Blind Spots: Threats To The Chesapeake

Chesapeake Bay. North America's largest actuary. Once the world's most productive. For more than 30 years scientists have reported the bay is continuing declining health. Despite billions spent on massive efforts to clean up the water. The Chesapeake has not improved. Many of the basic problems are well known. Others. Are not. New research is underway on invisible so-called emerging contaminants in the bay's waterways. Products pharmaceuticals both prescription and over-the-counter as well as antiseptic personal care products are finding their way into rivers lakes and bays not just in the Chesapeake watershed but across the nation and the world.

One concern is that the water bodies receiving these pharmaceuticals and personal care products known as PPC PCs are also often the sources of drinking water for public water systems. The amounts of PPC panes in the water are extremely small. Measured in parts per billion or even parts per trillion. The for. You can see an effect of such creation mountains on clear and our central questions guiding the search. Dr. George Gray is assistant administrator in the Office of Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency PPC PCs have been on our radar screen for almost a decade. The agency has been doing research both within our own laboratories and funding millions of dollars of research in the academic community to help us try to understand what risk if any these low levels of materials might be posing either to humans or to wildlife at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Geography and environmental engineering. Doctors A Lynn Roberts and Edward J Bower and their team of researchers

are analyzing waterways of the Chesapeake Bay. Their EPA funded research on PPC PCs includes designing techniques for detecting very low concentrations. They are also identifying which compounds are in the water and their potential toxicity and fate in the environment. Yes there are a variety of different a class of the drives and composite we are studying to think about as a consumer when you go down and get prescriptions you know is on all kinds of prescriptions for paying for anti cancer anti-convulsants sleeping pill uppers to restimulate anti-anxiety. So based on the sales of the drug we could predict which ones are likely to have the highest concentration. We developed a method that screens for about 50 different chemicals with one or two injections into our instrumentation. And many of these companies have not been detected before. Pharmaceuticals get into waste water when they are excluded in everyday human waste or when expired or unused drugs are flushed down toilets or drains.

PPC peas have been found in wastewater entering treatment plants in treated water discharge from the plants and in treated drinking water treatment plants are not now equipped to capture or destroy some of these chemicals. In addition manure runoff and manure fertilizer from livestock and poultry treated with hormones antibiotics or other drugs are another important source of pharmaceuticals in the waterways. One of our in Robert's water sampling sites is near the back river wastewater treatment plant which has an intake or inflow and of about 200 million gallons of waste water from the Baltimore area every day. The treated water or effluent is discharged into the back river downstream water in this case is not used for drinking water but flows directly into the Chesapeake Bay even though each individual compounds at a low level we are detecting some 30 of these 50 compounds in the waste water at Back

River in the info and many of them are making it into the effluent and so are some of those low concentrations if there is enough of that could eventually get to higher levels. Plus when we think about long term exposures and picking drinking water if you're consuming it for your lifetime then there's potential exposure there. And many times we don't understand what happens to them in the environment. Personal care products are another important type of PPC PCs. Some of the active ingredients in antiseptic or antibacterial soaps and detergents used in homes industries and medical facilities. Act chemically like hormones. Researchers are trying to determine if there is an impact from these PPC PCs on aquatic life which is exposed 24/7 to these contaminants and other pollutants. Dr. Vicki S. Blazer is a fish bath ologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the National Fish health research lab in West Virginia. While

investigating fish skin lesions and fish kills in the Potomac River a major credit area to the Chesapeake Bay. Dr. Blaser and her team of researchers made a disquieting discovery. Male small mouth bass are developing eggs within their male organs a condition called intersex because some people have hormonal effects. She's investigating whether these compounds could be contributing to these abnormalities from all the fish that we collected at eight sites in 2000 and three which And there are seasonal differences and there are slight differences but if you look at it overall. About 58 percent of the male small mouth bass had intersex. In 2005. USGS and the Fish and Wildlife Service collected fish upstream and downstream of wastewater treatment plants in these areas as high as 100 percent of the small mouth bash exhibited

