The Poisoning of Chesapeake Bay

Such toxic discharges pose a difficult problem for a permit system that has not adequately stemmed the flow of conventional pollutants into the bay, environmental and other experts say. Unless the permits are upgraded to restrict toxic waste -- and are then strictly enforced -- the bay's slow decline will continue, they say.

"The bay really is as everyone's been saying . . . a national treasure. But it's also a national challenge," said William D. Ruckelshaus, who, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's first administrator, ushered in the Clean Water Act. "As of this moment, it's an open question as to whether we're going to rise to meet that challenge."

The Chesapeake's slow death has affected the lives of thousands of people. Last year Jimmy Rogers, 34, of Easton had to close his fishing-guide service of 10 years; 67-year-old Robert Fuller, also of Easton, no longer hopes for perch when he ambles out onto his dock, spinning rod in hand; Marguerite A. Anderson, a 58-year-old homemaker from Timonium, searches in vain for a delicacy that is as light and flavorful as striped bass, known locally as rockfish.

For their part, industry executives say they have spent millions of dollars on getting rid of visible pollution in the bay. There are no cumulative figures for what businesses have spent doing so.

But nationwide, manufacturing industries spent nearly $38 billion, adjusted for inflation, on water pollution control equipment between 1972 and 1985, according to figures recently compiled by the economics division of McGraw-Hill Inc.

Those investments amounted to about 4 percent of the companies' 1972 capital spending, according to McGraw-Hill; that percentage fell to about 1 percent last year.