Welcome to this week’s installment of the BayBlog Question
of the Week! Each week we'll take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week’s question comes from Roshni, who asked, “How does
water become polluted when automobiles are used for transportation?”
The most important thing to understand is that almost
everything we do as residents of the Bay watershed has an effect on the Chesapeake in the long
run. With the movement of people from city centers to more suburban areas, we
have had to rely more on traveling by car, which has led to the creation of
more hardened “impervious” surfaces such as highways and parking lots.
Transportation and the roads, parking lots and driveways
that facilitate it account for 55 to 75 percent of all paving in cities and
towns. These lands used to be forested, and when they are paved over, there are
fewer habitats for wildlife and fewer filters for Bay-bound pollution. Transportation
infrastructure has also caused the land across the Bay watershed to become more
fragmented over the past few decades, making it even harder for animals to find
habitat or complete their migration routes. (Learn more about forest fragmentation.)
The act of driving vehicles also emits pollution into our
air. The pollution from these emissions eventually falls back to the earth and
is transported by runoff and groundwater into streams and rivers.
Stormwater runoff is a massive problem due to the
ever-increasing amount of paved surfaces in the Bay watershed. Instead of rainwater
being filtered and absorbed into the ground, it simply runs off hardened areas
into nearby streams and rivers, eventually carrying the pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, stormwater runoff is the fastest
growing pollutant to the Bay.
Remember, everything we do affects the Chesapeake
Bay, beginning with your local creek or stream. But every little
change helps! So help the Bay by starting a carpool with your coworkers or using
public transportation to lessen the number of cars on the road and the amount
of pollution being released into the air during your commute.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
Welcome to the latest installment of the BayBlog Question of
the Week. Each week we take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week’s question comes from Matt:
“How are limits at wastewater treatment plants set? Is it
based on water quality standards or limit of technology?”
Ultimately, nutrient discharge limits for wastewater
treatment plants in the Chesapeake Bay
watershed are set to improve water quality, but many plants face limitations
because of technological capabilities. Nutrient discharge from wastewater
treatment facilities is one of the biggest causes of poor water quality in the
Bay. Because of this, the Chesapeake Bay Program has been working to reduce
nutrient pollution from these sources since 1985.
In 2005, the Chesapeake Bay
jurisdictions introduced a new permitting process limiting the amount of
nitrogen and phosphorous that the watershed’s 483 major wastewater treatment
plants could discharge. These limits meant that most facilities had to make
major renovations and upgrades to include biological nutrient removal and
enhanced nutrient removal technologies.
In the biological nutrient removal (BNR) process, microorganisms
remove nitrogen and phosphorous from wastewater during treatment. The
wastewater treated in this process contains less than 8 milligrams per liter
(mg/l) of nitrogen. Enhanced nutrient
removal improves upon the BNR process, with wastewater treated at these plants
containing 3 mg/l of nitrogen and 0.3 mg/l of phosphorous.
Some of those facilities that are required to meet stricter
limits but cannot afford more advanced upgrades still have options. Nutrient
trading programs have been implemented in Pennsylvania
and Virginia
for precisely that reason. These programs encourage facilities to invest in upgrades
with greater nutrient reductions and then sell their excess nutrient credits to
other facilities. This provides plants a cost-effective way to meet the limits
imposed on them to improve water quality if they are lacking the technological
advances.
And remember, you can do your part to help wastewater
treatment plants reduce nutrient discharge too. Two easy steps are conserving
your water so the facilities have less water to treat and switching to low- or
no-phosphorous dish detergents. For more information, check out our Wastewater
Treatment page.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
Autumn makes you think of pumpkin pie, hot apple cider and
the earthy smell of fallen leaves. I am
thankful we get to experience all four seasons here in the Chesapeake
region – even though I’m not as fond of the ice storms winter brings to us in Maryland.
Below are satellite snapshots of the Chesapeake
Bay during each season. It
is amazing how the landscape changes from spring to summer to fall to
winter.
See what the Chesapeake
looks like today by visiting NASA's
website.
