Outdoors Maryland; 1410

This program has been made possible by the members of NPT. Thank you for your generous support. Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. DNR. Inspired by Nature. I'm just with you. Just a week.

Where we would meet. On chairs and feet hold. Their. Feet. In. The dark. I'm just a baby. Says the mother. I was. Full of this life. It's hard to imagine what John Smith the first European Explorer of the Chesapeake saw when he sailed into this vast estuary nearly 400 years ago. Shorelines lined with thick forests fertile plains of grassy wetlands the skies filled with geese and ducks as far as the eye could see the water was often crystal clear revealing a rich bounty of fish. It was without a doubt a sight to behold. Abundant with life

but that paradise is long gone and scientists are increasingly worried that more trouble lies ahead. Can't Mon-Fri. A retired EPA scientist is an expert on the environmental history of the bay. He and his wife Nancy now spend much of their free time sailing near the mouth of the Patuxent River. When John Smith came here and he visited this river just about where we're sailing in 16 Oh wait. There are about 30000 Native Americans living around the whole perimeter of the bay. Today the entire Chesapeake basin is now somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 million. And that's just too much for the system to carry those concerns about the bay's future are communicated to students on board the 18th century replica ship the Sultana. OK you guys are and. The educators on board this historic vessel are not only teaching the students how to sail the boat but also how to understand how fragile an estuary the Chesapeake Bay

is. What do we call that bigger pictures I mean you know what water sets let's take a look at that. The students are all eighth and ninth graders from Washington D.C. you know exhaust Texas the smoke that's right. When the smoke goes up to the sky and it builds up in what now yeah clouds of coal come down as acid rain. On this five day trip these students are being taught about the dangers of pollution as well as the diversity of life in the bank. This crowd is pretty fired up. Come on in there. He's angry I want to sit him down in there. We've got some white perch. We've got a yellow perch we've got an American Eagle is really interesting because the Born in the Sargasso Sea. And then they travel here. We've got a striped bass often called a rock fish. Got a lot of different stuff in there. We think they're crabs trying to do is all jumpy snappy look.

You see that he's angry. We think he's doing when he does that what's he trying to do he's trying to protect himself that's right. Because Roland for an office this whole town is education director. We find that the more more interaction kids have with fish and crabs the more they play with that they touch that they see that. So the more interaction they have with that more knowledge and bases they have to be concerned about the health of the day was good for you. It's only been in recent decades that people in the watershed have begun to be concerned about the base house in 1903 the federal government in the states in the watershed made a commitment to clean up the estuary under the Chesapeake Bay agreement. And since then progress has been made. But decades of virtually unchecked growth have taken a heavy toll leaving

debate over fertilised with too much nitrogen and phosphorus. The water murky interbreed filled with sediment requiring the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the muddy bottom to keep harbors like the Port of Baltimore open in the summer months. Research divers collecting samples of oysters can barely see five feet ahead of them due to the high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous. Some parts of the bay now have low oxygen conditions choking off underwater life. Maryland water men like Chuck White have seen their catch of crabs drop steadily over the years. This past year was one of the worst on record. As far as what I've seen over the. Past 20 years. It's definitely decline. I don't. Really know the reason. I think. Got a lot of reasons. The reasons for the bay's decline start far away in the rivers and creeks of Maryland and

Virginia and the picturesque dairy farms of Pennsylvania as well as the culverts and drainage ditches of major cities like Washington D.C. Baltimore and Norfolk Virginia. Like veins and arteries these rivers and streams carve their way through the 64000 square mile Chesapeake Bay watershed carrying with them all kinds of pollutants nitrogen phosphorus and sediment inexorably moving to the Chesapeake Bay. The heart of this vast ecosystem. With all this water comes sediment and fertilizer from farms and lawn runoff sediment and toxic pollutants from storm water draining from shopping centers and city streets. All of this gets carried into the bay. Here there was the river. Would you teach me.

