Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Save the Blue Crab

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Some of my best memories growing up 40 years ago were of standing at the end of the wooden pier on hot, sticky summer afternoons and throwing chicken necks on strings into the Elizabeth River. We kids would patiently tend the lines and whenever we felt a strong tug, it meant that a blue crab was trying to make off with the bait. We’d draw up the string, slowly, slowly, so as not to spook the crustacean until it was visible just beneath the water’s surface. Then we’d swoop in with a net and scoop it up. Next would follow the prickly task of untangling the fins and claws and spiky shell from the net without getting a nasty bite from the flailing pinchers. Often as not, we’d drop the crab, and it would skitter off the pier and plop into the water.

These days, not enough crabs are getting away. According to a joint statement by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Maryland’s Gov. Martin O’Malley, crab populations in the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries “are down 70 percent from 1990 levels and are showing no signs of recovery…”

From the Washington Post:

The governors are ordering state agencies to cut the harvest of female blue crabs this year by a third. That’s fine as far as it goes; last year, watermen caught an estimated 60 percent of the crabs in the bay, far in excess of the 46 percent goal the states had set some years ago as a means of sustaining the fishery. But it is really more of a stopgap designed to avert utter catastrophe than a lasting solution.

Sad to say, but my youngest child, nine years old, will never know the simple pleasures of crabbing. When the species is at risk, the kind of play that my childhood friends engaged in, entailing the death of many innocent crabs left carelessly in crab buckets, is no longer appropriate. The slow-motion destruction of the Chesapeake Bay represents a loss for children whose summers will never be as full as mine — not to mention a tragedy for Virginia’s “beautiful swimmers.” Tolerating the devastation of his remarkable species, so critical to the Chesapeake ecology and so interwoven with our heritage, would be a crime.

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  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    They truly are beautiful swimmers.

    What used to be so plentiful they were basically free is now a luxury item. When the price gets high enough,there will be enough profits to go fix the problem.

    RH

  2. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Remember the ban on Rockfish fishing. Do what you gotta do to preserve. And more research on what is wrong and how to fix it – the best of science not the worst of politics.

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Agreed.

    If I had to choose between spending a hundred million to reduce mercury (for example) or a hundred million to save crabs (or some other species), I’d take the crabs every time.

    Unless I find out it is the mercury killing the crabs.

    And there’s the rub. (Pardon the pun.) We know contamination is a problem, we know habitat loss is a problem, we know over harvesting is a problem.

    We know we have a bunch of other problems, too. But we don’t know enough to prioritize accurately.

    Without the best of science we can only expect the worst of politics.

    RH

  4. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    My stepfather had four pots that he would fish out of Monroe Bay near Colonial Beach. I would go out and tend the pots with him. After we were done, we would spend hours cooking and picking crabs, freezing some crabmeat for soups and cakes.

    I also used to work at a couple of seafood restaurants in that area and loved to cook soft shells.

    It’s a damn shame that we’ve destroyed the Bay so much that we have to take drastic measure to try to save the blue crab. There are NO guarantees that this will work…only hope.

  5. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: why are the crabs and oysters disappearing?

    Is it Mercury? How about nitrogen? Phosphorus? hormones/antibiotics from chicken plants? pharmaceuticals from sewage treatment plants, runoff from parking lots….???

    is it what is causing intersex bass?

    is it what is causing the fish kills in the Shennandoah and upper James ???

    is it the KEPONE still oozing from the Appomattox?

    how about the PCBs or Mercury still oozing from the Shenandoah?

    gee.. if we ONLY knew which one of these was the problem .. we could “fix” it.

    Right?

    Methinks the crab and the oysters are gone… forever – a gift to our kids…courtesy of our current attitudes about how much it costs to have a “pristine” environment.

    but wait.. this cannot be ..somehow this has GOT to be the FAULT of those damned enviro-whackos – right? Surely it can’t be us.

  6. COD Avatar
    COD

    When I was teenager in FL blue crab was our back up lunch on days when the fishing was unproductive. We’d beach the rowboat that we fished from and walk along the shore of the bay with a net. We’d usually have a crab lunch in a matter of minutes. I’ve never been able to get used to the idea of paying a premium to eat blue crab. That doesn’t stop me from doing it once in a while, but it always feel weird.