Welcome to the third installment of our newest feature, the
BayBlog Question of the Week. Each week we'll take a question submitted through
the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week's question comes from Sacha:
“My husband and I just recently bought a house in Gainesville, Virginia,
and were told that the creek that runs on our property is part of the
watershed. I’d like to know how I can find out if that is true and if it is,
where I can get more information on what that means for us as property owners.”
Your creek is, in fact, part of the Chesapeake
Bay watershed. As you can see in this
map, Gainesville, Virginia,
lies within the Potomac River watershed, and the Potomac River flows to the Chesapeake Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers more than 64,000 square
miles in the states of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia
and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia, and contains thousands of creeks,
streams and rivers that all eventually drain to the Chesapeake
Bay. But no matter where you are, every creek or stream is a part
of a watershed -- it’s just a matter of finding out which one.
If you want to find out which watershed you live in, start
off by going to the Environmental
Protection Agency’s “Surf Your Watershed” site and plug in your zip code,
city, or even the name of the stream itself. The site will then generate
information for you about your specific watershed, including:
- The
name of the watershed
- The
congressional districts within the watershed
- The
names of citizen-based groups working in the watershed
- Water
quality monitoring data
- Links
to environmental websites dealing with that watershed
- A link
to the National Watershed Network
- An
assessment of the watershed’s health
- Information
from the United States Geological Survey including stream flow, science in
that area and water use data
- A list
of places included in the watershed (counties, cities, states and other
watersheds upstream and downstream)
As property owners, it is important to learn about this
information so you are aware of the health of the water near where you live.
You also might want to look into the citizen groups
that work in your watershed to help improve or maintain the health of your local
waterway. Volunteering with your local watershed group is a great way to help
the environment and the Chesapeake Bay.
With that information, check out our Help the Bay
section, which details dozens of ways you can make a difference around your
home and backyard to help the Chesapeake Bay and
your local stream.
The health of the Chesapeake Bay
begins with the health of every creek or stream that flows into it. So treat
your local waterways well, and the Chesapeake
will one day follow!
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
Welcome to the second installment of our newest feature, the BayBlog Question of the Week. Each week we'll take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program website and answer it here for all to read.
This week's question comes from Samantha. She asked:
What forces of nature caused the Chesapeake Bay to form?
The Chesapeake Bay as we know it today took on its current shape about 3,000 years ago, but its geologic history can be traced back about 35 million years. Around this time, a rare bolide, or a comet-like object from space, impacted the Earth. This impact did not create the Bay, but it did contribute to natural processes that eventually formed the Bay as we see it today.
The bolide collided with the Earth near what we now call Cape Charles, Virginia, on the lower tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, and created a crater. The crater is thought to have been as large as Rhode Island and as deep as the Grand Canyon. According to this article from National Geographic News, the impact of the bolide led to tsunamis and the decimation of marine life in the surrounding areas. The crater lay beneath sand, silt and clay for millions of years before it was discovered.
It was about 18,000 years ago when the Bay really began to form, as glaciers from the last Ice Age began to melt. During this time period, mile-thick glaciers existed as far south as Pennsylvania and the Atlantic coastline at that time reached about 180 miles farther east than it does today. As the glaciers melted, they carved rivers and streams flowing toward the coast and sea level rose continually. This led to the eventual submersion of what we know now as the Susquehanna River Valley.
History is rich in the Chesapeake Bay; evidence of the ancient Susquehanna River can still be found in a few deep troughs that form a channel along a large portion of the Bay’s bottom. But the Chesapeake’s 3,000 year history in its present shape does not mean there haven’t been changes. In fact, the Bay is constantly changing due to the forces of erosion and sediment transport.
For more information about the history of the Chesapeake Bay, visit our Bay History and Bay Geology pages.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
We're starting a new feature here on the BayBlog called the BayBlog Question of the Week. Each week we'll take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program website and answer it here for all to read.
This week's question comes from Elaine. She asked:
I would like to use balloons as promotional give-aways, but I am concerned for the environment. What is your position on balloons and the environment?
