Ten years ago, frustrated by the slow pace of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort and facing re-election, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich launched what he touted as a grand experiment in bay restoration.
He promised to concentrate $20 million in water pollution control projects into one small Eastern Shore river, the Corsica. The goal was to find out if Maryland could quickly improve water quality in one troubled waterway within its own boundaries.
“What really appealed to be about this project, and what I loved – maybe as a lawyer – was that we could isolate one river and bring the best practices, and every level of government and nonprofit organizations, to focus on what works and what doesn’t work,” Ehrlich said. “What really appealed to me, most of all, was that could measure it.”
Well, 10 years later, let’s measure the success of the Corsica River project. A review of the data shows that the effort achieved about two thirds of its concrete project goals. But it fell short of its ultimate target of improving water quality in the main section of the Corsica River. The reasons for this murky result provide lessons that can be applied to the larger bay cleanup.
On a sunny morning recently under blue sky with wispy clouds, I headed out onto the Corsica River in a motorboat piloted by Frank DiGialleonardo (his photo is at top). He's the president of the Corsica River Conservancy, which has been monitoring and helping to coordinate the cleanup effort.
The river, although an unhealthy-looking olive brown, is a riot of birdlife, including osprey plunging into the water for fish. Great blue heron stride through the shallows.
The waterway is only six miles long, with only one town (the historic Centreville). The banks are lined with grand homes with wide lawns, bulkheads, and piers, interspersed with stands of oaks and sweet gum trees. Beyond the houses, the land around the river is dominated by farms.
The first important measurement that DiGialleonardo gave me concerned the funding for the project.
“It was a state project that said we are going to spend $20 million over five years and expect to see results. But $20 million did not get spent in that five year period,” he said, as he guided his boat past a pier with a vintage 1920’s era Chesapeake workboat. “ It was closer to $5 million to $6 million that was expended. And clearly it was going to take a lot more than five years to complete the project.”
Despite the reduced funding – which was $10 million over 10 years -- some of the projects were highly effective. The state modernized the local wastewater treatment plant, in Centreville, which had a notorious history of sewage spills. That eliminated high levels of fecal bacteria from human waste in the river, and reduced 50,000 pounds per year of nitrogen pollution.
The state also paid farmers $45 per acre to plant wheat, rye and other crops without fertilizer in the fall and winter. These pollution-absorbing cover-crops were planted on 5,000 acres, which exceeded the goal of 3,000 acres.
Local residents were also enthusiastic about installing 500 rain gardens to catch stormwater runoff from their roofs. That was way more than goal of 200 gardens. And dozens of waterfront property owners started growing oysters in cages next to their piers, and then planting the grown oysters in a sanctuary in the river.
The project set a goal of planting 20 acres of oyster reefs seeded with 100 million baby oysters. In the end, after a decade, about 50 million oysters were planted on 10 acres. Organizers aspired to replant 50 acres of wetlands along the river, and instead restored 80 acres of wetlands.
The result of all these projects was positive. Two of the three streams that feed into the Corsica River experienced declines in nitrogen pollution levels of about 25 percent over the decade, according to monitoring by the Maryland Department of the Environment.
But in the main stem of the river, water quality did not improve over the decade, according to state data. And because the water still remains so murky from algae and sediment, no underwater grasses can grow. The project had a goal of establishing 10 acres of healthy underwater grasses over a decade, but none grew, because the water quality remains so poor.
“With underwater vegetation, our progress has been nil,” DiGialleonardo said, gazing down into the green water. “The problem is that underwater grasses will die without sunlight. We don’t have sufficient sunlight in the water to sustain any underwater vegetation.”
He explains that nitrogen and phosphorus pollution feed the algal blooms, which block the light.
So why didn't the decade-long project make the water clearer?
Part of the problem could simply be a lag time between making improvements in the land, and when the groundwater slowly trickles into the river, sometimes more than a decade later, according to Kevin Smith, Assistant Director of the Chesapeake and Coastal Service at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
But other parts of the program clearly fell short. For example, farmers did not want to plant trees along the streams on their land, even though forested buffers work as natural filters to catch pollution. Why not? Because farmers know they can make more money planting corn on these streamside acres, Smith said. This is a problem especially because a federal law mandates the production of corn-based ethanol, which is driving up the price of corn, which leaks nitrogen fertilizer pollution.
The Corsica River restoration project had a goal of planting 200 acres of forested buffers along streams. But in the end, only 10 acres were planted. Almost all of these trees were planted on government land, not farmland.
“We had a very difficult time with that,” Smith said of convincing farmers to plant trees. “We place a really high value on forested buffers, in part because they provide shade to our waterways, and high water temperatures are hard on aquatic organisms. But farmers prefer grass buffers. Grass is something they can drive their tractors and equipment over.”
Another area of shortfall concerned the management of stormwater in the paved areas of Centreville. The Corsica River project set a goal of installing ditches with pollution-absorbing plants and other systems to treat the water flowing off of 300 acres of parking lots and pavement. But in the end, only about a third of these systems were built, in part because of the cost, which can run $15,000 per acre.
Homeowners also were reluctant to voluntarily install upgrades to their septic systems to reduce the nitrogen pollution leaking into the river. The restoration program had a goal of upgrading the septic systems of 30 homes with advanced nitrogen removal equipment. But at the end of five years, only 16 homeowners had volunteered. By 2014, it was 23.
Why were people so slow to fix their leaky septic systems? Because of the cost and perceived hassle, which included disturbing lawns. Maryland has a program that pays about $13,000 toward the installation of nitrogen removal equipment for septic systems. But the reimbursements sometimes are thousands of dollars shy of the real cost of nitrogen reduction systems, which can hit $20,000 per home.
“People often asked questions along the lines of, ‘If my septic system is working, why do I need to change it?’” said Smith. “What it always comes down to, in most cases, is economics and cost.”
Finally, there is perhaps the most important factor: People. The population of Centreville, at the heart of the Corsica River restoration project, almost doubled, to about 4,000, during the decade when the water pollution control projects were being installed. More people meant more toilets being flushed, more car exhaust, and more blacktop.
So what are the lessons for the Chesapeake Bay restoration to be gleaned from Governor Ehrlich’s small experiment?
One clear lesson is that modernizing sewage plants works, and is a valuable investment of taxpayer money. Paying farmers to reduce their pollution can work, as long as the payments are high enough and the projects can be verified.
But, in general, purely voluntary efforts – like trying to convince farmers to plant trees without adequate compensation, or attempting to get homeowners to upgrade their septic system – often fail. In these cases, government mandates -- or more taxpayer money -- will be required to make real improvements.
Perhaps the most controversial issue is population growth. If the number of people living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed continues to expand at a rapid rate, modest efforts to curb pollution could be overwhelmed by waves of suburban sprawl.
This growth needs to be directed into cities and towns that already have vacant homes and modern sewage treatment plants. That way, the additional environmental footprints will not trample the Chesapeake Bay.
