Federation Blog

Former West/Rhode Riverkeeper Bob Gallagher recently had a great letter to the editor published in the Capital.  Several Waterkeeper groups, including the Federation, have signed on in support of the Attorney General's bills that he references below.  Please contact your legislators and ask them to support the bills as well:

Federal regulations regarding vessels with installed toilets have been in effect since 1980. At that time, it became a crime to dump untreated sewage from a boat to the water. The concern then was bacteria pollution. The law eliminated discharge of a dangerous pollutant from an easily controllable source.

The law has an exception for boats that have toilet systems that grind up the waste and kill the bacteria before the waste is pumped overboard. These systems remain legal except in a few designated "no discharge zones."

The 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement called for the elimination of "pollutant discharges from recreational boats." We now understand that pollution from nutrients like nitrogen is the biggest problem facing our rivers and the bay. Sewage from boats, whether treated or untreated, is a highly concentrated form of nitrogen pollution. Pumping even treated boat waste overboard is like dumping fertilizer in the bay.

Attorney General Doug Gansler has recently caused the introduction of legislation that would expand no discharge zones to include all Maryland waters (SB 513/HB 1257). Gansler's bill would require that boats that have these currently exempt "treatment systems" have them pumped out just like the great majority of other boats that store waste in holding tanks.

Less responsible elements of the maritime industry oppose the bill for the reason that boats affected by the legislation contribute only a very small amount to the nitrogen pollution that is suffocating the bay.

With the current state of water quality in the Bay, we need to stop nitrogen pollution from every controllable source. Moreover, why should any of us have to swim or crab near a boat that is discharging "treated" sewage? I support the Attorney General's bill.

Bob Gallagher

On Tuesday evening, the environmental community gathered in Annapolis to discuss our legislative agenda.  In the clip below, I discuss the reasons we need a state requirement for local stormwater utilities.   Video courtesy West/Rhode Riverkeeper, Chris Trumbauer.

Yesterday, at the Maryland State House, a coalition of scientists, former policymakers, and environmental advocates, including representatives from the South River Federation, presented the EPA with a 24-point plan to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay, and a declaration that the voluntary, collaborative approach to pollution reduction taken over the past several decades has failed.

You can read the group's plan and position paper in support of S. 1816/HR 3852, The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009  below:

• Comments on EPA strategy for restoring the Chesapeake Bay
• Comments in support of the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009

 WMAR-TV and WJZ also covered the event.  The newsclips can be viewed at the links below:

• Bay Advocates Send Obama Restoration Strategy - WMAR 2
• Bay Advocates Send Obama Restoration Strategy - WJZ 13
• Capital coverage:  Experts: Stronger bay action needed

This morning as I was on my way into the office and dropped my son off at his school, I quickly noticed something horrible.  The school is undergoing expansion and the rain this morning quickly showed how poor the contractor was at proper sediment and erosion control.  All of this sediment will quickly make it's way into Glebe Creek.--Diana

Second Part of the story;  I took samples as the water was freely flowing into the stormdrain by inserting my hand with a bottle to obtain a proper sample, I then processed then in a laboratory and the following in the results I obtained:

Turbidity:  437  NTU (nephlometric turbidity units),  Orthophosphate: 0.29mg/l, Nitrate: 0.21 mg/l, Nitrite, 0.083mg/l.  The maximum turbidity that should be coming off of construction site is 40, this is about 9 times higher.

  Today I had the pleasure to work with US Fish and Wildlife Service in their lab while they performed necropsies and obtained samples from the catfish pulled from the South River on September 30, 2009.  The lesion on the right side of this catfish measured one inch long by 0.5 inches thick.  While this fish was swimming, the lesions were so big they bounced around.  The fish will be tested for liver cancer and skin tumors.  The area these fish were taken from was directly across from the ski zone in the northern part of the South River.  Again, as I have said before; the South River has no industry- but we have such toxic sediments and water quality that they produce catfish with major health problems.  On weekends I see people fishing off of Rt 50 bridge catching these catfish to eat.  What has the world come to when we allow ourselves to eat lesionous catfish.  No studies have been performed on the effect of human health and eating cancerous fish, but maybe it is time such a study is done.  There are no regulations or health advisories on this topic either, maybe it is time we do so.  I can not image feeding this to my children, in my opinion, this would be child abuse.  We have abused the South River enough- how much more can this poor ecosystem take?

Diana

Today I was out with USFWS performing the fall monitoring for our famous South River Cancerous Catfish.  The site was in the section near the ski zone in the northern part of South River.  With every catch the majority of the catfish had tumors, either on the face or back.  This is completely and utterly depressing to know that our river has no industry, but industry like water.  To know that where we have cancerous catfish, people are swimming, skiing, and fishing in waters with known problems.  Not only did the fish have horrible tumors, but they were anorexic.  Tomorrow I will be in the lab with USFWS helping to necropsy the catfish to help find the source.  But in the meantime --- Our river has a large problem.