The Chesapeake Bay Program does not have an official position on balloons and the environment. I did some research on this topic and found that releasing balloons into the air is the issue that can have environmental consequences. When balloons are released into the air and eventually deflate, they can fall back to earth and become litter on our ground and in our waterways. In this 2004 Baltimore Sun article, a staff member with the National Aquarium in Baltimore noted that animals such as fish, gulls, dolphins and sea turtles can confuse deflated balloons with food.
If you decide to use balloons as promotional giveaways, perhaps you could include a note that encourages users to dispose of the balloons properly and not intentionally release them into the air. Because we all love balloons -- we just don't want them to become litter, or worse, food for wildlife and aquatic life in the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways.
And remember, if you're outside and you see a deflated balloon lying on the ground or in a tree, pick it up! We all need to do our part to help keep litter out of our parks, beaches and waterways.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
If you're looking for Chesapeake Bay-related day trips for you and your family, check out Chesapeake Trips and Tips, a new weekly e-mail from the Friends of the Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network with events taking place throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed during the upcoming weekend. This week's edition of Chesapeake Trips and Tips includes a festival in Baltimore, an Eastern Shore bull and oyster roast, and a reenactment of the 1774 Yorktown Tea Party.
And remember,you can always visit baygateways.net for ideas for day trips and weekend getaways around the Chesapeake Bay region. The Gateways Network includes 160 parks, museums, water trails, historic sites and other spots that show the local area's connection to the Chesapeake's culture, history and environment. So get out there and explore the Bay!
You could say the weather was against me that day. I woke up in the morning to pouring rain and a temperature in the 50s. Not exactly the best conditions for planting wetland grasses on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. But nonetheless, the Baltimore Aquarium volunteer packet did say “RAIN or shine.”
So I hopped in the car with some fellow co-workers and began the hour-and-a-half drive from Annapolis to the planting site at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge. I had never been to Eastern Neck before, but I will surely return, preferably on a warm, sunny day! The refuge, located at the mouth of the Chester River on the Eastern Shore, is one of the top five waterfowl habitats in Maryland.
I arrived at the parking lot to find the hardy Aquarium staff ready to load us onto a boat and shuttle us to the planting site. So I suited up in layers and raingear and prepared for an interesting boat ride. The river was a bit choppy, so the ride was a cross between white water rafting and riding a rollercoaster with a bucket of water dumped over your head every five minutes. Taking a ride in a washing machine might be a similar experience.
Thoroughly drenched, I arrived at the planting site ready to get to work. My mission that day was to plant two species of grass on the eroding sandbar separating Hail Creek from the Chester River. We broke into teams and started planting. My team had a diviler, a feeder and a tucker. The diviler dug the hole, the feeder put fertilizer in the hole, and the tucker planted the plug of grass.
A tucker planting a plug of marsh grass
We repeated the process over and over and over until half of the sandbar was planted with new grass. The other half would be planted by more volunteers the next day.
Before and after planting marsh grasses on a sandbar at Hail Cove
After a long day of planting, we boarded the boat back to the mainland. Soaked to the bone, the Aquarium staff was nice enough to give us some trash bags to sit on or in, depending on our preferences. I went home knowing that through the wind and the driving rain, my blades of grass will remain.
Krissy stands in the driving rain at Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge after planting marsh grasses at Hail Cove
Matt Robinson is with the Chesapeake Research Consortium as part of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Restoring Healthy Watersheds team. Wink Hastings is with the National Park Service Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program at the Bay Program Office.
Sidney Center is nestled amongst the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County, N.Y. Most may not know it, but this rural community located hundreds of miles from the tidal Chesapeake Bay resides entirely within the Bay’s watershed. Sidney Center lies within the Carrs Creek watershed, a small tributary of the upper Susquehanna River, approximately one hour south of Cooperstown, N.Y.
Downtown Sidney Center, N.Y., in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Mike Siletti)
A very rural area, in recent years this small community has been devastated by catastrophic floods and severe groundwater contamination. “2006 was the worst flood in recent memory,” says Joe Lally, president of the Sidney Center Improvement Group. “Two truck drivers were killed in Carrs Creek when a culvert failed and a portion of Interstate 88 was washed out.” In addition to loss of life, there was destruction of private housing, loss of livestock, and loss of land due to erosion. Most of the community has also been exposed to contaminated groundwater caused by failing septic systems.