intersex. So this is what we most often see where you have a few of these immature oversights in the testes this is normal. Testicular tissue and. And this is actually sperm being produced here. What we've seen this year is larger and more mature eggs. And again testicular tissue that doesn't really look very normal although there are some sperm. Produce this well. These are actually chemicals that are produced and are used for a biological effect and so they work at much much lower concentrations. And of course they affect non-target tissues or organisms. But there is a wide variety of other things that we have found in the water what we don't know whether any of those erratic concentrations individually that would cause the intersect we more think it's an additive kind of thing and it's a it's an accumulation of

all those chemicals. Dr. Blaser is looking into whether the intersex characteristics she's discovering are having an effect on the reproductive abilities of the fish which could spell trouble down the line for some species including important commercial in-game fisheries. Dr. Blaser is also investigating whether PPC PCs have an underground effect on fish's immune system making them more susceptible to disease and parasites. But all that still leads into the whole issue of ecosystem health and eventually is human health involved. Research on PPC PCs is ongoing across the country at top agencies and universities on a range of topics from detection at low levels to frequency of occurrence to effects on humans and wildlife to improve techniques for wastewater treatment and drug disposal.

The story is still unfolding. The sus quote Hannah. It's a long rocky stretch of river. Winding from Oswego New York to Harvard to Grace Maryland where it feeds the Chesapeake Bay. Scientists say the suspect is in crisis in 2005. High sewage levels earned at the title America's most endangered river but much of the trouble the river brings to the Chesapeake Bay. Originates south of Harrisburg Pennsylvania. And it has nothing to do with sewage. Instead experts are worried about three hydroelectric dams on the lower suspect. Safe Harbor. Hope. And most of all.

On the way out. There. Concerned about 250 million tonnes of river sediment. Trapped behind the dams. It's been piling up since they were built in the early 1900s. The mud's infused with pollutants like heavy metals fertilizers coal dust and farm waste. The reservoirs behind safe harbor and hold wood are already filled with sediment. Now only the condo in the reservoir has space behind it. To trap the millions of tons of soil that constantly washed down river. But not for long. Scientists now know the poem a polluted setting. Will one day pass unrestricted through the dams turbines and sweep down river into the Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps with devastating consequences. Underwater surveys begun in 1988 behind Qana When Go tell

the story of the growing pile of sediment in 1996 the level of sediment actually decreased after tons of it were scoured off the reservoir bottom and washed into the bay by a severe storm that hit in May of that year. The possibility of more sediment in the bay has scientists worried. This increase in sediment coming over the dam which may double the modified sediment being put into the upper bay by this US Why have a river will have long term consequences. Dr. Donald Bosh is director of the University of Maryland Center for extra Marine Science. They will fill in shallow parts of the bay to deep parts of the bay in the upper part and that will affect circulation in the bay which would affect things such as the success of striped bass and other fish in terms of their early life history survival recruitment. The other issue which is a concern of course is. In the bay would try to reduce new treatment pushed to the back. And one of those nutrients phosphorus tends to

be associated with fight sediments. So there's going to be a greater import of phosphorus into the upper parts of the bay at the very time we're trying to reduce phosphorus sources in the south we had to base it elsewhere too much sediment and phosphorus in the bay could wreak havoc with water chemistry and aquatic life by feeding algal blooms blocking sunlight and smothering oysters and underwater grasses. But what experts fear most is a catastrophic release of sediment from behind the dam. It happened once before in 1900 to when Tropical Storm Agnes pushed 17 million tons of mud down river and over the condo window. Five years worth of sediment surged into the Chesapeake in a matter of days. Scientists today refer to it as the phosphorus pulse that nearly killed the upper bay. That's the storm that everyone considers the worst storm that has affected the bay and everybody remembers what happened.

Susan Stranahan is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who writes extensively about the shots. That came down in June. It brought down huge amounts of sediments that that in essence drowned the the upper bay cut out all the life buried what birds aquatic vegetation was left in it buried all lot of habitat and it took the the bay I think of decades to recover. But in essence if there was a large rain storm not even as significant as Agnes that just flooded out and brought bringing down a lot of this pull this nutrient that's built up with the soil. You could in essence undo a lot of the of the good works that have been done down in the Chesapeake so far. If there was another catastrophic storm on the sauce one that it takes. It could definitely provide as much damage as this hurricane. Existed in 1972. Ron Smiths is director of corporate communications for excellent Energy which owns the condo window that.

