Rivers Of Worry

This program is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you. Rivers of worry is made possible in part by a grant from the Keith Campbell foundation supporting management of living resources and habitat reduction of pollution and citizen engagement in the Chesapeake Bay. The Campbell foundation investment in action. Five o'clock in the morning I woke up with a terrible pain in my right and then come my finger started to turn all numb. I do not swim in any waters of the Chesapeake Bay any more. When we look across the sky compound and we find them. We don't usually find just one in a well we usually find out it was at that time that we found a mature eggs within the testes of the male fish across Maryland. Water is on the move slowly or quickly above ground or below. Along the way the surface and ground water is picking up sinister souvenirs of its

travels. Trash. Animal waste. Human sewage. Petro chemical pesticides the list goes on. So how safe is the World with me swimming boat. Drill or drinking or. Fishing craft. Find out as we examine the waters around the state. A new Maryland Public Television special. Rivers of. The beautiful Severn River on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay begins in western and a Rundle County and flows through Annapolis into the Chesapeake. It's both a showcase scenic river and a typical developed waterway with water quality issues springing from both identities. The Severn River is one of the scenic rivers in the state and there's a lot of people who spend a lot of time on the water and it's a big economic asset to them also because certainly waterfront properties are very valuable. So we would think that

these water should be fishable and that's what the Clean Water Act has stated a long time ago that these water should be both. And yet they're not. Most of it is close to oyster harvesting due to high bacterial counts. And also it's not after at least a half an inch of rain. The Clean Water Act was watershed legislation passed by Congress in 1972. It regulates so-called point source pollution that is discharged from concentrated sources like factories and wastewater treatment plants. We made a lot of progress we've cleaned up a lot of these point sources. But in the period since it's become more and more obvious that when rain hits surfaces an agricultural field or a parking lot it washes whatever is on the surface into the water. And those kind of sources non-point sources are not covered effectively at all by the Severn River.

Like all of the rivers on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay has been listed as an impaired waterways there's too much sediment in the water so that plants can't grow bacteria because it's not safe to swim or harvest oysters nutrients too much nitrogen and phosphorus toxic materials and biological communities are not what they should be. Many of these contaminants can impact human health directly or indirectly. One of the highest priorities are disease causing organisms that come from human and animal fecal waste fecal bacteria thrive on the algae that blooms in warm nutrient rich waters like Bay rivers in summer. It can be a toxic soup. Typical bacteria that would cause things like this. Hepatitis A salmonella shigella Camplin backed or those you typically see through contamination they don't occur naturally in the waterways.

More than a decade ago Congress passed the Healthy Beaches Act. Which requires swimming beaches to be tested for fecal bacteria during summer. It's the job of counties to monitor beaches as delegated to the states and the EPA the Environmental Protection Agency. And Ronal County samples one hundred and one private and public beaches including some along the Severn. Results are available by Friday. But counties seldom sample during the actual high use weekends. We are at Epping Forest which is a private community Beach located on the Severn River. This is a high priority beach means that sample weekly recreational water activities here include swim team summer camp and a marina with boat sewage pump out facilities for vessels with on board bathrooms beach water a sample for a single fecal bacteria called in Tara Cox II. This bacteria comes from human waste and from livestock. Wild mammals birds and pets.

When it's found in high levels in Tara Cox II indicates the possible elevated presence of other disease causing bacteria viruses and other pathogens. Also found in fecal waste. A few years ago Severn River resident Bernie Voight learned just how dangerous the water in his own backyard could be. I accidentally just kind of ask in the back. Of my right K. it. Wasn't any big deal. It had rained two days before his grandson came to visit for the Fourth of July. My grandson and I probably spent an hour and a half or so just playing in the water here. Enjoyed it. Very nice time. About five o'clock in the morning I woke up with a terrible pain in my right calf. Boy that thing hurts. And at that time my finger started turning numb so I decided I better call Nine one one. My temperature was running 105. They started putting me on antibiotics and Dr. Jamison

told me that it was from faces in the water that caused it. The lake will never be the same she told me that I haven't been swimming since that time. To prevent these kinds of infections the beach Act mandates that states and counties notify the public of high fecal bacteria counts at monitored beaches. But among the county's there's no uniform process. Web notifications can be difficult to find or nonfunctioning and around the county uses a variety of techniques to get the word out free subscriber email and Twitter alerts. A 24/7 water quality hotline. And weekly bacteria count reports and advisories on the county website. How do you get information out to everybody in a particular community. Is it can be a struggle. Years of sampling data have also prompted an in Rundle County to post a preemptive

