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For Chesapeake, a Few Inconvenient Truths
Gerald Winegrad, left, who retired from the state Senate in 1995, presents a slide show about Chesapeake Bay pollution to teachers and environmentalists.
(By Jonathan Newton -- The Washington Post)
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Those who have seen the slide show say they found it powerful -- even if it is the length of a Hollywood epic.
"Whatever he has to say, he often takes a long time to say," said state Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery). "But he knows his stuff, he's passionate, he's right."
Winegrad's next presentation is scheduled for Sept. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at Downs Park in Pasadena.
Last Wednesday, seven people -- including two teachers from Anne Arundel Community College and an activist for preserving open space -- gathered to watch the show on the deck of Winegrad's home in Oyster Harbor.
From the waterfront spot southeast of Annapolis, they could see ospreys overhead and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in the distance.
He began by ticking off the slow or nonexistent improvements in pollution control and in efforts to bring back populations of blue crabs and oysters. Winegrad's show, "The Chesapeake Bay: An Imperiled Treasure and the Inconvenient Truths About Its Recovery," immediately struck a somber tone.
"Look at that trend," he said, as a chart on the laptop screen showed the bay's water becoming muddier over the years. "There's no way to put a happy face on this stuff."
Winegrad then outlined his proposed solutions. He wants a law that will order "no net loss" of forests across the Chesapeake's 64,000-square-mile watershed, because the woods don't cause the pollution problems that farms and suburbs do. Any trees chopped down would have to be replaced by new ones somewhere else, he said.
"The bay cannot be restored without radical land-use reform," Winegrad said.
In the slide shows, he also proposes a tougher approach to farm runoff. Instead of allowing farmers a choice about adopting measures to reduce polluted runoff, Winegrad thinks the state should mandate such action but help farmers with funding.
Both of these policies would be major changes even in Maryland, a state with a relatively "green" reputation. Neither would be easy to enact or implement, said Ann Pesiri Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission. She said farmers probably would rebel against the cost of making mandated changes, and a "no net loss" regulation on forests would be difficult to enforce.
Still, Swanson said that Winegrad makes an important point about the unfulfilled promises of bay cleanup.
"He's recognizing," she said, "that there is an enormous gap between what we need to do, and what we are able to do."