  7. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I spent much of my young life near waterways and crabbin with chicken-necks was primo entertainment.

    In my adult life – I’d eat crabs and/or oysters before anything else.

    Until recently, we’d get up with friends and a campfire in the winter with the proper libations and oyster knives…

    so it’s great sadness

    and I don’t know.. up and down the east coast – is the crab and oyster also dead in other places or is it just the Chesapeake Bay?

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Well, Larry, like you say, Chlorine is a hazardous chemical. if we had banned it, then we would never have had PCB’s or Kepone.

    And we would have lost a few million people by not having the antiseptic qualities of chlorine, along with its many other uses.

    We can do without Mercury if we give up on Conservation minded fluorescents, safety switches, much of our outdoor lighting, and having our teeth filled. We could shut down any laboratory that depends on diffusion pumps, and gun owners would have to do without mercury fulminate. And if you cut yorself you would have to do without both Chlorine and Mercurachrome. We would have to do without alot of other chemicals becaus mercuric sulfate is a catalyst, and we would have to do without the color Vermillion. Along with 2500 other legitimate industrial uses.

    Then of course there is a Mercury compound used in lethal injections for executions.

    We could cut out Phosphorus and do without all the organophosphates, good and bad, along with toothpaste, shampoo. We could do without both fire starters (matches) and fire retardants. We could pass on water purifiers, all kinds of cleaners and metal preservatives.

    And we can prevent the pharmaceuticals from getting to the seage treatment plant – by not using any pharmaceuticals.

    It’s going to be great world when the enviro-whackos take over. The crabs will be healthy and we’ll all be too sick to eat them.

    RH

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “…researcher Tim Haab…found that both water clarity and quality correlated with increased property values, but “water clarity seems to have the biggest bang for the buck in terms of housing price,” Irwin says…”If you increased the depth of water clarity by two meters, it was found to increase the average housing value by $4,300″

    If the rest of the watershed inhabitants spend a few hundred billion to clean up the water, at least science can tell us where to send the bill.

    RH

  10. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    the answer has NEVER been a choice between pristine and nothing.. but there is no shortage of folks who portray those choices.

    The answer has ALWAYS been to not release into the environment the things that cause great harm and/or cannot be cleaned up without great cost.

    Some think Great Harm is the destruction of the Crabs and Oysters. Others see it as a shoulder shrugging moment.

    Hypocrites abound.. claiming environmental credentials while they decry the “expense” of a cleaner environment.

    Rivers used to be essentially open sewers and smokestacks used to be common city features.

    We used to use mercury in thermometers and PCBs in transformers and dump both in rivers.

    We used to spray DDT throughout residential areas…directly on critters and humans alike.

    We didn’t abandon cities.. nor give up on knowing he temperature or having electricity because we could not have transformers.

    None of the choices were made nor were they necessary.

    In each case – we removed the substance that caused the harm – at perhaps a higher initial cost but saving costs dollar and environmental – over the longer term.

    We have folks who portray environmental protection as an all or nothing proposition and that giving up a substance means giving up the benefits it provided so .. the ONLY answer is to do nothing and blame the enviro-whackos for no good reason other than to assuage their own guilt.. about CHOOSING to not to advocate for anything much less do it.

    then these same folks cluck their tongues when the crabs and the oysters go belly up… rolling off their tongues.. meaningless mea culpas while making sure one last time that the future is dark if we do what the enviro-whackos suggest.

    You won’t save the Bay much less bring it back as long as we have folks who think personal wealth is the bottom line and money for the environment is money wasted.

    It’s a simple choice.

    So far, we choose to NOT save the Bay but we do choose to plaster Save the Bay stickers on the car.

  11. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Here’s the center of my frustration – with the process and with people – the talkers as well as the professionals and regulators.

    and it goes like this…

    would you purposely dump stuff like drugs, hormones, anti-biotics, anti-freeze, motor oil and chlorine in your aquarium and expect the critters in it to be unaffected?

    yet.. that is exactly what we do with our waterways… and we express shock and disbelief when we hear one after another reports of sickened fish with lesions… intersex fish, fish kills, health warnings to NOT eat fish and the commercial extinction of crabs and oysters.