advisory to avoid contact with natural waters for 48 hours after rainfall. There are additional warnings for vulnerable people and notices go out to local media and community associations. The EPA in the Maryland Department of the environment also have beach safety websites empty east side includes an interactive map showing advisories or closures. Some community associations have their own beach water quality testing programs. The Severn River Association the oldest such group in the nation launched their beach sampling program called Operation Clear Water decades ago. Even before the beach act Dr Selly Horner has been the association scientific director for more than 20 years for decades of data consistently show very high fecal bacteria counts after heavy rains. In spite of all the notices how well the public understands the risk of infection

is an open question. Most of the time for most of our beaches the water is OK. The problems arise primarily after the way you know after a hot summer day and there's been a thunderstorm. Kids want to go out swimming right away. And. A lot of us kind of cringe knowing that the bacterial counts are really high at that time. But it's really hard to convince people not to swim. In Ann Rundle and other counties fecal bacteria related infections from recreational waters are not required to be reported by medical personnel or labs to county officials. So there's no way of knowing how many people have gotten sick. The beach sampling data does show that in 2010 27 out of 100 in one county beaches tested high at some point mainly after rainfall. Ultimately monitoring beaches for fecal bacteria does not advance the fundamental goal of making the waters swimmable and fishable

notifying people that beaches are contaminated of course not the ideal situation what we really need is to have the beaches be clean and have the fish be pure. And that is going to take us a lot more work and resources. Fecal bacteria and other contaminants in water may come from point a non-point sources. In urban areas like the Severn River Watershed. Water rushing off surfaces and trickling underground can pollute from shoreline erosion storm water runoff and septic or store systems. Activists are working along the Severn to fight new developments that add to runoff pollution by eliminating nature's best runoff prevention. Trees. The view is in a sense an enemy of the health of the Chesapeake Bay. This is Priest point. It's a marvelous shred of fully trained land. It was purchased by a developer who had plans to

build over a 13000 square foot mansion with outbuildings and civic groups like the Severn River Association and local residents of this community. I fought it. And we're able to protect it in its present open space zoning. Most of the Severn River is already developed. So addressing runoff in older communities is key to curtailing it. Attorney Fred Kelly is Severn River Keeper. The older communities were all engineered to run the rainwater off the land as quickly as possible into the waterway. These are the storm drains that we're all familiar with we see in all of our older communities. And these are to a large extent the culprit. Because all the water is directed down here and to a great big pipe carrying all the nutrients and dog waste and other things with it. And that's what is sucking all the life out of the rivers.

And we have to go back and retrofit those major sources of storm water runoff from the older communities. This used to be a major ditch 30 feet deep. That was the result of the high volume of water coming down from the storm drain. The ditch was filled with sand and natural materials which absorb and filter into the ground. Over 90 percent of the water and pollutants before they get to the river retrofits like these are not cheap. This Clements Creek project cost half a million dollars a grant from the federal stimulus package and we've got about 30 plus of these projects throughout the Severn that we need to do to really have an impact and improve water quality. One of the major question is where will this money come from. The end of Randall County engineer estimates the cost of retrofitting the county's stormwater structures at a whopping billion dollars. Meanwhile activists like Fred Kelly contend that some new developments without

adequate storm water controls continue to receive zoning and design and building permits. The second approach to protecting the Severn and the other waterways from storm water runoff is to make certain that the new best management practices that will infiltrate over 90 percent of the rainwater that falls all on the land will be required for all new development. Aging sewer lines and septic systems also contribute to dangerous contamination of waterways. Almost all of the communities on the western side of the Severn River depend upon wells and septic. Bob Wood km is currently president of Severn River Association and serves on the Severn River Commission would come twice contracted water borne infections from other bay rivers. The why and roads. And I do not swim in any waters in the Chesapeake Bay any more