Tell me your. Son. You know. The largest of the rivers feeding the Chesapeake. Is this Esquire Hanna which begins its journey in New York and flows through Pennsylvania finally emptying into the bay at Havre de Grace Maryland. It is a vital resource for the Chesapeake half of the bay is fresh water comes down this river and unlike other rivers about 90 percent of the sediment and nutrient pollution that comes with it comes from non-point sources like farms. John Kauffman is one of a growing number of Pennsylvania farmers that is involved in stream restoration. His farm sits alongside a trout stream called Honey creek. He's fenced off the stream to keep the cows away and he's built a large tank to store the manure. He says it's been costly but working and I'm mentally orthe post you

know be helping out that film that we don't really see but they're telling us that that they're getting enough of farmers to do this that it is making a big difference as far as we know are discharged with it into the stream and eventually ended up down the Chesapeake Bay. Pennsylvania has one of the most extensive farmland restoration programs in the country but the settlement load in the state's tributaries is vast. Directly downstream from the mouth of the cess quite Hannah many Maryland water men complain that Pennsylvania's farmers aren't doing enough. Bob Coleman has been working on the water for 40 years. When we have a hard rains up into the watershed up and was quiet it affects everything down this way. Fish and crabs take a long while to get back into anything they dump in the river comes down to us. I've got to. Go to my blog. I was trying to do I think you done got a good one. Oh geez.

Oh now that's a core Walter Boynton an engineering ecologist who has been studying the bay for most of his career believes more needs to be done to clean up not only the cesspool Hannah but many of the other major tributaries as well. He and his research team are extracting cores of sediment from some of the river bottoms to see how much nitrogen and phosphorus is being released. Well over the last 50 years we're pretty sure that the the nutrient that is the lot of nitrogen and phosphorous to the ballet has increased very very substantially by a factor of two or three in some areas of the ballet by a lot more than that. What. And the response of the bait to this is that first the sea grasses have dominated back in the one thousand fifty years in early 1960s. There was around 400000 acres of sea grass at the present time there's somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of that sea grasses have been called the miner's canary of the Chesapeake sounding the alarm that danger is

near. They provide habitat for small fish and crabs. There are also important shoreline buffers without them. Scientists fear the bay's health cannot improve. In response to all these danger signs a task force of thirty eight scientists and technical experts have completed a comprehensive study entitled Chesapeake futures choices for the 21st century. In the report the study's authors conclude that the Bey and the people who live in the watershed are now at an important crossroads. It's really remarkable how they keep these grasses can undergo their sort of annual growth ecologist Donald Bosh the president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science headed up the study. We have a choice to make between on one extreme a bay which is as I said worse than it is today in which the fisheries production is diminished and which the biodiversity the Natural Heritage basically that it is embodied in this play in the

legacies that we want to leave the opportunities that we will leave to the next generation or for gone before we can make some choices that actually can restore the productivity and diversity of this ecosystem. The report concludes that the main reason for concern is the rapidly growing population throughout the watershed. The numbers of people are expected to grow from 15 million today to 19 million people by the year 2030. That will mean more housing developments more strip malls more cars more garbage more sewage and experts say as a result more sediment and more nitrogen and phosphorus into the bay. This group of maps Joe disowns director of comprehensive planning at Maryland's Department of Planning worked on that study. This map shows how much farm and forest land are going to be lost within each tributary by the year 2030 if development patterns continue. This peach pink color

indicates tributaries likely to lose more than 20000 acres of resource land yellow between 10 and 20000 acres and green less than 10000 acres. According to the study the total amount of forest and agricultural land that will be lost over the next 30 years will be more than two million acres. An increase of 60 percent nitrogen loads through the bay will grow by more than 30 million pounds per year. Sections of the bay could begin to look like some of the more polluted of the bays tributaries like the Anacostia River. There are areas of the bay you know the Anacostia River some of the little rivers down in the Virginia portion of the background the Patapsco River. You know one I mean I want to quality is lousy they're not for aesthetically pleasing you probably don't want to as the population gets bigger and bigger. Careful. We could start to see those kind of characteristics out in the main stem.

