The Blue Ridge Mountain Communities Area Watershed Plan Citizens Committee along with the Jefferson County Department of Planning & Zoning would like to invite you to attend a series of meetings to gather citizen input related to the Blue Ridge Mountain, the next one will be held on Thursday July 15th at 7:00 p.m. – Blue Ridge Mountain Fire Co.
By Sharon Behn
June 17, 2010
As Congress hears testimony about the handling of the Gulf of Mexico spill, scientists and environmentalists question how prepared the government is to respond if a ship or barge were to leak oil into the Chesapeake Bay.
Experts say a quick-fire response is needed to stop oil from spreading in the shallow bay and reaching the shores.
"There is no functioning [emergency response] system on the Bay in the terms of what we call operational. …," said William C. Boicourt, an expert in physical oceanographic processes at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science at Horn Point. He said the center has been working on an early warning system for wind and oil patterns, but such a system is at least two years away.
"We don't know of any detailed plans and response scenarios that are in place that have been practiced that are ready to go at a moment's notice," William C. Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said. "Clearly the states and the Coast Guard ought to do more planning."
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Michael J. DaPonte said there are area contingency plans — collective efforts by federal, state and local agencies and industry representatives — to respond to water-related disasters on the bay. But primary responsibility for cleaning any oil spill is the party responsible for the spill and the contractors it hires to do that work, DaPonte said.
He added the Coast Guard is not meant to stand by "like the fire department." If there is an oil spill, the Coast Guard "does not jump to the response – it's the responsible party that has to do that."
But given the narrowness of the bay — it is six to 10 miles at some points — and its shallow bottom — 160 feet at the deepest point — an early warning system would be essential to saving fragile marshes and grasses that are vital to the already pollution-impaired waters, Boicourt said.
While there is no oil drilling on the Chesapeake, container ships and cruise ships carrying large fuel loads constantly traverse the bay, along with fuel-oil-carrying barges and tugs. If a ship or a barge were to hit the Bay Bridge and cause a spill — even one smaller than the BP accident in the Gulf — "you could have a devastating effect" on the large but shallow estuary, Baker said.
The Coast Guard is required to hold area-level, full-scale drills where boom actually splashes water every three years, said Lt. Kristen Preble, chief of the contingency preparedness branch within the Contingency Preparedness and Force Readiness Office at Hampton Roads. The contingency plans cover everything from oil spills to terrorist threats, she said.
The last full-scale drill the Coast Guard conducted in the upper Chesapeake's watershed was three years ago, on the Potomac River, said Coast Guard Lt. Bryan A. Naranjo. That drill was on coping with a scenario of a barge spilling its load of fuel oil destined for delivery to Andrews Air Force base, he said.
A full-scale exercise scheduled for August was postponed until next spring because of the number of personnel and equipment being directed to the Gulf oil disaster, Naranjo said.
Shaun Adamec, a spokesman for Gov. Martin O'Malley, said full-scale first-response exercises beyond scenario discussions would be an "unnecessary use of resources," given that there are no major oil tankers or drilling in the bay, and because of the pressures created by the Gulf spill. He added that equipment exists to deal with oil spills.
The governor has directed his cabinet members who focus on bay issues to insure that the necessary equipment is properly maintained, Adamec said.
Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, which Adamec said is charged with maintaining equipment, said it is "prepared and equipped to clean up oil spills."
Apperson said MDE has conducted small water-related spill drills. One drill two years ago on the Susquehanna River and another last month on the Wicomico River were open-water drills.
Another involving the bay itself and another planned for this September off the coast of Delmarva are "table-top" exercises: "Basically people get their plans out and tell each other what they would do in the case of a spill," Apperson said. "It helps make sure the information is up to date."
Fred Millar, an emergency preparedness and homeland security expert, cautioned against the over-reliance on plans that local communities do not understand.
"Plans are plans. If they sit on a shelf and bear no relation to reality and are not communicated to the public, then that means they are useless," said the former member of D.C.'s local emergency planning committee. "One way to make sure that plans are useful is to do drills very frequently, where you run a simulation in a full-scale drill."
But drills cost money, and emergency services across the country are underfunded and under-resourced, he said. For the Coast Guard to hold a full-scale drill on the Chesapeake only every three years, Millar said, reflects how starved it was of resources and personnel.
Boicourt said quick-response teams need to be in place. "My sense is that if things were in place, then it would not necessarily be a disaster. But there are no quickly deployable" teams, he said.
