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Bay's Health Scores Poorly ; Report: Chesapeake Waters Still Polluted and Oxygen-Deprived

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 November 2005, 06:00 CST

By Lawrence Latane III

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation gave the bay a "D" in an annual report released today that for the third straight year rates the estuary's health at 27 on a scale of 1 to 100.

The environmental group blamed the score on another year of oxygen-deprived dead zones and water-pollution problems that continue to stress the nation's biggest and most productive estuary.

Foundation President William C. Baker noted that state governments and federal agencies in the bay region have pledged to control bay pollution by 2010. But, "instead of seeing significantly improved water quality, we have a bay that is dangerously out of balance and in critical condition."

The foundation's Virginia spokesman, Chuck Epes, said the bay can be saved if state and federal governments follow through with the spending to upgrade sewage treatment and improve farming practices.

Nutrients from sewage, fertilizers and animal wastes cause the biggest problems for the bay by spurring algae blooms that squeeze oxygen from the estuary's waters.

In recent years, a "dead zone" in the bay's deepest waters stretching 100 miles from Annapolis, Md., to the mouth of the York River has symbolized the damage that pollution is causing the estuary. Little or no oxygen is present in the dead zone, making those waters inhospitable to most fish and shellfish.

The bay foundation, which claims 140,000 members, has issued a bay report every year since 1998 based on the status of 13 indicators including blue crabs, oysters, wetlands and various pollutants. The score has rocked back and forth from 27 to 28 during all those years.

The score card's big losers were dissolved oxygen, nutrient pollutants, water clarity, oysters and shad - each category received an "F." The only "A" the foundation handed out was for the status of the bay's striped-bass population, which rebounded a decade ago after strict catch moratoriums in both Virginia and Maryland. But the foundation noted that rockfish, as they are called, are increasingly being affected by a wasting disease that may be linked to declines of menhaden, their preferred food.

The Virginia General Assembly is expected to grapple during this winter's session with how to fund the bay cleanup. The legislature added slightly more than $50 million last year to the cleanup fund, which already was earmarked to receive $32 million in surplus funds.

A legislative study committee will meet today in Richmond for a final meeting, having met twice before to consider how the state can pay to improve water quality and control pollution.

One projection puts the price for what needs to be done in the state at $2.3 billion.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

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