Photos from the 2006 Carrs Creek Flood. (Photos courtesy of the Sidney Center Improvement Group)
Inspired by these issues, Joe, a lifetime resident of the area, and other members of the Community formed the non-profit Sidney Center Improvement Group to address problems in their area. As part of this new effort, the Sidney Center Improvement Group contacted the Chesapeake Bay Program for help dealing with the water resource issues. Joe grabbed the attention of Wink Hastings, who isresponsible for assisting local communities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed for the National Park Service Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program.
Wink has been working with the Sidney Center Improvement Group for three years now on addressing land use and water quality issues in the Carrs Creek watershed. In 2008, through funding from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, Wink and the Sidney Center Improvement Group arranged for the assistance of Leah Miller and Mat Webber from the Izaak Walton League Save Our Streams Program to train the community in conducting stream corridor assessments and monitoring water quality in Carrs Creek and a branch of the creek known as Willow Brook.
The community conducted the first stream corridor assessment in September 2008. Local citizens chose various segments of Carrs Creek and Willow Brook and assessed conditions in these segments. The group looked for erosion, cows in streams, trash dumping, fish barriers, and other signs of poor land stewardship. This data was then placed into two GIS databases. The first was an ArcGIS database that can be used for writing a watershed management plan. The second was an online database, designed using Bing Maps, that can be easily accessed by the public. Because of these efforts, the group was featured in an article in the January 2009 edition of Outdoor Life.
A member of the Sidney Center Improvement Group identifies one of many erosion sites along Carrs Creek during the 2008 Stream Corridor Assessment. (Photo courtesy of the Sidney Center Improvement Group)
The group will begin quarterly water quality sampling in 2010. They have mapped out their sample sites and are looking at engaging local schools and colleges to assist with collecting and organizing the data. They are also looking for funding for resources to purchase monitoring supplies. This fall, at the request of the Improvement Group, the Upper Susquehanna Coalition plans to begin restoration of wetlands within the Carrs Creek watershed to help mitigate flooding problems.
Members of the Sidney Center Improvement Group collect macroinvertebrate samples during water quality monitoring training conducted in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Wink Hastings)
While still very far away from the Chesapeake Bay, it is no less important to engage local communities like Sidney Center. Archaic land use practices (e.g. drainage tiles and ditching in crop fields) are highly prevalent in the watershed. Many landowners are losing large segments of land at an alarming rate due to erosion exacerbated by flooding.
“The beauty of a project like this is that the community is able to meet several objectives through a single, coordinated approach. By helping to improve conditions in the watershed, we are helping improve the quality of life for local citizens, and improving water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed,” Wink says. “Community residents are also learning how to work more effectively with local leaders and institutions; it’s the equivalent of a Civics 101 course.”
With the inevitability of larger, potentially more damaging rainstorms caused by climate change, small watersheds such as Carrs Creek couldexperience higher sedimentation and nutrient loading. However, engaging local communities on how to “hold the line” and maintain healthy conditions in their watershed can help ensure that conditions in the watershed and the Bay are improved and sustained.
The community of Sidney Center still has a long way to go to “fix” the problems in their watershed. Funding is very scarce right now, and they have had difficulty getting noticed by many potential funders. Nevertheless, the group is determined to continue pushing forward to find a solution to their problems. “For the Sidney Center Improvement Group to work on this project, and with help from the Chesapeake Bay Program, we’re not only improving environmental conditions in our watershed but we’re increasing our ability to work as a community,” Joe says. “Thanks to this project, the community has strengthened its relationship with elected officials, Delaware County, and the local school system.
The Sidney Center Improvement Group is made up of an executive board and several workgroups that meet on a monthly basis. The Water Quality workgroup currently meets the third Thursday of every month from 6:30pm-8:00pm in the Sidney Center Library (contact Joe Lally, jlally2us@yahoo.com, for more information). The group invites non-profits and government program representatives to come and talk to them about opportunities and partnerships that could help them meet their goals.