And "when they talk about quickly deployable, that means not to just call up Baltimore, but have things distributed around the Bay and come out, like fire trucks."
MDE's Apperson said the department has trailers with more than 11,000 feet of boom, five spill response vessels and equipment deployed in different places throughout the state. It handles about 400 incidents a year on land and about 30 on water, he said.
The seven-person emergency response team trains regularly, he said. "A few times a year, we train other people," he said. "We are at an advanced level."
In training, a hypothetical spill is designed, wind and tide are considered, and a boom is deployed, he said.
Dr. Beth McGee, a senior water quality scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said the last large-scale oil spill in the bay region involved a pipeline break at Pepco's Chalk Point power plant on the Patuxent River in April 2000 and involved roughly 150,000 gallons.
"For the Patuxent, it was a big spill," said McGee, who at the time was working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a leader in that clean-up effort. A significant amount of marshes and beaches in the Swanson Creek Marsh were oiled in the incident.
Local, state and federal services reacted promptly to the emergency, she said, but Pepco's contractor in the incident failed to boom off a particular creek that had been identified as sensitive because its "boom was dry rotted and wouldn't work," McGee said.
Lawmakers, business leaders and environmental advocates have slammed British Petroleum for its inadequate plans as well as its slow and largely ineffective response to the oil spill in the Gulf. BP's Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire and sank off the coast of Louisiana on April 22, freeing hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Coast Guard has become the lead player in the federal government's response to the Gulf spill, coordinating between BP and state and local officials.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the U.S. government had conducted four major drills over the last eight years to prepare for such a massive oil spill – all of which "foreshadowed the weaknesses in coordination, communication, expertise, and technology that have plagued the federal response" to the BP disaster.
President Obama in March proposed opening up parts of the Virginia coast near the mouth of the bay to oil and gas drilling. Although action on that has been suspended pending an investigation into the Gulf incident, environmentalists and U.S. Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin and Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) remain against any offshore drilling or exploration along the mid-Atlantic coast.
"The real solution is minimizing the amount of oil you handle on the water," Baker said. "Whenever oil is handled on the water, it gets into the water in some quantity. That quantity is determined only by the level of human error and technical failure."
This story was produced by the News21 team at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, in partnership with The Baltimore Sun.
Copyright © 2010, The Baltimore Sun
Photo Credit: USDA/NRCSProposed federal legislation to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay could also help a typical Maryland crop farm earn an additional $10,000 in net profit each year, according to a new analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI).
The analysis, How Baywide Nutrient Trading Could Benefit Maryland Farms, forecasts the potential profits to farmers who participate in an interstate nutrient trading program, which could be created if Congress passes the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2010. Under a nutrient trading program, sources of nutrient pollution, such as wastewater treatment plants, would be able to purchase “credits” from farmers who reduce their own nutrient pollution runoff.
“Excess amounts of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, are the main cause of the Bay’s poor health,” said John Talberth, a senior economist at WRI and lead author of the analysis. “An interstate water quality trading program would make it possible to achieve restoration goals faster, at lower cost, and create additional profits for farms and others.”
Findings show that a farm with 200 acres of cropland located in the Potomac River basin could earn an overall net profit of more than $10,000 annually through the sale of nitrogen credits. The farm must meet baseline pollution-reduction requirements established by the state before participating in the trading program. Once the requirements are met, farms, depending on their location, could invest in additional pollution reductions through practices such as fencing livestock from creeks or planting upland forest buffers. The additional reductions could be sold as credits.
“Though Maryland recently launched its own state-level trading program for farmers, a Baywide program could link Maryland farmers with other existing state programs and expand trading to states without current programs,” said Cy Jones, manager of WRI’s water quality team and a contributing author. “Since most farms meet some of Maryland’s baseline requirements, investment in additional pollution reducing measures would create a win-win for farmers and the Bay.”
The analysis follows two earlier WRI studies. The first, How Nutrient Trading Could Help Restore the Chesapeake Bay, found that a Baywide nutrient trading program could help wastewater and stormwater utilities achieve clean water goals at lower costs throughout the watershed. In addition, farmer revenues from trading could rival existing public farm conservation payments. The second analysis, How Baywide Nutrient Trading Could Benefit Virginia Farms, found that Virginia crop farms could earn additional profits of more than $8,000 annually through a Baywide nutrient trading program.