    As a society that blathers on about the need to be “green” – we are plum stupid sometimes.

    Do we clean up our sewage treatment?

    No.. because it is “too expensive”?
    It will raise our monthly water bills.

    Do we employ EFFECTIVE impervious surface policies to keep bad stuff from running off?

    No.. because it is “too expensive”.

    I will make development “cost more”.

    etc, etc..

    so.. we treat the two issues as separate…

    higher water bills? bad stuff

    no crabs and oysters? “gee, how did that happen”?

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I have never portrayed it as all or nothing. It is always a choice.

    All I suggest is that we look more carefully at the choices, and that we have a better means of establishing priorities.

    The environmental movement has made great strides, as you suggest. Now that the really easy pickings are over, we move more and more towards the point where we can make huge mistakes.

    PCB’s wre invented because they are almost entirely inert. Won’t react with anything and they are next to impossible to destroy. Why would we think they were hazardous? Maybe someone knew they were a bioaccumulator and would eventually cause damage in high doses. If so, he’s a criminal, but more likely, it was a big mistke, based on a lack of knowledge or insufficient analysis.

    Environmentalists are not immune from exactly the same kind of mistakes. Eventually, we will have our own kepone or DDT incident in reverse: something like banning chlorine because it is a hazardous chemical, only to see infections shoot sky high.

    I know, you are going to go pooh pooh, that will never happen.

    Just like the PCB guy did.

    My last post puts an actual property value of $4300 on cleaning up the water, for those properties adjacent to the water.

    What if the cost is $500,000 per home? Is it still worth a cleanup, based just on that evidence?

    But that is only one of the vlaues of clean water. We would have to sum them all up to know the true worth. And suppose the true worth turns out to be $1,000,000 per household.

    What difference would it make if you haven’t got the half million?

    Sure, it is probably worth it to clean up Chernobyl, but it isn’t happening because there isn’t that much money. There are times when we just don’t do it.

    I’m not decrying the “expense” of a clean environment. I’m decrying the fact that some people don’t believe there is such a thing as too expensive, and aren’t willing to set limits. Not even willing to describe a uniform way to agree on limits.

    Suppose cleaning up the Bay saves a million people and distributing condoms saves a million people for a fraction of the cost. You have enough money for one, and not the other, then what?

    Even if it isn’t a choice between pristine and nothing, it’s a choice between pristine and something. The present environmental movement just wants a little bit here and a little bit there, and every time they say, this doesn’t cost very much, like a boy approaching a virgin.

    Who makes the choice, at what level, and how much does it cost?

    Personal, corporate, and civic wealth is the bottom line, because without it you can never raise enough money to save the Bay.

    It’s only a little here and a little there, but there are hundreds of causes. If you think you can take the last penny out of every pocket, just because they go one at a time, then think again.

    Taking that last penny is very much like taking that last oyster. You have to let them grow if you expect to continue to harvest.

    RH

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It’s that Petri dish problem. We all know that when we run up against the edge of the Petri dish we will run out of Agar and die.

    So we draw a circle around the Petri dish just inside the edge, and then we pretend that will save us all.

    And of course it won’t. Some will either die or not live, so that we don’t cross that circle and we still have agar left.

    Somebody is going to have to make those decisions, and people like Larry pretend we won’t. We can alwyas give up a little more and save a little more Agar. No one will notice.

    Solving global warming is going to be easy compared to solving that other problem.

    RH

  14. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    ….”Who makes the choice, at what level, and how much does it cost?”

    what’s the cost of telling your grand children what the Bay was like in the “old days”?

    and what do you tell them when they ask why it changed from when you were a young boy?

    do you blame it on the enviro-whackos?

    probably.

    and then you’ll say ” it was going to be god-awful expensive to keep it clean enough for crabs and oysters”.

    “there was no profit in that”

  15. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    I am with JAB. The rockfish were supposedly “gone forever” about 20 years ago. Then the states instituted an absolute ban on fishing for rockfish or keeping rockfish. If you were caught on a slow troll with a deep lure – you got fined, even without catching a fish. If you were caught with rockfish in the cooler, it cost you $500 per fish and the fish were taken. I was checked by Maryland Natural Resources police every time I came back to the dock.