If we continue the patterns that we've seen in terms of land development patterns that we've seen over the last 30 years in the next 30 to 40 years. It will be very very difficult if not impossible for us to improve the condition of the bay from what it is today. The mindset that says Get me away from where people live already is a dead end for the given population levels that we have in Maryland and are increasingly having throughout the Bay watershed. There just isn't enough land for that. There's lots of land here you could fit lots of houses here but when you add it all up across the whole state across the whole watershed where reaching a threshold you're here today because you love this river. No one is more aware of the bay's fragile condition than retired Maryland legislator Bernie farmer. Everybody turn around face the river. Each year in June. He leads his followers into the Patuxent River on a mission to

save this historic waterway. Too many people concerned about the bay. He's a living legend. I used to cram down the shore. You could see very clearly you could wade out chastize still look down and see those crabs down in the grass. You'd see little fish running offshore. We lost that. But it was a it was a great heritage for me. Bernie Fowler wants to see that heritage restored. So each year he records how far he's able to wade into the river before he can no longer see his sneakers. OK. They're going to the Super Bowl you say. Can't say much. Do you think his records show that the water quality in the Patuxent has improved since his low point in the 80s but foller believes a lot more needs to be done. I think we're at a crossroads to start to stand guard. Chesapeake Bay is concerned unless we're able to doctor it up and get something done pretty soon I think we're going to reach a point of no return.

But the Chesapeake futures report says there is another alternative a way to avoid Bernie foamers grim forecast. Part of the answer lies in controlling sprawl. If land development patterns change and more aggressive environmental policies are adopted the loss of farm and forest land could be less than 400000 acres and as a result nitrogen loads into the bay would be roughly one fourth of what's projected under current trends. The Bay's water would be clear helping to grow more sea grasses and healthier fisheries. Having the bay restored to something akin to a birdie foller saw when he was a young man with clear water or productive environment is entirely feasible. It's not a pipe dream if we can do it it's not going to be easy but we can do it. But the question is do people who live in the watershed share that same enthusiasm. The bay provides recreation food and jobs for many. But the changes would be

costly. It would mean more highly zoned land development modernizing storm water systems and wastewater treatment plants. Removing tons of sediment from behind dams like the mile wide Khana wing go on the Hannah river. More emphasis on the reforestation and creating shoreline buffers to prevent erosion. All of that would cost millions perhaps billions of dollars. It would also mean changes in present lifestyles. More incentives for people to reduce their footprint on the environment less reliance on cars less fertilizer on lawns and more gardens designed to prevent runoff. Mark Segall teaches a course on environmental ethics at the University of Maryland. He believes we have a moral obligation to clean up the bay the bay attracts us because of what it is in itself because of its character because of its

beauty its complexity and the wonder if we make an effort to protect the ecology of the bag. Restore the bag that gives us a sense that there's a meaningful life other than our own particular needs and pleasures that takes us out of our own physical economy and puts us closer to our own spiritual aspirations. But what about the millions of people in the watershed who never visit the Chesapeake Bay. Even some of the bay's most ardent supporters are skeptics. There were too many people to really enable this estuary to function the way it could and should Can't Monfort is not optimistic about the future. Doesn't appear that people are willing to make sacrifices in their lifestyles in order to change that situation. So I see decline as a very probable future for the better. But despite that dire prediction there are many hopeful signs.