A lot has to do with timing as far as if you get a storm that's in the wintertime where the ground is frozen and that the ground is not healed. You won't see as much of a problem. However if you're in the middle of a growing season such as hurricane season you know you're going to get a lot of runoff and a lot of flow down to the bay. Currently it's estimated that there are two hundred fifty million tons of that sediment and Kamya waited behind all would safe harbor and kind of lingo. Marshall Kaiser is president of safe harbor water power company up river from Qana window. He was a member of the 1999 commission that explored dredging the lake to remove the sediment. If he wanted to dredge it and remove it. It's estimated that it would take 25 years. And you would have to fell 600 100 ton rail cars every day for 200 days a year to get it out of here. I think it would be quite expensive to dredge the Congo up on the concern that

we had there was really the sediment that continues to come down from the first 100 river the river moves sentiment toward the bay all along its 400 mile journey. But here on the lower just down river from safe harbor sediment load is super charged by the harmless looking Conestoga river a disproportionately high volume of topsoil and enters the sense here. The small river winds through Lancaster County Pennsylvania some of the world's most productive farmland. The face of agriculture here is diverse from cutting edge planting harvesting and conservation techniques to surviving 19th century technology. By some estimates the county has lost fully half of its topsoil to erosion over the last three hundred years. Much of it washed from farm fields into the Conestoga river. The subsequent Hina and the bay Lancaster County Farmers have borne the brunt of the blame.

But in the city of Lancaster to Franklin and Marshall College geology professors have a different idea. They believe they've solved the mystery behind the Conestoga unusually high sediment load. Dr. Dorothy Maritz and Dr. Bob Walter are exploring damage from colonial times in the county. They say hundreds of breached dams they found are releasing millions of tons of soil into the bay after crapping it for nearly three centuries. For powering back then was as important as oil is to us today it is the only game in town for getting power to run things like grist mill saw mill. We found out that there were 400 dams or so unlike the county they had large amounts set up behind all of them most of the vans are breached they breached during 20 century hurricanes and much of the fire with the remote live being washed downstream into the bay into the economy to resit forth at the same time policymakers have focused on farmers as a source of much of that set in the. Wild if it washes away under our noses and nothing being done about it.

Farmer certainly has an erosion problems but there's a tremendous aversion problem it goes right into the streams. It's a source of much of the sentiment going to. Figure it from isn't just the cost of the war so alone there's about a hundred and eighty thousand. Tons of sediment every year coming out the cost of the war said in the south and a river. Most that's getting trapped behind the Conway Gaudin about 60 percent of that but some of that's going over. And of course the kind of lingo down there. USGS estimates about going to be filled by sometimes. 20 20 plus or minus a couple years. And when that happens. All the sediment. All the mud that's coming up the suspect. Monster the water said is going to go over the dam. And. And into the bay. So that's a big problem. We've got to start to consider. You are. Then you say I thought

you know the rain and windy conditions show no sign of letting up. As Chris strum by our Andrew Costello head out into the sounds river toward beards creek so the headwaters of Back Creek have been the site of some runoff issues that we've seen over the past couple of months. So we're going to see what the waters look like up there. From our end. What are members of the sound's river Federation a nonprofit environmental community. They're concerned about the dangers of runoff to the rivers ecology. Like many parts of the Chesapeake Bay watershed the South River so close to Annapolis has experienced significant development in recent years. And with that growth has come increasing runoff from tape surfaces carrying with it a mix of debris and chemical pollutants. We seem to be a kind of make or break point and in the south forever and

many of the other rivers I think in this area where the rivers are really at a capacity of what they can handle. At Beard's creek from Bauer pulls up a water quality monitoring instrument that's been logging data for three weeks. Judging by the amount of fine silt that you can see there was on the instrument and there was probably some some sediment coming into the system over that time period. Scientists and environmental groups are increasingly concerned about the waterways ability to absorb pollution. The concept is called Carry and. How much pollution can a stream a river or an estuary process or carry before it begins to decline in health. Dr. Margaret Palmer who heads up the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory believes the Chesapeake Bay watershed has already reached that critical threshold point. For the first time since the Clean Water Act was passed. We're starting to see poor water quality in our rivers and streams.