harmful bacteria in the water feeds on algae which in turn thrives on nutrients like nitrogen. That's one reason Bob Whitcomb has installed nitrogen reducing technology on his own septic system which harmlessly vents nitrogen into the air not into the groundwater with all septic in the critical areas meaning within a thousand feet of a shoreline to be upgraded whether it's working or not the working ones are probably the ones contributing more nitrogen the non-working ones because that nitrogen is successfully if you call it success going into the underground waterways and therefore getting out to our tributaries. It's a responsibility we all have and eventually to not pollute the river with our normal human waste. Other communities are also taking personal responsibility for protecting their slice of the river. The Carrollton Manor Improvement Association has installed a

rain guard a pet baggie Depot and stormwater controls to help stop erosion and pollution. If we didn't address the problems we would see our beaches are red. To the point where the kids couldn't go swimming in a couldn't go boating. And the river would not be a thing of all life for. The Environmental Protection Agency has recently issued new mandatory pollution limits for impaired waterways across the country. Their special focus on states and tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay including Maryland the so-called pollution diet or total maximum daily loads known as T MDL set specific limits for each tributary and the kind of pollution sediments nitrogen phosphorus mercury and others detailed watershed implementation plans or whips or the road maps by which these limits will be achieved if

in forced the TMD else could go a long way toward cleaning rivers near and far from the bay making them swimmable and fishable again. The open question Will these new laws work where others have not. What we need is not just more monitoring not just more science but we need the law to be enforced and we need the governments the EPA and the Maryland apartment environment to actually make sure that pollution limits are met and that when a new construction projects going to exceed pollution for a stream or river the bit that permit is denied for that project. This implementation plan is very comprehensive. It deals with waste water treatment plants industrial discharges urban and suburban storm water runoff septic systems all of the different things that we need to do in order to keep the pollution levels below the level that would cause a water quality violation.

The thing that's different about this is we're setting to your milestones where where the jurisdictions as well as the federal government will say what are the activities we're going to undertake over the next two years that are going to incrementally get us to the point of restoration much needed attention is being given to cleaning up Chesapeake Bay. But the water quality issue that more directly impacts human health on the eastern shore is the safety of the groundwater. Before it makes its way to the bay. That's because virtually everyone here gets their drinking water from public or private wells which tap into groundwater found a different strata of soil. And cracked rock coal aquifers. Wells on the Delmarva Peninsula use both shallow aquifers and deeper confine that were first which were protected by overlaying clay and a shallow strata can have more pronounced issues because it is subject to getting sometimes contaminants from activities that are done on the ground surface.

The single most pervasive land activity on the eastern shore is agriculture. Crop farming is dominant in the northern counties in southern counties. It's animal operations especially the poultry industry. Researchers are finding a disturbing hidden legacy of both in groundwater this sampling while in Kent County is one of about 30 on the Delmarva Peninsula that the U.S. Geological Survey is analyzing for shallow groundwater contamination. It's part of a decades long national water quality assessment. We're typically analyze our groundwater samples for more than 100 different chemical compounds. This includes nutrient compounds like nitrogen and phosphorus that are common and for example fertilizers and animal manure and also pesticides nitrogen feeds algal blooms and bay waters. But the form of nitrogen most threatening to human health in groundwater is nitrate whether from crops or Animal Farm or natural sources nitrate is a carcinogen that can also lead to the dangerous bluing effect in babies

by interfering with their body's ability to process oxygen. The EPA safe standard for nitrate is 10 milligrams per liter or less. We found the nitrate concentrations exceeded 10 milligrams per liter and about a third of the wells that we sampled in a down market and in 2000. We found the technical pesticide concentrations and 93 percent of the wells that we sampled in shallow groundwater and agricultural areas pesticide concentrations are typically below 1 microgram per liter which is one part per billion. And they're generally below any established drinking water standards although that's a little misleading because standards don't exist for many of these compounds and also they don't exist for mixtures of multiple compounds which is typically what we see in groundwater because of nitrates and other contaminants in shallow groundwater Eastern Shore counties require that new wells are drilled to deeper can find offers an added cost. The dilemma in some areas the deeper aquifers can contain naturally

occurring arsenic requiring special upgrades or filters to bring levels below the EPA safe standard of ten parts per billion under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Responsibility for monitoring well water safety is split between the state and counties overseas most community wells serving more than 25 people. Counties like can't certify the safety or put ability of individual homeowner private wells. Joe Homeowner with the individual well gets a certificate of credibility when he moves in that truly is the extent of our involvement with that well. You're live in a municipality you're sampled twice a year for a very long list of contaminants so the degree of the safeness of the water supply is much higher for a community. Well in a municipality I think you're going to see that change I think there's going to be an emphasis on individual wealth here in southern

