Potomac River report cites farms and forests

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 11, 2010

Here's what the troubled Potomac River needs to get healthy, according to a report released Thursday by a group devoted to protecting it: more forests and farmland to filter toxic rainwater.

But the forests started being stripped long ago, in part to make way for farms. And now farms are being paved over by urban sprawl and asphalt, allowing rain to flow more rapidly to the river, according to the Potomac Conservancy's fourth annual report on the Potomac region.

Even existing farms contribute to the problem, the report said. They're studded with pesticides, nutrients, other chemicals and manure that wash into the river, which is the source of the region's drinking water.

The report called on Potomac region governments, including the District, Virginia and Maryland, and the Environmental Protection Agency, to protect the river from sprawl by preserving more forest and purchasing farmland to slow sprawl.

The report, the "State of the Nation's River 2010," further called on governments to strengthen inspections of farms where livestock produce tons of manure. The waste contains hormones that contaminate fish and nutrients that cause vegetation to grow abnormally.

"Simply put, when it comes to protecting water quality and providing drinking water, farms and forests matter," said Hedrick Belin, president of the Conservancy.

The Conservancy's report comes two weeks before Chesapeake Bay states are expected to submit plans to reduce the bay's diet of pollution, as required by the EPA.

Two of the states, Virginia and Pennsylvania, support a clean river but disagree with the EPA's approach. From the EPA's perspective, the District and Maryland worked harder to meet its requirements.

An organization that represents farmers opposes the Conservancy's report. "We don't agree with groups that propose higher regulations on farms," said Valerie Connelly, a spokeswoman for theMaryland Farm Bureau. "Here in Maryland, we think we're doing a good job."

Connelly said the state has had a plan to limit nutrients that flow into the river system from farms for decades. She said environmental groups too often promote solutions one year, only to say they don't work the next.

"We need to figure out what actually gets the job done" when it comes to cleaning the Potomac, Connelly said. "If it costs 10 times as much for our farmers to operate farms as other states, our farmers can't compete."

The report blamed sprawl for erasing more than three-quarters of a million acres of forests in 30 years.

More than half of the land in the Potomac River basin is forested. But for excellent health, the river basin's tree cover should be about 65 percent, the report said.

"The bay has not improved in the last 26 years," said Ed Merrifield, president of Potomac Riverkeeper. "The water we drink comes from all those areas upstream that produce all that pollution, and that includes agriculture."

Pollution control requirements draw criticism

November 4, 2010 - By John McVey, Journal staff writer

MARTINSBURG - Jefferson County farmer Cam Tabb disagrees with the way the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has arrived at how much pollution is generated in the Eastern Panhandle by agriculture operations.

"I have a problem with computer-generated models based on estimates," he told representatives of the EPA Wednesday evening during a public meeting about the Chesapeake Bay Restoration program. "I don't have a problem with actual tests, but I have a problem with models."

About 60 farmers, environmental advocacy group members, water and sewer professionals, local government officials and a few members of the general public listened Wednesday evening at the Comfort Inn on Edwin Miller Boulevard in Martinsburg to presentations by EPA and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection representatives about the Chesapeake Bay Restoration program's impact on the Eastern Panhandle.

The program would place limits on the amount of nutrients, that is nitrogen and phosphorus, and sediments that can get into the Chesapeake Bay through its tributaries, like the Potomac River.

One of the targets of those limits is agriculture operations, which produce nutrient runoff that is transported via rivers, streams and creeks up stream from the bay.

Limits on the amount of pollution getting into the bay from storm water runoff and waste water treatment plants are the other two main targets of the program.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed includes the eight-county Eastern Panhandle and all or part of Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. A very small part of Monroe County in southern West Virginia also is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed area.

The Chesapeake Bay restoration program was initiated through an executive order by President Barack Obama in May 2009 that in effect forced the EPA to develop an enhanced strategy to reduce pollution in the bay by setting very strict limits, or total maximum daily loads, on nutrient and sediment pollution.

Those TMDLs, referred to as a pollution diet, were released in early July and placed limits on nutrient and sediment loads that can be allowed by each state.

According to information provided by the EPA, West Virginia's new limit on nitrogen pollution under the Chesapeake Bay Restoration program is about 4.7 million pounds per year. In 2009, according to EPA information, West Virginia's nitrogen load was 5.75 million pounds per year.

For phosphorus, West Virginia's new TMDL has been set at 740,000 pounds per year. The 2009 level was 830,000 pounds per year.

West Virginia's limit for sediment under the new TMDL is 264.8 million pounds per year. The 2009 level was 375.1 million pounds for year.

Agriculture operations are called non-point discharge sources, meaning pollution from most farms comes through runoff of fertilizers, manure or other byproducts of farming into waterways, making the amount of nutrient pollution more difficult to measure.

"I have yet to see a pipe run from a farm into a creek," said Tabb, whose family has been farming in Jefferson County for several generations. "These benchmarks are unreasonably high. How are we going to meet these unreasonable increases? We're already doing a good job."

On the other hand, wastewater treatment plant discharges are easy to measure because sewer treatment facilities, in effect, do have a pipe and therefore are easier to put pressure on to comply with the new, more stringent requirements to lower nutrients getting into the bay's tributaries.

"We can't meet those requirements," Jane Arnett, Charles Town's utilities manager, explained after the meeting, adding that the city's treatment plant would have to be upgraded to achieve the strict levels placed on it by the EPA.

"We have a proposal for a 20-year upgrade that would be a $20 million to $30 million project," she said. "(The EPA requirements) would significantly increase the costs."

Officials with Martinsburg have said it could cost that city as much as $45 million to upgrade its sewer treatment plant to meet the new nutrient control requirements, and officials with the Berkeley County Public Service Sewer District have said it would cost that PSD as much as $40 million to meet the new requirements.

It would cost an estimated $180 million to $240 million to bring all the wastewater treatment plants in the greater, eight-county Panhandle into compliance with the new TMDLs, officials said.

However, Arnett said discussions between all the vested parties are moving in a positive direction.

"We're optimistic things can be worked out," she said.

- Staff writer John McVey can be reached at 304-263-3381, ext. 128, or jmcvey@journal-news.net