They're actually getting worse. The question is have we failed to carry the bag. Well the truth is we probably haven't. So we're now at the point where we have to figure out are there things we can do. To lessen our end tags and to potentially improve things. Joe disown the director of resource conservation at the Maryland Department of Planning says the primary problem is too much development and too much urban sprawl. While pollution loads have been going down from farms and from wastewater treatment plants especially there is evidence to suggest that pollution loads from urban runoff is not only increasing on the land but the pollution from it is also increasing. Even more troubling the future of rice in the Bay watershed is expected to continue to be high. In Maryland we're looking at another 1.4 million people in the next 25 years and in the Bay watershed a good number would be four million more people

which is a good 25 percent increase over what it is now. More people means more houses more pavement more cars and more. Pollution from storm water runoff. One of the biggest new housing developments in Maryland is Clarksburg in Montgomery County. Developers here are working closely with environmental officials to reduce runoff with the newest thinking in sediment ponds and filters. Keith's then ness is the senior ecologist for Montgomery County. He believes the sediment and erosion control devices here will be about 80 percent effective in Clarksburg. What we're trying to do is to put as much of it back in the ground as we can. Given all the. Imperviousness that's going to be here. We want to be able to maintain the the recharge through these little head water strains through infiltration from a lot of small little sand filters and

infiltration trenches throughout the site. But Venice says even with these precautions 20 percent of the sediment runoff from the site will still enter the areas stream. Overloaded storm drainage systems are something that our unkosher have seen many times in the South River area you can see the suspended material just rushing by like a slurry. Why on this occasion they find at least one of the sources of the sediment pollution they discovered earlier in Beard's creek. Its a drainage system right across the street from a Monday construction project actually from this construction site. Its going into a river. But the problem is not just new development it's also storm water systems that need to be updated. This is the head waters of Turkey Creek. This doesn't particularly look very healthy.

The gray color is is not what you would expect to see at a natural river system. And what's happening is that out far from the pipe the water from that outfall is coming in at a faster velocity than the system is that is really willing to handle so much of the work that needs to be done now is retrofitting old systems that were just not done at all or not done properly. Old storm water management systems are also a problem on the nearby Severn River the Severn used to be one of the best rivers to find yellow perch now choked for several months of the year with talk. It sounds. Kevin Smith is the chief of restoration services for Maryland's Department of Natural Resources. Well suburb wherever it is is that much for a number of different reasons say one of the huge things the stormwater this is an old area it's an old metropolitan area. It was built prior to the storm water management controls going there for most of the headwater area.

Smith and to Severn River Community leaders are also concerned about runoff from overly fertilised lawns. A big source of nitrogen pollution he'd like to see more vegetation buffers and less grass. Restoring wetlands is another key factor. They act as kidneys for the day filtering sediment. In the Severn River. Environmental officials are trying to restore an old wetlands area that was filled in by sediment. It's all part of the Howard branch restoration project. Upstream they turned a muddy drainage gully into a fertile wetlands area with a small forest of Atlantic white cedars and a series of five small dams. Reminiscent of beaver dams. What that does in terms of maintaining or improving water quality is that instead of the water when it drains down through the system and out into the Severn River is a provide some retention time for this water. That's when

these water quality improvements really take place. The effects of storm water runoff can be subtle. Developing over the years eroding the carrying capacity of waterways. But Dr. Margaret Palmer says time is running out for the Chesapeake Bay and the streams and rivers around it. The citizens in this watershed care about the bay but they have to send a strong signal that they're willing to support policies that will help improve the conditions. If we continue at the rate we're going I don't know if I'd want my grandchildren waiting in the bay waters. Drugs in the water. Changes in wildlife. Heavy loads of sediment from farms and dams moving downstream and rivers throughout the watershed. And into the bay. With. All of this creating more problems

with the long term health of an already troubled. Chesapeake Bay.