counties on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Nitrates in groundwater are less of a problem because of less permeable soils but runoff from chicken and other animal manure which can also contain animal pharmaceuticals can affect water quality. The poultry industry maintains there is little risk of contaminated ground water. The menorah storage buildings have roofs on them and walls so unless there's a hurricane flood that comes through there's little chance of a Menorah no storage buildings will get onto the soil and reach their way down into the aquifers. But as with urban storm water controls environmentalists here contend an even compliance with an enforcement of existing regulations. The urgent Foresman of the new TMD Els and the new state's watershed implementation plan which details best management practices for both crop and animal farming.

Even if the new pollution diet works perfectly hell over the background persistence of dangerous herbicides and pesticides some of them banned years ago continue to damage water quality here and across the state. Scientists are also finding disturbing effects from even very low levels of so-called emerging contaminants in water which are not regulated or even tested for. In 2002 in three Dr. Vicki blazer was investigating fish kills on the remote south branch of the Potomac River when she discovered eggs in the testes of small mouth male bass an abnormality called intersex. We have continued the research on both the fish kills and the intersex because I feel they are associated. Not that one causes the other but that the same chemicals that are inducing the intersex are also leading to immunosuppression and fish health issues.

Blazer believes the growing list of disrupting chemicals includes antibacterials and pharmaceuticals discharged from wastewater treatment plants and chemicals from crop an animal form. Animals naturally excrete hormones just like people do a number of the pesticides and herbicides may be tied up with this antimicrobials that might be used to clean up for instance chicken houses. There is no one cause Blaser is also collaborating with other scientists investigating the effects of these chemicals on human health. We don't have enough research to know what are the effects and we don't have the methods or the regulations to to keep them out of our water. Further downstream in Washington D.C. the Anacostia River flows into the Potomac. There's little mystery about what's entering the Potomac from the Anacostia. Raw sewage overflows six toxic government and industrial sites polluted run off. Outdated and inadequate storm water infrastructure.

The Anacostia is one of the most polluted water bodies in the nation. The Washington Navy Yard is a superfund toxic site on the Anacostia. There are contaminants lead mercury arsenic PCBs. I really believe that the toxics is the issue that has the greatest impact on human health. It's the toxics and it's also the bacteria level of bacteria comes in part from the millions of gallons of combined storm water and raw sewage directed into the Anacostia during major storms as a result of the overwhelmed capacity of Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant. All of these toxins have resulted in restrictions on what and how many fish people should eat from the Anacostia. So the communities have been bearing the brunt of the environmental health effects of these sites for decades. Implementation and enforcement of water quality laws here are vexed by

conflicts between the district state county and federal jurisdictions. For example the district recently enacted user fees to help pay for mandated stormwater controls but Congress had to pass a special bill forcing the federal government to pay its full share of the fees even though the Feds own 30 percent of district land. EPA is requiring us to manage storm under the Clean Water Act and they will be issuing us a permit requiring us to do that at the same time that they're telling us that federal agencies don't want to chip in and help pay for that cost. Across the state there's little disagreement on one issue. The cost of cleaning up water quality is staggering. But many also agree so was the cost of delay or denial of the need. The implementation of the Anacostia restoration plan to address storm water retrofits and wetlands restoration and trash control

cost 1.7 billion. So it's just an example of how when you break a watershed it's very expensive to fix if you think about what we've got in our or water. Generally it's a mixture of all of the things that we use commercially plus bacteria naturally occurring chemicals. It's a very complex soup and we don't really know what the cumulative effects are of the exposure to that soup over a life time. Everybody is in favor of cleaning up the environment. But. So many people perhaps most of us are not at all interested in paying the cost. We have these very good environmental laws. We quite often lack the political will to actually enforce the laws. The cost of not dealing with our environmental infrastructure. Is just as disaster is if we don't keep our bridges up and they collapse we cannot afford to have a collapse of our environmental infrastructure.

Why. Rivers of worry was made possible in part by a grant from the Keith Campbell foundation supporting management of living resources and habitats reduction of pollution and citizen engagement in the Chesapeake Bay. The Campbell foundation investment in action.