Efforts to improve Chesapeake Bay’s water quality drawing concern
Published: Friday, August 12, 2011 7:48 PM CDT
http://www.newarkpostonline.com/articles/2011/08/13/news/doc4e45c63fc4922974373305.txt
A federal initiative to reduce the amount of pollutants finding their way into the Chesapeake Bay is producing opposition.
About 200 people turned out at the Seaford Fire Hall recently for the second of two public forums to discuss how Delaware plans to meet the goals for curtailing the amount of nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment reaching the bay waters.
Delaware is one of six states that contain a portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed within its borders. More than a third of the state, including half of Sussex County, is included. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set limits on how much pollution the bay can assimilate each day (Total Maximum Daily Load - TMDL) and has set limits that each of the watershed states must meet.
Jennifer A. Volk, an environmental scientist with the Watershed Assessment Section of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), said the EPA does not care how Delaware reaches the goal only that it does. She told those attending the forum that if The First State does not submit a plan to hit the mandated levels, or fails to show progress, the EPA could respond with increased permitting requirements, regulations or sanctions.
Currently, the plan is for the states to achieve the federal goals by 2025, but 60-percent of the tools, policies and practices for doing this must be in place by 2017. Volk said the state also needs to set two-year milestones to show the EPA it is making progress towards the end goal.
Volk said one part of the plan envisions eliminating more than 6,000 septic systems from watershed, mainly through the transition to expanded sewer systems. Additionally, another aspect of the plan anticipates planting 90,000 acres of “cover crops,” which are used to prevent farm field erosion during the late fall, winter and early spring months. DNREC officials are also expected to construct 5,000 acres of buffer zones along tributaries, although where they will be located, how they will be financed and who will maintain them remain open questions.
“Most of the watershed located in our state is agricultural,” said State Rep. Dave Wilson, R-Cedar Creek Hundred), who is a breeder of horses. “We heard tonight that over the last 10 years, farmers have reduced the amount of nutrients running off their land and into the bay by 40-percent. I believe farmers have done their part to improve water quality, and will do even more, but this isn’t a burden that should fall solely on them. There are many other non-agricultural sources of runoff and whatever is implemented to help the bay needs to consider everyone that’s in the mix.”
Richard G. Collins, executive director of the Positive Growth Alliance, a group support by the Sussex County development community, spoke at the meeting and said he worries about the level of control the state government will impose to meet the mandate and how much it will cost Delawareans.
“If we could do it, and still live our lives, without micro-management … then wonderful,” Collins said. “But that’s not the way it is.” He claimed officials in Anne Arundel County, Maryland - which has a population of approximately 538,000 people - have said it will cost them billions of dollars to comply with the anti-pollution program.
“It’s time for our elected officials to take charge of this problem and not have people we hire run our lives,” Collins said.
Collins took issue with Delaware’s role in the degradation of the Chesapeake, which currently contains “dead zones” where the levels of dissolved oxygen are too low to support most aquatic life.
Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Ed Kee conceded only one-percent of the bay waters originate in Delaware and that the state is responsible for only two-percent of the targeted pollutants.
“Like anything else, the devil will be in the details,” said Rep. Dan Short, R-Seaford, whose district is in the heart of Delaware’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. “I spend a lot of time on the bay and the Nanticoke and I think we all have a responsibility to be good stewards of this resource. But we also have a responsibility to make sure that this well-intentioned effort to improve water quality does not steamroll the rights of landowners or result in expensive or onerous new regulations that are unfairly imposed on local residents. Equity, balance and prudence should be the watch words as DNREC and the EPA move forward in this process.”
Phase II of Delaware’s Watershed Implementation Plan is due to be submitted to federal officials by December 1st. Content provided by the Delaware House MInority Caucus).