Technical Solutions outlined in the Chesapeake futures report provide some answers. The Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant on the Potomac River is one of the largest in the country and one of the more advanced. It uses biological nutrient removal to eliminate nitrogen and phosphorus more and more of the watersheds wastewater facilities are being upgraded with this system. And the Environmental Protection Agency now says emerging technologies offer promises for even greater reduction of nutrients. EPA official Allison we demen. Technology has advanced very rapidly. And we are discovering new ways of operating every day. We know that we can get 50 percent or more beyond what we're doing now and that's what we need to focus on. Even though much has been done since the first day agreement was signed in 1983 to clean up major industries officials say businesses can play a greater role.

This gas station in Washington D.C. has voluntarily adopted stricter recycling procedures than required and has done so without hurting its profits. Mary Lynn will here is the coordinator of businesses for the bay an agency that is part of the Chesapeake Bay program. This is easy and free which will take away for free if you're a business that's pouring solvents or paint that are oil directly into the drains. That responsibility lies on you to step forward and to learn the proper method of disposal. We all share an ecosystem and we all love the Chesapeake Bay and it is up to businesses to really step forward and do the right thing. OK let's follow up. The Bay's enormous needs have also triggered a growing response from concerned citizens. Ed Gatlin a victim of polio is now a volunteer oyster rancher working in conjunction with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

He grows oysters off his pier on Virginia's Lynnhaven river with the help of his grandson and friends one day a bag. And Les Hallman the blacktail. Gatling is one of several hundred in Virginia who have joined this oyster restoration program. Once a year he and the other oyster ranchers turnover their harvest in what's called an oyster roundup. I thought they were all going to die. We gave them the best care that we could. They become almost like children. Get lings oysters along with 40000 others were loaded onto the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's boat the Baywatch and taking up a tributary of the Lynnhaven river where they were dumped on an established oyster sanctuary. If. You want. To go over. All we're trying to do is. Hard. Work. How much you can make the oyster crowd.

For Ed Gatling who watched from another boat. It was an emotional moment. I don't feel so good I'm about to pop this project has helped me stay alive. It has given me wonderful things to fight about. Fisheries scientist Rob rumba heads up this project for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. If you save oysters you save the day. Oysters are a tremendous filter feeders. In a simple sense if you bring oysters back it's like plugging the pool filter back into the Chesapeake Bay. This is what can happen on a day wide basis. The citizen involvement is critical to the restoration potential has been proven. And if you do this on a great big scale all up and down the just Big Bay watershed I know we can save the day. That enthusiasm and sense of urgency about the bay could also be felt on the decks of this old town of.

A new load of fish was being hauled in for the students to examine. We are lots of fish guys. Pull this stuff back at Stark and fish Yeah. We don't want to be able to die. I think it's really hard to convey the information that there's not enough crabs in the bed there's not enough oysters in the bag. But you can do is let them know the problems that are affecting it. And what they can do to help. Crystal Marshall says she no understands how we are all affected by the health and survival of the bay. There's a time and a slight where that stops whatever happens to the water and their stuff happens that. Will give you a compass course. And compass courses wanted us down wanted 400 years ago when John Smith sailed in these waters the bay was virtually untouched by man. If you believe that this estuary can ever be restored to what it was like back then.

But many scientists believe the bay can be brought back to a much healthier state than it is today. Walter Boynton I'm not interested in trying to get all the fences that were here when John Smith sailed up the Chesapeake I don't think that's realistic but we certainly can do better than what we what we're doing. Right now. And we've had successes and we know it can be done. Go ahead and take that last breath. Let it go slack. For the young crew of the Sultana who have traveled back into time on this historic 18th century vessel their journey known lies in the future a future that over the next 30 years will be filled with the important choices about nothing less than the destiny of the Chesapeake Bay. So my job is go half left. To take a new man. John hello. I'm just me but.

I'm sure you do that in the. Home to be. Going on. Drop into our website at w w w dot amp e t dot. O r g.

Just send us your comments and suggestions. This program has been made possible by the members of NPT. Thank you for your generous support. For more information about the Chesapeake futures with board visit w w w dot Chesapeake dog org slash s t AC.