MARTINSBURG - A draft Tuscarora Creek watershed-based plan unveiled at Thursday night's public meeting detailed the problems faced by the watershed and how regulators hope to address them.
The proposal is a joint project by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Canaan Valley Institute and the Opequon Creek Project Team, said DEP Potomac Basin Coordinator, Alana Hartman who chaired the session.
Hartman, speaking to an audience of 10 individuals, said she hopes the draft plan will be finalized and submitted to her DEP superiors within two weeks, so they can prepare to submit it to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
At that point, it will be considered for future federal funding opportunities under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act.
She said it roughly is based on a similar watershed plan that was developed for Mill Creek in southern Berkeley County and has since received more than $400,000 in funding.
The Opequon Creek Project Team, as well as local citizen response, has been important since this project first got under way last July, when two public meetings were held and the discussion began about the watershed's non-point pollution sources, Hartman said.
"We couldn't write this type of plan without local knowledge and input," she said.
Tuscarora Creek is approximately 11.7 miles long, while its major tributary, Dry Run, is five miles long, according to the DEP plan. It flows into the Opequon Creek, which is part of the Potomac River watershed.
"The Opequon Creek watershed is a priority area for West Virginia's efforts to reduce nutrients and sediment delivered to the Chesapeake Bay," the draft plan reads.
Both Tuscarora Creek and Dry Run have been listed as impaired for biological criteria and fecal coliform bacteria, Hartman said.
Additional information on the draft plan is available by contacting Hartman at alana.c.hartman@wv.gov or 304-822-7266.
Journal photo by Jenni Vincent
Alana Hartman, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Potomac Basin coordinator, discusses the draft Tuscarora Creek watershed-based plan at Thursday night’s public meeting at the Berkeley County Public Service Sewer District office.
CHARLES TOWN - A massive infrastructure project on Jefferson County's Blue Ridge Mountain is being put on hold as officials await information from an upcoming study.
"We are going to wait for the county to do the well testing as they plan to do on the mountain," said Peter Appignani, Jefferson County Public Service District board member.
The wells are being drilled to help determine whether a mountain water source might exist to service three communities that are reportedly in need of improved water quality and quantity.
Nearly a year ago, members of the Public Service District partnered with private utility company Jefferson Utilities Inc., in an attempt to undertake a project aimed at making the necessary improvements.
The project is expected to cost nearly $18 million in its most recent form, and is slated to include a new water source for residents in Keyes Ferry Acres, Harpers Ferry Campsites and Westridge Hills. Just where that water source will come from remains a controversial issue.
Officials earlier discussed the possibility of linking the mountain water systems with a valley water source. More recently, discussions turned to the possibility of a new water treatment plant that would service water taken from the Shenandoah River.
That approach, however, reportedly would have increased the project's price tag dramatically, a point that raised questions for state agencies that were being asked to help provide funding for the effort.
In a recent letter from the West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council, the agency expressed reservations about plans by JUI and the county's Public Service District to use a Shenandoah River water source. The agency encouraged less costly alternatives, including the possibility of drilling a well on the Blue Ridge itself.
Appignani said members of the Public Service District are interested in seeing the results of a series of test wells that the Jefferson County Commission plans to drill on the mountain before they proceed. This could provide additional information to use as they chose a water source for the project.
"It's kind of hard to make a decision without the information in front of you," he said.
County employees are in negotiations with two companies that could be hired to undertake the test wells. County Engineer Roger Goodwin said he plans to come before the Jefferson County Commission in the next two to three weeks to have commissioners choose which company to use. Once that happens and the work gets under way, he said it likely will take several months to complete preliminary work and research, drill the wells and then draft a final report.
"You're looking at about five months," he said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Lee Snyder, owner and operator of JUI, said he was not pleased with the prospect of putting the project on hold while the wells are drilled.
"I'm not acting to put anything on hold," he said. "I think any action to delay is simply a failure of county government to act in the best interest of the customers on the mountain. I'm concerned that the focus of things is on delaying them instead of fixing them."
Snyder noted that water source studies already were conducted to evaluate the valley water source, and wells already exist on the Blue Ridge. Those wells, he said, do not indicate a sufficient water source to supply the three communities.
The county has budgeted $30,000 for its test well project.
Snyder said close to $200,000 already has been spent on the mountain water project itself. That money, which came from a grant, has been used to design the project.
"That seems to be forever the outcome of these things. We spend a lot of money and accomplish nothing," Snyder sa
