Chesapeake Cleanup Degenerating Into "Bureaucratic Farce" - WP

Halfway through a 10-year program to save the Chesapeake Bay, political leaders are acknowledging that the vaunted cleanup is faltering and are calling for major changes midstream. Once touted as a national model, the cleanup effort has unraveled into what some environmentalists call a bureaucratic farce. Five years of planning, they say, have left the bay no cleaner than it was when the "Chesapeake 2000" pact was signed.

An Eastern Shore congressman is contemplating legislation that would replace the voluntary cleanup strategy with strict regulatory requirements. Governors are pledging to walk the halls of Congress lobbying for $12 billion in needed support. And scientists are exploring the mass introduction of a Chinese oyster to replace the vanishing native breed. "Business as usual won't work," said former Virginia governor Gerald L. Baliles, who led a committee that studied the bay cleanup last year. "More of the same is asking for trouble."

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But large reductions in pollution have not come; at the current rate, the nitrogen goal won't be met until 2038. And the problems with oxygen-poor areas haven't changed. In fact, the summer of 2003 was one of the worst times on record, as nearly 40 percent of the Chesapeake became a suffocating expanse that environmentalists dubbed the "dead zone."

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Douglas F. Jenkins Sr., 70, of Virginia's Northern Neck said he's seen the signs both on land -- where the number of waterman has dropped because of low oyster harvests -- and in the water. For instance, boat anchors used to come up with a menagerie of tiny bottom-dwelling animals crawling on them: sand fleas, worms, snails. Now, Jenkins said, those animals are gone, and probably dead. "The little shells or carcasses are about all you see," Jenkins said."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31198-2005Jan23.html

If the Bay can't be fixed then I doubt we can fix anything. The proximity to DC, the economic losses, the pride of Maryland, one would think these factors would propel a serious effort. The Bay might have been one of the most fecund places in the world, now little better than a sewer. Chinese oysters? WTF??

It used to be my home. I wish Thomas Wolfe was wrong.

I live on the Chesapeake Bay. It's still beautiful but it is so sad how much it has changed in my lifetime. So many of the things they have tried over the years have only made it worse. When they banned fishing for Rockfish, for example, the Rockfish population increased a bit but crabs became less plentiful because the Rockfish were eating them. These chinese oysters make me nervous because every time they introduce a foreign species into the bay it seems to ultimately end up being a mistake.

I'm hoping the people on the Eastern Shore will wise up and see they are voting against their own interests. They vote heavily repuke over here and end up with representatives who have little power in the State legislature and and not much credibility with the evironmentalists.

I'm glad you posted this article. I contribute to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation but I think I need to get more involved with this. I love the bay. I moved here around 10 years ago and lived on a boat for 6 years. It's almost hard to describe my feelings about it.