By Angus Phillips
Sunday, December 14, 2008

The last sail of the year was a good one -- stiff breeze from the south, flocks of wintering sea ducks buzzing around close to the water and, as expected, the Chesapeake Bay as clear and clean as all outdoors.

If that last bit doesn't sound right to you in view of recent reports of dead zones and a general decline in the bay's water quality, you must be a fair-weather boater. In warm months, the bay indeed looks dismal -- murky and clouded with suspended algae. But for the four or five months a year when water temperatures dip too low for algae to bloom, it's clear as ever, a bright reminder of what once was.

Then, each April, a sad annual scenario plays out. Brave strands of submerged grass poke up in the shallows, clawing for the sun. Within weeks, the water warms and algae blooms, blocking the light. The strands grow pale and die. By late June, most grass beds are gone and dead zones return in vast areas of deep water, where decomposing algae eat up oxygen and higher life-forms can't survive.

The villain in this tragedy is well known: excess nutrients. Walter Boynton, a University of Maryland professor who has studied the bay's decline for 30 years, says loads of phosphorus and nitrogen entering the bay and tributaries from sewage plants, farm fields, polluted air and storm-water runoff are six times what they were 400 years ago and double what they were just 50 years ago.

Nutrients, of course, are what give the bay its richness and diversity. The open ocean is largely a watery desert, but in shallower places where the ocean meets fresh water and mixes with nutrients washed down from the land, life thrives -- to a point.

"I compare it to food," Boynton said. "You need food to live but if you eat too much, you become obese. The bay has become obese."

Boynton was among a group of scientists who gathered this month to note a depressing milestone in the Chesapeake's ongoing saga. Twenty-five years ago, top elected officials from Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District met in Fairfax to forge a historic agreement to clean the bay. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to lead the resulting Chesapeake Bay Program, whose mission was to reduce nutrient loads with the active support of the states.

"The hope was that very substantial decreases in nitrogen and phosphorus would develop," Boynton said. Ambitious targets were set but none ever were met. What happened?

"The simple, semi-mindless answer is, 'Not much,' " Boynton said. "But that insults the thousands of people who busted their butts trying to make something happen. Realistically, at best, we've been kind of holding the line in the face of big population increases, big development. The region is schizophrenic. On one hand, all three states promote economic growth, yet all three have a policy of saving the bay. If we don't do number one very creatively, number two goes backwards."

The bottom line is, in a quarter-century the CBP has run through an estimated $6 billion to reduce nutrients, but the bay is no better. "In some places it's worse, in some places it's better," Boynton said. "In most places, it's not worse." Faint praise for all those billions spent, and all those good intentions.

What to do? Boynton said that's not his bailiwick. "I'm an estuarine scientist," he said. "I can tell you what will happen if nutrients increase or decrease." He'd like to see the nutrient load cut in half. "But how to get that done is not something I know."

Interestingly, the fellow who seems to have the best handle on that is a Chesapeake interloper. Eight years ago, Howard Ernst came to Annapolis from the mountains of Virginia to teach political science at the U.S. Naval Academy. There, he researched and wrote a book titled "Chesapeake Bay Blues" that reset the stage for bay restoration efforts. "It was a shock back then when I claimed the bay was dying not from pollution but from politics," says Ernst. "Today, that's conventional wisdom."

The EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program, he said, "is a 25-year experiment in voluntary, collaborative environmental management that didn't work. It's a product of Ronald Reagan's EPA that is being emulated around the country -- the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico -- even though it doesn't work.

"It turns out this sticky-sweet, light-green, voluntary approach to environmental protection has no nutritional value. There are two ways to change a culture: carrots or sticks. We got fat on carrots. Now it's time for the stick."

Ernst says the 1972 Clean Water Act gives the EPA regulatory power to set and enforce maximum pollution loads for public waters. "If a body of water is impaired, as are the Chesapeake and its tributaries, environmental officials must identify the sources of pollution and reduce it to acceptable levels," he said. "The Chesapeake Bay Program was seen as a voluntary alternative to that regulatory process. The alternative has failed."

Ernst wants the Chesapeake Bay Program to be replaced by a Chesapeake Bay Authority with legal power to regulate polluters, fine and sue them if they fail to meet standards, and regulate living resources such as oysters, fish and crabs to prevent excess exploitation.

The precedent for such a body exists, he says, in the Lake Tahoe Regional Authority, which oversees the restoration and protection of that treasured body of water on the California-Nevada border. "They monitor, they file lawsuits," he said. "It's not pretty, it's not nice, but it works."

For the Chesapeake to get similar protection, governors of the three states and the District would need to forge a legally binding agreement that would then need approval by Congress.

"It's simple, but it will take leadership from the governors and the Congress," he said. "The environmental community speaks with one voice. The old system of big promises but no delivery is not working.

"Elected officials can listen to us or ignore us," Ernst said, adding that he thinks conditions for change are finally right. "The stars are aligning. We have strong Democratic governors in all three states and a president-elect who is not afraid of environmental regulations."

A perfect storm for polluters? One can only hope.