-----Diana

Chalk one up for "old media."  The New York Times did a beautiful job of taking an enormous amount of information from EPA data sources and compiling it into the linked map below which has information on the location of water discharge permit holders, their number of violations (or lack thereof), and the amounts they have (or haven't) been fined for their violations.

 Check it out here: http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters/polluters/maryland

 MDE's response can be found here.

Earlier this year, the Maryland Department of the Environment completed its revisions to the Maryland Stormwater Design Manual, the idea being that several advances have been made in the field since the last iteration in 2000.   Well, that and the fact that the Stormwater Act of 2007 required it.

 The primary change in the new stormwater guidelines is the broader push for "Environmental Site Design" or (ESD).    ESD, aka Low Impact Development (LID) is based on the premise that by taking into account all of the natural features of a site (e.g. forest, wetlands, steep slopes, etc.) and designing around or integrating those features into the design of a development project, rather than simply looking at a site as a blank slate, will result in a more environmentally sensitive outcome and will also lead to a more aesthetically appealing place to live/work/shop.  

The new regulations require also that certain storm events be captured and infiltrated with practices like bioretention areas (aka rain gardens), vegetated swales, or living roofs.  Ideally, this will lead away from the practice of installing large, biologically-challenged stormwater management ponds that it is increasingly clear don't even do what they were intended to do [pdf].  

The counties and local jurisdictions have the prerogative to go beyond the MDE regulations, and to this point, the Anne Arundel County advisory group has injected some important amendments into the discussion, including the notion that the outfalls from these projects need to be genuinely stable and non-erosive.   This is critically important as much of the damage to our river is coming from the erosion caused after rain water leaves a developed site as those high velocity flows erode our streams.

A friend recently forwarded an article from the Denver Post describing how, until recently, it had been to harvest rainwater.   As anyone who has been to Colorado or out west can attest, the land is pretty arid, and water is generally a pretty scarce resource.  Throughout the west people take their "water rights" pretty seriously and get pretty upset when they suspect someone is siphoning of "their" water. 

At the heart of the previous law was the misguided notion that capturing rainwater would hamper stream flows.  Healthy streams are fed primarily by groundwater, that is rainwater that has fallen on the land, infiltrated, and then been exfiltrated as baseflow.  Flashy, storm driven streams are largely a product of the heavily developed and de-forested landscape.

This recent change in state law has made it a bit easier for homeowners to collect and re-use rainwater for their lawns or gardens.   It's great that this wise use of rainwater is being allowed, and its always good to see water treated like the resource that it is, rather than as a pollutant that should be shed from a site. 

Meanwhile, rain barrels are very legal, and even encouraged here, so if you haven't already, consider hooking up your downspouts to slow stormwater runoff and save potable water for drinking.

And a little advice for water-concerned westerners: Stop storing your water in huge open-air reservoirs in the desert.  Evaporation is not your friend.

Throughout almost the entire sampling season, our bacteria readings on Almshouse Creek have been well above the EPA threshold for safe swimming (see here).  For the past several months, we've been trying to track down the source.  Our sampling site is at the top of the creek, and the surrounding area is entirely on sewer.  Edgewater Park is at the top of the creek and comprises a significant portion of the drainage area. 

Having walked the park a number of times and determined that pet and/or wildlife waste doesn't appear to be a significant problem in the area, we contacted Anne Arundel County Recreation and Park and Department of Public Works (DPW) about coming out to look at the sewer infrastructure in the area.  Needless to say, that involved a lot of looking down pipes. 

 Last week, DPW popped the manholes off several sewer junctions to examine their condition.  The photo below shows the gravity pipe coming from the park concession stand (in aquamarine) draining into the main sewer line.  A dye test and smoke test seemed to indicate that the pipe was intact and not leaking into the adjacent soils.  One problem that this investigation did reveal is that groundwater is leaking into the sewer system from around the pipe collar.  This is a problem because it means clean water is getting into the sewer and being treated at the treatment plant, occupying capacity and costing additional money.  DPW expects to fix the problem within a month or so. 

With the feeder pipe from the concession stand apparently in working order, we scoured the site for other possible bacteria sources.  Below is a shot of the filled-to-the-brim grease trap from the concession stand.  Though from outward appearances, the tank appeared relatively new, it was quite full, and we've requested that Recreation and Park pump the tank just to rule it out as a possible source.

DPW will be checking one or two other sewer segments in the area, and our bacteria monitoring program continues on, but unfortunately, the mystery remains unsolved.  I'll keep you posted on any future revelations here.

Note: Never open a manhole lid and descend into the sewer system yourself.  Dangerous gasses can build up in these systems, and because they are often heavier than air, remain there.  Suffocation and death could easily occur if one ventured down without the proper breathing equipment.