the rise of slime
Waterkeepers Chesapeake By Michele Merkel, Chesapeake Regional Coordinator
Ninety percent of Chesapeake Bay and its tidal waters are impaired from nutrient pollution. In the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, leaders from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and the federal EPA pledged to get the bay off EPA’s list of impaired waters by 2010. Current predictions for meeting this goal are dire.
South Riverkeeper
»Every year nearly half the Chesapeake Bay has too
Algae bloom at Betterton Beach on the Sassafras River, MD. This algae, microcystis, produces a toxin that can cause illness, including gastroenteritis, and has killed livestock and pets.
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little oxygen to support most aquatic life, creating a dead zone stretching for hundreds of square miles. The Chesapeake Bay Program, a federal-state agency charged with directing bay restoration, recently reported that there are no prospects of likely recovery. They predicted continued harmful algal blooms causing beach closures and fish kills like the one this June that caused 7,000 menhaden to go belly up in the Baltimore Harbor. Why have the federal and state governments given up on the bay? We know what the problem is. We know what the solutions are. Stop nutrient pollution from industrial agriculture, sewage systems and stormwater runoff from reaching the water. We have piles of reports and initiatives, strategies and assessments. Now it’s time to start at the top of the list and cut the sources of pollution. With government moving at glacial speed, the Waterkeepers Chesapeake are picking up the pace of our efforts to protect the bay from nutrient pollution using litigation, regulatory and legislative strategies. Keeping Waste Out of the Bay Earlier this year, Shenandoah Riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance put two companies, Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation and Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation, on notice that we will sue them for dumping poultry waste into the North Fork of the Shenandoah River in Timberville, Virginia. PPC and Cargill send 360 million gallons of poultry processing waste to the failing SIL wastewater treatment facility each year. In 2005, the
Waterkeeper Magazine Fall 2007
SIL facility exceeded their phosphorous pollution limits by an astounding 900 percent. Tests showed phosphorous levels in the river 140 times greater below the outflow for SIL than above. These violations continued into 2006. As a result of the notices of intent to sue, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality stepped in and is requiring the facility to install treatment technology that will slash pollution. However, the Shenandoah and Potomac Riverkeepers’ work is far from over. The Virginia Fish Kill Task Force recently hypothesized that poultry litter is a likely contributor to the substantial number of fish kills that have occurred each year since 2004 in the Shenandoah River. To the North, in Pennsylvania, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper is also hard at work tackling industrial agriculture. Earlier this year, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper and Penn Future threatened to sue five industrial agriculture operations for operating without a Clean Water Act permit. Those actions compelled three of the facilities to obtain permits. One of the facilities chose to reduce their livestock below numbers that require a permit. The fifth facility is still under the Riverkeeper’s watchful eye — they claim that their facility is really two separate facilities, neither of which is large enough to require a permit. More recently, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper in coalition with other state groups successfully pushed Pennsylvania legislation that makes tax credits available to farmers and businesses who install conservation projects that reduce water pollution. Waterkeepers Chesapeake are also working to keep human waste out of the bay. One of the primary sources of nutrient pollution in the West and Rhode Rivers is from recreational boaters. Because the Coast Guard and the state have failed to enforce the laws that prohibit the dumping of wastewater from boats, the West and Rhode Riverkeeper decided to take matters into his own hands, convincing the city of Annapolis to donate a pumpout boat. With operating assistance from the state and with help from many volunteers, the West and Rhode Riverkeeper now operates the pump-out boat “Honeydipper” on the West and Rhode Rivwww.waterkeeper.org
