Water quality in Chesapeake Bay is not improving. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF at www.cbf.org) routinely publishes the “State of the Bay” and although their methodology is not perfect, their assessments are in accord with other, more science-based, organizations. Why, after more than 30 years of knowing that poor water quality is caused by excess nitrate and phosphate, mostly from agricultural practices and wastewater treatment facilities, has there been no improvement in the water quality of Chesapeake Bay? Some agencies like to point out that water quality has not degraded proportionately to population growth in the watershed, so we are making progress. This is true, but water quality has not improved. As Mark Twain said “You can be on the right track and still get run over by a train if you don’t move fast enough.”

In a democracy such as ours, the people are ultimately at fault. Too few people have educated themselves responsibly about the problem and voiced their demand publicly and/or in writing, and especially with their vote, that the Bay be improved. Many people are not sufficiently critical of the information they receive. Just because the information emanates from government or CBF does not mean that it is correct and unbiased. Many people are simply not interested or are unwilling to mount a sustained effort to effect change. Bouncing off the bureaucracy repeatedly commonly achieves the desired bureaucratic goal of making the bouncer go away in frustration. When some people learn that water quality improvement will incur real costs, for example more expensive wastewater bills, they balk. Too few people have demanded that politicians take the necessary steps to “clean up” the Bay and too few people have confirmed that they are willing to pay for improved water quality.

The politicians are certainly at fault, responding to the deep pockets of agriculture, sewage sludge and municipal wastewater lobbies, and failing to educate themselves responsibly. Politicians rarely take a long-term view of any problem, and although they will vehemently deny that campaign contributions or free lunches with lobbyists sway their information base or their votes, we all know differently. Any politician who openly stated “farm profits and agricultural productivity are more important than improving water quality in Chesapeake Bay” would never be elected, yet that is government’s current position.

State and Federal agencies, especially the Economy Protection Agency (EPA), are at fault for favoring agricultural productivity over regulations that would result in significant improvements in water quality. They disseminate misinformation, overly optimistic projections, and rely too much on “models” rather than on hard data. All these agencies are too politicized, especially at the top, and respond primarily to short-term economic pressures. Even when the truth surfaces, as in the current federal administration’s admission that the reason we are not seriously addressing global warming is because “it would hurt the economy,” most people do not object. Cheap gasoline today is more important to most people than the alternatives.

Non-governmental agencies, especially CBF, are at fault for not playing “hard-ball” with important issues like agricultural pollution, and, especially, in using the courts. Instead, they self-promote by building visible public facilities, tout useless exercises like SAV planting that are doomed to failure until water clarity improves (although there may be educational value in the exercise), and put the CEO of the largest corporate polluter of Chesapeake Bay, Perdue Farms Inc., on important committees.

Any discussion of Bay pollution that does not list agricultural fertilization practices first must be considered suspect. “Urban runoff” is certainly a problem, and addressing it would be visible to the public. The worst kind of urban runoff is called “Combined Sewer Overflow” and happens in older installations where raw sewage mixes with storm discharge during heavy rains. The Blue Plains wastewater facility ( www.dcwasa.com ) discharges nearly 2.5 billion gallons of mixed storm runoff and raw sewage each year. Overboard discharge from boats is a miniscule problem but is often mentioned. Few people are stupid enough to defecate directly into the water and there is probably no way to keep fishermen from urinating overboard. That said, there is no excuse for Chesapeake Bay not to be designated as a No Discharge Zone. Oysters and menhaden are often touted as solutions to the Bay’s problem because they are filter-feeders and help remove suspended algae from the water. The more filter feeders the better, and oyster reefs were once populated by many filter-feeding organisms other than oysters. Desirable as they may be, more filter feeders are not the solution to the Bay’s problems.

Consider a leaking boat. Putting in a bigger bilge pump is the “engineering solution.” But the boat will eventually sink because leaks never repair themselves, and bilge pumps fail. We can’t fix the problem of too many suspended algae in the Bay with a bigger bilge pump (more oysters, menhaden and other filter-feeders.) The leaky boat can only be fixed if it is hauled out of the water and the leak repaired, no matter how painful and expensive the repairs may be. Too many algae in the Bay must be addressed by reducing their cause, which is too much nitrate and phosphate entering the Bay from inefficient agricultural fertilization practices and out-of-date wastewater treatment facilities, and not just trying to filter the algae out of the water.

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