Chesapeake Bay Clean-Up Gets Renewed Attention

Chesapeake Bay

Damage to the Chesapeake Bay has been traced to a number of sources, including nutrients leaving farm fields.

The Chesapeake Bay has been called one of the most biologically productive ecosystems in the world. It’s also one of the United States’ most troubled waterways environmentally. Damage to the Bay has been traced to a number of sources, including nutrients leaving farm fields.

Advertisement

Problems actually go back many years, as intensified agricultural and forestry activities and urban development have placed a significant strain on the Bay’s ecological health. In 1982, one five-year study concluded that a rapid loss of aquatic life was being caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus runoff. Non-point sources were identified as the primary sources of Bay pollutants, with agriculture contributing 44% of the nitrogen and phosphorus loads and 65% of the sediment loads.

Top Articles
TFI: Phosphate and Potash Are Critical Minerals, Senate Bill to Solidify

CropLife 100 dealer Willard Agri-Service, Worton, MD, lies in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Mike Twining, vice president of sales and marketing, points out that other contributors are many — and that runoff from both point and non-point sources creates nutrient and sediment loading.

For example, the reservoir behind the Conowingo Dam has essentially “filled up” so now it only traps nutrient-loaded sediment for short periods of time. During large storms and floods, sediments and attached nutrients can “scour” into the Susquehanna causing significant environmental shocks to the Bay’s ecosystem.

While agriculture clearly has a role and responsibility in these efforts, it has a tremendous track record of improvements over the past 30 years that have resulted in real water quality improvements, says Twining. Yet, the Bay remains impaired or by many measures worse off. For instance, monitoring data from Bay tributaries shows a mix of some progress, but more of them continue to exhibit water quality decline, says Bill Angstadt, retired executive secretary of the Delaware Maryland Agribusiness Association.

Clean-up Measures, Legal Action

How big is the challenge geographically? The Chesapeake Bay itself covers more than 2,500 miles, and its watershed encompasses 64,000 square miles in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. More than 50 major tributaries connect to the Bay, the largest being the Susquehanna River.

Efforts to clean up the waterway began in 1983 with the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement, signed by the governors of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the mayor of the District of Columbia, the chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the EPA Administrator. These leaders acknowledged the Bay’s problems and agreed to “assess and oversee implementation of coordinated plans to improve and protect the water quality and living resources of the Chesapeake Bay estuarine systems.”

Since 1983 many citizen and governmental efforts — including amending of the Clean Water Act to establish the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) — have focused on Bay improvement. The CBP is a regional partnership that directs Bay restoration and protection efforts (partners include federal and state agencies, local governments, non-profit organizations and academic institutions).

In 2000 six Bay states and EPA signed a Memorandum of Understanding that recognized the Bay was still a Clean Water Act impaired waterway and put forward the concept of a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) that limits nutrient and sediment discharges. The TMDL makes allocations of allowable loads of nutrients and sediments for specific industrial or other categories that may be either point or nonpoint sources.

Clean-up progress hasn’t been extensive enough or happened quickly enough for many stakeholders. In May 2009 President Obama issued an Executive Order which required seven federal agencies, led by the EPA Administrator and in consultation with seven established Bay Jurisdictions, to develop a strategy for addressing Bay pollution and preserving its natural resources. Among many other topics, the Order proposed more restrictive TMDLs.

The seven jurisdictions have been developing Watershed Implementation Plans to provide a roadmap for how they will achieve TMDLs by 2025. The regions also have two-year milestones for tracking and assessment of progress towards meeting the Bay TMDL allocations.

Problems with the TMDL are now being argued in court, a fight which began in 2011 when the American Farm Bureau Federation and other ag stakeholders filed a lawsuit against EPA, challenging its authority under the Clean Water Act to implement the Bay TMDL on a state by state level. The Farm Bureau lost the lawsuit but in late 2013 filed an appeal, which is still in the courts.

“Our argument is not that there shouldn’t be a TMDL on the Bay,” says Chris Jahn, president of TFI. “Rather, it’s the states that should be responsible for developing and implementing their own plans.”

A key factor in the debate is the scientific modeling that seeks to measure how many different things — such as animal production/releases, fertilizer applications and crop yields — will impact Bay nutrient loads. Angstadt is encouraged that the most recent models include more accurate data elements for these variables.

Figures fuel action. Public and private groups carefully monitor nutrient levels in the Bay and its waterways. For instance, recent data on the Bay’s Eastern Shore released by U.S. Geological Survey show “concentrations of nutrients in groundwater, and nitrogen and phosphorus in surface waters, are well above natural levels and are among the highest in the nation.” Hence, in June 2014, the watershed’s six state governors, EPA officials, and the head of the Chesapeake Bay Commission signed a new Chesapeake Watershed Agreement that establishes new goals and outcomes for the restoration of its tributaries and surrounding lands.

Ag At Work

“We have prided ourselves on taking a leadership position with regards to agriculture’s role not only in the Chesapeake Bay watershed but in sustainable crop production in our entire geography,” says Willard’s Twining. The company offers a number of trademarked initiatives, such as EcoN, HighQ and Footprint Management that help growers plan and manage nutrients, “big data” and equipment.

Twining says there has been significant adoption of 4R Best Management Practices (BMPs) overall in the region in the last 20 years. Strategies have included no-till, sidedressing, cover crop planting, nitrogen stabilization technology, use of irrigation, phytase use in poultry feeds (to reduce phosphates in manure) and enhancements to manure handling systems and applications.

Growers have made huge investments in mitigation techniques, including miles of grassed waterways for drainage, wildlife buffers on field edges, water control structures for storm events, and cover crop plantings to capture nutrients over the winter and recycle them the next growing season.

Twining describes how precision agriculture is playing a big role as farmers utilize the 4Rs, and “moving forward there is a strong movement to adoption of variable rate technology to better match seed and fertilizer to productive environments.” Plus, growers are exploring cutting edge technology that uses soil microbes and biostimulants to help push yields even higher from every pound of plant food applied.

That being said, there is still disparity from state to state in how authorities are regulating nutrients among the six states in the watershed. For instance, in Maryland and Delaware nutrient management is mandatory, while other states vary in their approaches. Nutrient management plans and practices in these two states must be highly detailed — and they’re highly regulated.

Agriculture is credited for its efforts toward the Bay restoration through states reporting on BMPs, says Angstadt. “The tracking, reporting and verification of these ag BMPs is the most controversial issue between agricultural stakeholders and the non-ag public organizations. The majority of conservation practices voluntarily implemented by farmers are not counted and none of the 4R practices for nutrient stewardship are reported,” he says.

Twining believes that “unfortunately public perception is overall very negative and misinformed. Ag has a lot of PR work that needs to be done to effectively get its message out in this highly emotionally charged issue.”

He also points out there is significant “lag time” between the adoption of pollution-reducing practices and the positive effects of these practices on a particular river or stream. This lag time can span from 10-to 50-plus years. “This often creates the perception that implementation of BMPs in agriculture aren’t having a positive effect on the Bay water quality when in reality we haven’t had them in place long enough to measure the results,” he says.

“And while initially voluntary efforts were slow, most, if not all of the initial ideas we had are actively practiced today,” says Twining. An education process was needed, as is always the case when widespread change is called for. He compares the situation to the 1980s when recycling first started: “It took several decades for consumers to understand the importance of it and systems and infrastructures to be put in place to support it.

“Again, the key in this whole debate is for ag to make these kinds of analogies to help people relate to the challenges we face and the reality of implementing the fixes,” he points out.

0
Advertisement