    Then, wonder of wonders ….

    The rockfish were back. Today, there are so many rockfish in the bay you could virtually walk across the bay by stepping on their heads.

    It’s time for an absolute ban on crabbing. We’ll give it a few years and see what happens. I know some people will be hurt but they will be hurt worse if the crabs really are “gone forever”.

  16. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    First, we need to better understand why the crabs and oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are in trouble if crabs/oysters in other areas are not. Is the problem specific to the Bay or is it more systematic on most of our estuaries on the East Coast?

    Each year, for instance, we have the Urbanna Oyster Festival attended by thousands of people.

    Guess where the oysters come from?
    They come from HEALTHY populations of oysters NOT in the Chesapeake Bay. Why is that?

    I do not think a “wait and see” approach is an intelligent approach because we already KNOW we have serious issues in our rivers – and they do go downstream to the Bay.

    For instance, it should take a rocket scientist to know that giving millions of chickens hormones and anti-biotics then piling up their excrement next to creeks awaiting the next rain storm… is not a smart move yet DEQ continues to dither….not only with respect to proper handling reforms but .. more importantly in my mind – a commitment to monitor the water to actually KNOW what some of the impact are…

    almost as if they don’t want to know…..

    we are told we don’t have the manpower and money to monitor.

    This is a load… as far as I am concerned.

    It borders on criminally negligent to NOT have an effective monitoring program… that gives us not only a good assessment of our rivers but the trend lines also.

    We use “models” for stuff like nitrogen – but we don’t actually measure the nitrogen – ESPECIALLY upstream and downstream of major discharge pipes and chicken farms, etc.

    I would wager than virtually no one who reads this blog can tell me WHERE the biggest spikes in Nitrogen OCCUR on our rivers and could not find the info either.

    That’s because we don’t monitor.

    Instead we use “models” to predict without bothering to actually check to see if the actual levels are what the models predict.

    This is the dumb-as-a-stump school of Environmental monitoring.. as far as I am concerned…

    EVERY SINGLE sewage outflow should have REAL TIME 24/7 monitoring of the substances that we know are harmful and they should be online – just as river flows are online.

    Do you know how we currently find out if a sewage treatment plant has a problem?

    Virtually in every case, it is “discovered” by a citizen who “notices” it.

    Give me a break.

    The folks in the plant itself know there is a problem.

    Simple 24/7 monitoring would reveal instantly when a problem occurs but DEQ does not require it.

    Why not?

    I’m not going to continue to belabor the point but the facts simply are that Virginia and DEQ are not interested in actually knowing comprehensively the status of the rivers…

    and without doing that..how can we even begin to understand what is wrong with the Bay?

    Virginia CHOOSES to Not deal with the reasons why the Bay is in trouble.

    It is as simple as that.

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “what’s the cost of telling your grand children what the Bay was like in the “old days”?

    Don’t have any grandchildren,and I can’t remeber that far Back. The first time I sailed the Bay in the 1960’s I remember it as being disgusting – A face full of spray tasted like chemicals more than water.

    But, there are people who now how to put a price on such things. And prices are uniquely democratic: people have to agree that is the price, or else it isn’t.

  18. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Water samples are collected from sample locations (see map below) in the Patuxent, Potomac, Choptank, and mainstem Chesapeake Bay. These water samples are tested using a bioassay. The results of these laboratory tests are used to determine if a sample is:

    Nitrogen limited (excess Phosphorus), Phosphorus limited (excess nitrogen), or Nutrient Saturated (excess phosphorus and nitrogen or inadequate light).”

    The essay takes three or four days so real time monitoring is not an option. Probably having above and below every sewage aoutfall would not really buy you very much useful information considering the cost.

    There are real time nitrogen instruments, but they do not meadure the same thing.

    The people that do this stuff do know what they are doing, even if they are underfunded.

    RH

  19. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Automated, on line N-P analyzers run from $15,000 to $60,000. If you think we need a thousand points monitored, where will you get the $40 million?

