Alarming ‘dead zone’ grows in Chesapeake Bay, on track to be largest ever
By Darryl Fears
24 July 2011 A giant underwater “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is growing at an alarming rate because of unusually high nutrient pollution levels this year, according to Virginia and Maryland officials. They said the expanding area of oxygen-starved water is on track to become the bay’s largest ever. This year’s Chesapeake Bay dead zone covers a third of the bay, stretching from the Baltimore Harbor to the bay’s mid-channel region in the Potomac River, about 83 miles, when it was last measured in late June. It has since expanded beyond the Potomac into Virginia, officials said. Especially heavy flows of tainted water from the Susquehanna River brought as much nutrient pollution into the bay by May as normally comes in an entire average year, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources researcher said. As a result, “in Maryland we saw the worst June” ever for nutrient pollution, said Bruce Michael, director of the DNR’s resource assessment service. That’s bad news for biologists who monitor the bay and horrible news for oysters and fish. Dead zones suck out oxygen from deep waters and kill any marine life that can’t get out of the way. […] “We know it’s not good habitat for fish,” he said. Chesapeake Bay shad, rockfish, oysters and crabs are already threatened species. “If there’s not good habitat, they’re stressed and they won’t reproduce,’’ Michael said. “They’re more susceptible to disease and won’t eat. We want them to eat a lot of food and reproduce and grow.” Donald Boesch, president of the Center for Environmental Science at the University of Maryland and an expert on dead zones, said this year’s water flow will rank at least among the five largest, a result of heavier-than-normal rains and snow melt mixed with high amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. […] “If we had met our nutrient [pollution] reduction goals in the past, we would have a much smaller dead zone,” said Boesch. “Because the pollution is so high, every year is a bad year. You really have to get the bay in better health so it can clean itself.” The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, part of a coalition that sued the EPA in 2009 after decades of weaker anti-pollution measures failed to clean the bay, lambasted the farm bureau’s suit to stop the EPA’s plan. “Farmers, the chicken council, fertilizer institute, hog people, turkey people … these are big Washington lobbying associations,” said Will Baker, the foundation’s president. “They’re not mom-and-pop farmers. If you look at the amount of money they’ve given to candidates and lobbying, it’s in the hundreds of millions.” Baker said the size of this summer’s dead zone “is clear evidence that the bay is still in trouble” and that the EPA’s get-tougher approach to lowering pollution is the best way forward. […]
