Patuxent watershed health gets D-

Ches. Bay watershed improved over last year

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Patuxent watershed earned a D- for 2008, the same as in 2007, in an annual "report card" issued by a group led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. At 23 percent, it scored third-worst out of 14 tributaries graded on water quality. Grades were calculated using a rubric including dissolved oxygen, water quality and examinations of the health communities of algae, aquatic grasses and floor-dwelling organisms. All attributes were rated poor or very poor.

The bay watershed as a whole performed better with a C- grade, qualifying as "moderate poor ecosystem health" with an improvement of 1 percent from last year. Overall, however, the bay has improved little since 2003, when wet conditions flushed harmful nutrients and sediment into the bay, according to the report.

"Since this rapid decline, the bay-wide health score has only modestly improved, increasing from 36 percent in 2003 to 43 percent in 2008 — still much lower than the 55 percent the bay scored in 2002, before the wet conditions," the report said.

Fred Tutman, head of the Patuxent Riverkeepers, which compiled the Patuxent data, said the stagnant results demonstrate that current conservation methods are not working.

"I think what we can derive from this and agree on is the bay and these tributaries are getting no better," he said. "We're not doing enough or doing the right stuff to bring them back and nurse them back to health. People look at these reports expecting it to be like the stock market, going up or down — I don't think that's realistic here. The truth is they're inevitably going down. We're not practicing what we're preaching."

Powerful interests, including those involved with construction and development, have impeded effective political solutions to the problem, Tutman said, and the state will need to embrace its regulatory powers to see real improvement. A voluntary, education-based approach will motivate some to change their ways but that isn't enough.

"We've had plenty of time to see the approach we're using ain't working," he said. "… Money is a problem but it's not the key problem here. It's what we're working on, it's the willpower to actively change [and] actively restrain [behavior]. We don't want to tell people they can't do what they want to do. All our efforts are on educating people to do the right thing, but all the incentives are pushing them to do the wrong thing. We have to have spine to say, ‘No, we're going to fix this and we're going to take the funds from the violators to fix this.'"

Changing public attitudes toward regulation will be difficult, Tutman said.

"If you try to raise these issues in a public forum, developers will argue they have the right to build, and apparently that right subsumes the general public's right to have access to clean, safe, swimmable, fishable, drinkable water. What do you want more? Property rights or drinkable water? Can you have both? You could argue that you do. They do in other jurisdictions," he said. "… A bad economy and a bad environment — that's called a ghetto. Isn't that what we call that?"

Bernie Fowler, a fierce advocate for restoring the watershed, said Tuesday he had not seen the latest report but was not surprised by its results.

"That doesn't come as a shock to me because that's what we had last year and that's what I'm trying to have the political leadership understand: We're doing a lot of talking, but when you look behind there's nothing happening, really," he said. "Somehow, we've got to get people excited over this and understanding it. We need to move environmental consideration, especially for the estuary, for the Chesapeake Bay."

Last June, at the annual Patuxent River Wade-In to gauge water quality, the former Democratic state senator spoke bluntly about the river's peril while exhorting listeners not to give up hope.

‘‘She's on death row," he said of ‘‘Lady Patuxent." ‘‘We put her there. But we're making strong appeals. She's not going to die. We're going to bring her back. We will save this river, trust me."

emitrano@somdnews.com