doesn't prevent the pain from worsening.
The watermen, like crabs and oysters, are victims of a broader failure to implement the remedies that we all know could restore the bay's health. As one Chesapeake Bay Foundation official put it, even if no more crabs were taken from the bay, the creatures would continue to struggle without improved water quality and renewed habitat.
Until we control the nutrient loading of the bay and its tributaries from sewage-treatment plants, farms, residential lawns, and endless acres of impervious pavement, conditions will only worsen. The watershed ecosystem's ability to maintain the status quo will erode. As time passes, the region is at increasing risk of forgetting what a healthy Chesapeake Bay is, having taken for granted this key to its identity.
Bay advocates agree that regulating the blue crab fishery is a necessary evil at this point, and a last resort. The regulators grieve for the toll they are taking on the watermen's way of life, while knowing this is their only hope for preserving some portion of it.
Only reliable funding from every level of government can assure that progress toward the bay's recovery is made. If bay allocations are used as a source of general revenue when budgets get tight, how is this "commitment"?
It's our choice--and the one we are making gives little hope to crab or man.