Peter Bergstrom is a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Chesapeake Bay Office.
On Friday, July 3, I did my usual twice-monthly volunteer
water quality sampling at four
sites on the Magothy River near where I live. I started doing this in 1991 through
a program run by Anne Arundel County to get a better understanding of Bay water
quality, and I’ve kept doing it ever since. The county program was
discontinued, but I’ve continued sampling with the Magothy River Association,
which has other volunteers who also do water monitoring.
This monitoring trip was different from recent ones because
my four-year-old granddaughter came with me. This was only the second time
she'd seen any part of the Chesapeake up close
(she lives in Vermont
and usually visits us at Christmas). Thus, I was thinking about how she
was reacting to it. It’s been a long
time since my own kids helped me with monitoring (my youngest child is 26).
My granddaughter at
Bayberry next to the pier where we sampled, holding some crab legs she found on
the beach. Taken with a cell phone camera.
We started our sampling at the end of the Bayberry pier, on
the south shore on the lower part of the river’s mainstem, where all seemed to
be well. Several people were catching juvenile spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) pretty regularly, and my granddaughter was
fascinated by watching them. The reason they were able to catch these
bottom-dwelling fish at that location was apparent when we measured the
dissolved oxygen (DO): it was over 8 mg/l on both the surface and bottom,
plenty of oxygen for fish. The bottom DO here has not fallen below 5 mg/l
(the EPA and state standard for fish habitat) since I started sampling at
Bayberry in April.
The fish & DO story was different at the three other Magothy sites I
sample, and the news was not good.
At the first two these sites, Ulmstead in the mouth of Forked Creek and in my
own neighborhood (Stewarts Landing) on Old Man Creek, the bottom DO was less
than 1 mg/l at both sites, but that’s fairly common in the summer. There were no weird colors or smells, and people
were fishing or crabbing in shallow water nearby, although not in water as deep
as where I sample.
However,
in upper Cattail Creek in Berrywood, the water was a weird milky green and
there was a musky smell, so I knew before I lowered the meter that the DO would
be bad. The color and the smell are both signs of an algae bloom that
died and is decomposing. The surface DO was only 0.7 mg/l, the second
lowest surface DO reading I've ever made, and the bottom DO was definitely
anoxic with 0.00 mg/l, the lowest DO meter reading I’ve ever seen.
My granddaughter can't quite read numbers yet, but she knows zero when she sees
it. It made me sad to show her how dead the creek was. Amazingly there
were no signs of any dead fish; I think the fish usually avoid the whole upper
creek when it's such a dead zone. I’ve never seen anyone fishing or
crabbing nearby. A week after I sampled
there, Cattail Creek had a
health advisory against swimming posted by the county health department for
high bacteria levels, so that creek has multiple problems.
The water quality in these creeks was not always this dismal. Both Cattail and
Old Man creeks were much healthier in 2004 and 2005, when dark false mussels
covered almost all of the hard surfaces over a variety of depths in both creeks.
By pure luck, when I chose my sampling sites in 1991 I picked two sites that
would have some of the densest mussels 13 years later, so I have been able to
document the water quality improvements that followed their filtration. Water
clarity (measured by Secchi depth) and bottom dissolved oxygen showed dramatic
improvements in both creeks in those years, and underwater bay grass (SAV)
acreage in the Magothy went up in both 2004 and 2005. Volunteer divers and kayakers organized by
Dick Carey of the Magothy River Association estimated the number of mussels and
the volume of the creek. From that research they estimated that, in 2004, the
mussels could filter the water in Cattail Creek every two days, while it took
them 15 days in 2005. (Watch
an eight-minute video about the mussels and the 2004 surveys.) Imagine how
healthy the Bay would be if oysters were filtering its water every two days, or
even every 15 days.
People who remember the mussels from 2004 keep asking me how
we can get them back, along with improved water quality. I don’t have an easy answer. Memories of the mussels do give me hope that
improvement is possible. I just wish the
mussels and the good water quality were still here to show my granddaughter,
instead of zeroes on the DO meter.