    And that’s just for the instruments.

    RH

  20. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    You get the 40 million from the folks that are dumping effluents.

    It is a legitimate cost of business and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than spending billions trying to find out why the crabs and oysters or gone or tax dollars to provide assistance to people and businesses affected by restrictions on crabs and oysters.

    This is a simple matter of “pay me now or pay me later” and our dumb-as-a-stump policies invariably choose the “pay later” option without having a clue as to how much “later” will actually cost.

    Is monitoring expensive?

    you bet it is and it should be because if you do it – it can save you millions/billions of dollars on mis-directed cleanup of the wrong stuff at the wrong locations.

    Should we pay farmers not to plant or should we require the city to clean up it’s sewage outflows?

    How would you KNOW if you don’t know what the status of the river is UPSTREAM and DOWNSTREAM of the outflows?

    That’s the problem that we have.

    We don’t know.. that we don’t know.

    We are ignorant by choice…

    we don’t want to know if we should clean up the sewage outflows or pay farmers to not farm upstream.

    All we have is our own petty prejudices of what we want to believe – rather than get the facts and be guided by those facts in terms of our policies.

    We already spend millions/billions of dollars on things that we simply don’t know if they are effective or not.. because we think finding out with monitoring is “too expensive”.

    So we pay Scientists tons of money to develop “models” that have nothing to do with actual realities.

    Could you tell me how the Rivers in Virginia RANK in terms of nutrients at their mouths?

    Can you tell me how those rivers compare with other rivers in the country?

    Are Virginia’s rivers better, worse or about the same as Rivers in North Carolina or West Virgnia?

    What we don’t know and what we are not willing to find out.. is breathtaking.. in terms of deciding what we should or should not be spending money on to improve.

    We simply don’t know.

    All we seem to know is that it is “too expensive” to find out.

    We would rather spend billions on unemployment benefits, compensation to economically-damaged companies and “studies” based on models..than finding out the truth and using that to formulate our responses.

  21. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “You get the 40 million from the folks that are dumping effluents.”

    No, you won’t.

    They will go bankrupt, and take our jobs with them. If we all cannot afford the cost then we surely cannot expect a few to bear the cost.

    The good news is that if all the polluters pack up and leave, then most of us will be among them.

    When they leave, they will take their pollution with them, and now it will be someone else’s problem.

    Think globally, act locally.

    Right?

    RH

  22. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “It is a legitimate cost of business ….”

    Well, that’s different. In other words you are not going to get it from them, youare going to get it from us.

    Why didn’t you say so?

  23. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “…it’s a hell of a lot cheaper… “

    For whom? Them or us?

    I’m getting a little confused here.

    RH

  24. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Is monitoring expensive?

    you bet it is…”

    What you mean is, is total, real time monitoring expensive.

    We already know the bay is a wreck, and we only need 20 or so stitions to tell us that. Since it has been a wreck for decades, we really do not need real time monitoring.

    We do depend on models, but these models have been reasonably well verified.

    You think maybe we could spend that $40 million better? Better than spending it to tell us what we already know?

    I’m the one who is ALWAYS in favor of more data, but let’s not be stupid about it.

  25. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “How would you KNOW if you don’t know what the status of the river is UPSTREAM and DOWNSTREAM of the outflows?”

    If it was all point sources, you might have a point. As it is, we know the system is a mess. What more do we need. Anyway, the biggest point sources are artificially created. They are the seage plant point sources that concentrate the effluents (from everywhere), and then treat some of them.

    We could do better. We know how. We know where the effluent comes from (all of us), so we know where to send the bill.

    Have you flushed your toilet lately?

    RH

  26. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “We use “models” for stuff like nitrogen – but we don’t actually measure the nitrogen “

    Hoe many times have YOU run a BOD sample?

    In this case, the models we use are pretty good. And we do back them up with analysis.

    RH

    RH

  27. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “We are ignorant by choice…”

    Yeah. we choose not to spend more money to tell us what we already know. The BAy is a mess and everybody in the watershed is to blame.

    No new taxes, right?

  28. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “we don’t want to know if we should clean up the sewage outflows or pay farmers to not farm upstream.”

