ANNAPOLIS- Environmentalists and fishing groups put differences aside at a meeting here Tuesday to urge an immediate crackdown on nitrogen pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, which they said is a cause of shrinking fisheries.
Leaders from 12 fishing groups and Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William Baker signed a letter calling for political action to improve sewage treatment and decrease farmland runoff.
“We’re going to have to smell the death from a fish kill or a decayed marsh to get policy makers to act,” said Kelly Place, research and policy director for the Coastal Virginia Watermen’s Association.
Watermen and recreational fishers have become increasingly dissatisfied with what they see as political failure to regulate pollution, while strict regulations on their diminishing fisheries are enforced.
That’s why they’ve joined the foundation, the largest bay advocacy group, which regards nitrogen pollution as the “chief culprit” in the bay’s decline.
The foundation has been critical of fishing groups in the past and vice versa, but fighting pollution has spurred a growing alliance.
The letter is addressed to the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the mayor of the District of Columbia and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. These officials, who make up the Chesapeake Bay Program Executive Council, will meet Dec. 9 to discuss bay issues.
The letter urges the council to mandate nitrogen reduction technology for sewage treatment plants and enforce pollution limits for the plants and “other significant nitrogen dischargers.”
Nitrogen fuels algal blooms that block sunlight needed by underwater grasses, which shelter crabs, juvenile striped bass and sea trout, among other species. Algal blooms also rob the water of oxygen when they decompose.
This summer, above-average rainfall flooded the bay with nitrogen runoff, creating what scientists and watermen say are some of the worst low-oxygen conditions on record. They’ve seen fish kills and unusual crab behavior: summer hibernation and “crab jubilees” where gasping crabs, straining for oxygen, dance on the land.
The foundation estimates that 459 million pounds of nitrogen will flow into the bay this year, a significant increase over the 10-year average of 320 million pounds per year.
All states within the watershed, along with the District of Columbia and the federal government, agreed in April to reduce nitrogen pollution to 175 million pounds per year by 2010.
The fact that two-thirds of wastewater treatment plants employ no nitrogen reducing technology is emblematic of the failure to curb nitrogen pollution, foundation president Baker has said.
And fishing groups are anxious for any effort that might provide an economic turnaround.
“It’s pitiful and at the end of the day when you can’t produce a paycheck for your family you really feel bad,” said Roy Meredith, president of the Chesapeake, Atlantic and Coastal Bays Watermen’s Coalition.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich has taken steps to curb nitrogen pollution, said his spokesman Henry Fawell
“This governor has made nitrogen pollution his No. 1 environmental priority,” Fawell said. Ehrlich has pursued federal funding for upgrading wastewater plants and secured $93 million in fiscal 2004 for upgrades and $23 million to combat other types of runoff, he said.
And nitrogen is far from being the only source of the bay’s woes or dissention among its interest groups.
The decline of most bay fisheries, including the collapse of the once bounteous Chesapeake oyster industry, is also blamed on a combination of fishing pressure, erosion and the construction of tributary dams that block spawning runs.
“We can’t use water quality as an excuse to forgo good fishery management,” said Sherman Baynard, committee chairman for Coastal Conservation Association Maryland, an anglers association.