Bay Health Update

Just-hatched terrapins—the size of pinky nails—nestle into open hands.

By Kim DeBarge

Ban on Commercial Terrapin Trapping Passed, but There's More Work to Be Done

It's apparent that the Chesapeake is in an environmental crisis. Groups have been created to study it. Task forces are analyzing it. But is anyone doing anything to fix it?

When Governor Martin O'Malley was sworn in this January, one of the first documents to land on his desk was the Maryland Transition Work Group's report on Maryland 's environment. The group was assigned to analyze the current state of the environment, then provide the new governor with a comprehensive environmental plan. The result was a grim assessment, followed by a list of fifty-seven recommendations and a whole lot of press.

The report focuses on Maryland 's biggest natural resource and the state's biggest environmental problem: the Bay. The report paints a pretty gloomy picture. In the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, known as C2K, members of the Chesapeake Bay Commission agreed to restore the Bay's water quality by 2010. According to the transitional group's report, the state now faces lawsuits “due to a lack of required enforcement.” Maryland 's part of the deal was “to reduce nitrogen pollution by 20 million pounds per year” by 2010, according to Beth Lefebvre, communications coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Basically, the signatories to C2K—Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, D.C., and the Federal EPA—made these commitments to the citizens, who would benefit from having a cleaner Bay and cleaner waterways. And Maryland hasn't met these goals,” Lefebvre explains.

One symbol that captured the public's imagination was the terrapin, our state reptile, and its diminishing numbers as it struggles to survive in its native habitat, the shores of the Bay. At the end of the legislative session, Maryland did ban commercial terrapin trapping, making Maryland the twelfth state, after both Delaware and Virginia , to outlaw the trapping of the University of Maryland mascot. While there were previous restrictions on trapping from November to July, terrapin trapping during the restricted season increased twenty-fold last year—enough to seriously damage the population. The ban on trapping is intended to allow the species, which reproduces infrequently, to flourish. Terrapins thrive in the Bay's brackish-water habitats, making them unique to the Chesapeake .

However, in April, one of the Maryland Legislature's—and the Bay Foundation's—biggest hopes for accomplishing that nitrogen reduction goal died when the Senate failed to vote on House Bill 1220, which would have established Maryland's Green Fund by charging an impervious surface fee for new construction. It passed the House 96–41 before it died in committee. Lefebvre is disappointed. “The Green Fund was looking, conservatively, at removing 5 million more pounds” of nitrogen from the Bay annually. “The fund would have created a dedicated funding source for programs that reduce nitrogen pollution. These were identified in the Tributary Strategies—the scientific roadmap that the state created to reduce nitrogen pollution. Things like storm water management, oyster restoration, and wetland buffering.” Without that funding, Maryland 's projected annual nitrogen removal will be 10 million pounds by 2010—half of the C2K target.

The Bay Foundation plans to continue promoting the Green Fund in next year's session. Because of Maryland 's looming budgetary crisis, the legislature is reluctant to approve new spending; however, a great asset of the Green Fund bill is that it provides its own source of funding.

Lefebvre sees the situation very plainly. “The Bay really needs to be on the forefront of the governor's agenda,” she states. “2010 is right around the corner. Every year we've waited until the Bay can become a ‘priority' and we have dead zones, sick and dying fish, beach closures—and we let these moments slip by. People think inaction just perpetuates these conditions, but they actually worsen over time. Legislators need to act to clean up the Bay.”

Fortunately, Governor O'Malley has a plan in place for watching over the Bay. Redesigning the system he used to monitor services as Baltimore 's mayor, O'Malley will use BayStat to watch over progress of the Bay's cleanup. The monitoring system forces the heads of the Departments of Agriculture, Environment, Natural Resources, and Planning to combine their individual skills and jurisdictions into meaningful action on the Chesapeake . The stat system, which O'Malley implemented in Baltimore to monitor municipal services, brings together the heads of these organizations to influence the governor's policy. It also forces them to report their work to the governor's office regularly—a pretty high-pressure situation that pays off by forcing accountability.

The legislature produced some other environmentally sound pieces of legislation this session. In 2007, states are ordered to standardize their vehicle emissions policies by either adopting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's federal regulations or California 's much more stringent policies. The Clean Cars Act mandates that Maryland adopt the latter's emissions standards, with full enforcement by 2011. According to the office of Delegate Virginia Claggett, experts estimate that enforcing “these standards will have the same effect as taking 190,000 cars off the road.” Hopefully, these efficiency requirements will positively affect both air and water quality in Maryland .

With the passage of House Bill 786, the Storm Water Management Act was implemented. This legislation requires local governments to use environmental site design techniques at construction sites. Runoff from storm water can carry surface pollutants quickly into groundwater and streams, so minimizing their impact will have a direct effect on the passage of pollutants into the Bay's tributaries.

While none of these policies will clean up the Chesapeake overnight, each piece of environmental legislation will hopefully restore its own piece of the Bay. With nervousness and with hope, environmental activists and other Marylanders alike look forward to the implementation of these laws and the accomplishments of the next Maryland legislative session.

Editorial Assistant Kim DeBarge loves boating and dining on the Chesapeake , and wants to see the Bay cleaned up.