    You mean we should have priorities?

    God forbid.

    Anyway, the problem is so big and so diffuse and so important, it really does not matter. It is an invfinite problem and we can afford infinite resources to fix it.

    Go ahead. Clean up the seage outfalls (some more), and pay the farmers both.

    What the heck. It’s only money, and this is REALLY important.

    No new taxes, right?

    RH

  29. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “What we don’t know and what we are not willing to find out.. is breathtaking…”

    Well yeah. But what we already know is breataking. How much more do we need?

    Now, what it will cost to fix is truly breathtaking.

    No new taxes, right?

    RH

  30. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    How about if we just take everyone in the watershed and send them a bill for $20 bucks a month, and stop crapping around.

    When the crabs come back, we will start having lotteries. The winners get a bushel of crabs. The more crabs we have, the more winners in the crab lotteries.

    I think it is called, “Pay for Waht you get”

    That way, you don;t need any new taxes.

    Right?

  31. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “How about if we just take everyone in the watershed and send them a bill for $20 bucks a month”

    you make my point.

    what would you prioritize it on?

    What are the most urgent areas and effluents that need the most attention first?

    Without monitoring.. we don’t know if the priority should be sewage treatments plants, impervious surfaces runoff, or chicken farms.

    The Bay IS a WRECK – and we don’t know why….

    the answer is not money per se…

    It’s money spent in finding out specifics and you cannot do that without a comprehensive monitoring program for the watershed.

    It’s like I said.

    Tell me which River in Virginia has the worst nutrient problem?

    How about the one with the least?

    What do the settlement patterns look like around the ones with the least and most…

    and about 20,000 more questions that we do not have the answers to… not because they don’t exist, but because we won’t pay to find out.

    and not finding out.. while spending money to “fix” is more dumb-as-a-stump policy….

    If we are SERIOUS about improvement then we have to be SERIOUS about knowing WHAT the problems really are.. instead of playing cheerleading rah rah “Save the Bay” sound bites… and bumperstickerology

    re: my toilet

    my toilet goes into a drainfield and MY clean water supply is DOWNSTREAM of my drain field.

    I have a reserve drainfield AND I pay to monitor my own water

    Which is the way it should be for all of us…

    Every single water bill should have a line item that says: “water quality monitoring fee” and if it is 20 bucks a month – so be it.

  32. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Tell me which River in Virginia has the worst nutrient problem?”

    That would be the Susquehanna, and has been for decades.

    “my toilet goes into a drainfield and MY clean water supply is DOWNSTREAM of my drain field.”

    How much “nutrients” are you drinking? The CBF folks tell us that drainfields as far away as West Virginia affect the bay because nutrients flow through the groundwater. I’ll guarantee your drainfield isn’t 100% efficient, but it is probably good enough, for your purposes.

    “I have a reserve drainfield AND I pay to monitor my own water

    Which is the way it should be for all of us…”

    Then we are going to need to use a lot more countryside for housing.

    RH

  33. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    More than 2/3 of the Bays problem comes from non point sources. There are very few point sources left to clean up.

    Pretty soon they’ll come after non-point sources like you and I. it is going to cost us a bundle.

    RH

  34. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    Sure, we should be doing our part. But watch how it is done.

    Richmond is moving ahead with its stormwater utility fee. As an environmentalist, I am all for doing more about stormwater runoff.

    But who is going to be charged what? Keep in mind that Richmond is finally getting around to changing its minimum water rates after the local Green Party and Sierra Club made them an issue. Big water users were getting huge volume discounts while the City still has the highest minimum water rate in the country. I wonder how much VCU and other corporate entities will get charged on stormwater for all their downtown parking lots in comparison to Richmond neighborhood residents.

    More importantly for the environment, I am wondering how this money will be utilized. I hope it does not all go to more pipes and retaining ponds when more preventative measures like residential water barrels and greenways can make more of an overall difference.

  35. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “That would be the Susquehanna, and has been for decades.”

    prove it. and list the major rivers by rank with their nutrient loads.

    “More than 2/3 of the Bays problem comes from non point sources. There are very few point sources left to clean up.”

    wrong.

    again. supply the data that proves the above statement

    If this were true – virtually ever town and city along the rivers would show already-high nutrient levels ABOVE their sewage outflows and virtually no additional nutrients BLOW their outfalls.

    Show me the data that proves the above.

    “The CBF folks tell us that drainfields as far away as West Virginia affect the bay because nutrients flow through the groundwater.”

    where is the data?

    I live on a water-supply lake.

    If the claim is true – then sampling the lake water should prove the assertion.

    We should, in fact, be able to show that any lake surrounded by drainfields has a normalized per-capita nutrient impact – as compared to normalized sewage-treatment per-capita nutrients…

    so.. are drainfields twice, 3 times or 1/2 the contribution as per-capita from sewage treatment plants?

    How about impervious surfaces or farms?

    When you don’t know the answers and you don’t have enough money to fix it all at once… how to you decide what to fix first and what will have the initial best bang for the buck?

    When you don’t know the data – you’re wasting resources AND time and more important -you can’t quantify the effect especially the “how much was removed for how much cost”.

    And that’s the problem with the Richmond Approach.

    Many folks would not mind paying their fair share if they could see the results…

    but what it feels like is a tax & spend scheme without metrics or performance accountability.

    The way we do this is akin to have a parking lot full of new cars and a sign that says that each one of them “saves gas” without knowing anything more in the way of specifics.

    Just go buy one and “save gas”.

    It’s a totally bogus approach.

  36. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    We’ve been through this before. As i recall the top three polluters are the Susquhanna, the James, and the Potomac.

    The Susquehanna and James because of agricultural activities, primarily.

    With the exception of large processing plants and chicken factories, that’s a huge and diffuse non-point source. Part of it is called Pennsylvania.

    And, one third is said to come form air pollution, another nonpoint source. There are point sources that can do better clean up, but the easy and cheap work has been done. Now it gets costly.

    “The CBF folks tell us that drainfields as far away as West Virginia affect the bay because nutrients flow through the groundwater.”

    Yeah, I don’t believe it either, but it is part of the justification they say needs more control and more spending. There is a lot of bad info out there.

    “We should, in fact, be able to show that any lake surrounded by drainfields has a normalized per-capita nutrient impact – as compared to normalized sewage-treatment per-capita nutrients…”

    Yeah, if we could seperate it from the effects of lawn fertilizer, run off, and air pollution.

    I don’t think you get much nutrient run off from roads, but I think we pretty mcuh know tht farms are the largest sources of both nutrients and silt. We like to blame it on development, but it ain’t (entirely) so.

    RH

  37. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “But nearly four-fifths of the nutrient pollution reaching the Bay comes from “nonpoint sources,” which includes runoff from farms, cities, suburbs and other land uses.”

    http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=2981

  38. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    DATA … not narratives

    4/5 of what total?

    ONLY 1/5 comes from sewage treatment plants and impervious surfaces?

    on EVERY river on EVERY Section of River?

    The James above Lynchburg is already maxed out on Nutrients?

    Where are those numbers?

    I’m very familiar with the Bay Journal and their tendency to make sweeping statements without backing up the numbers…

    If we have so many farms that are no longer “farmed” then how does this translate into non-point source nutrients?

    Is the river below a bunch of no longer farmed land.. essentially devoid of nutrients and the problem is severe below “farmed” properties?

    Does the data confirm that?

    Common Sense guy.. it’s a scam…to raise money by making everyone feel equally guilty.

    the idea that EVERYWHERE on every river up and down every river across Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc – that the nutrient problem is EXACTLY the same is totally bogus….and it engenders a mindset that it does not matter when limited funds are spent -because no matter where they are spent .. it will “help”.

    totally bogus approach… insulting to the intelligence of even the most clueless.

  39. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The data is out there, with comparisons to how it tracks with the models.

    Nutrient data is mostly not availabe for tidal waters, because then you can’t tell where it is from.

    But there ae also not all that many monitoring stations. Mostly becasue the data above and below the point sources are not allthat different. It IS the diffuse sources that are killing us on this.

    Yes, only one fifth comes from point sources. That’s not too hard to figure out when you think of how big the bay is and how much runs into it completely uncontrolled.

    RH

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