A plastic 55-gallon barrell is seen amongst piles of driftwood and mud along the Potomac River in Cropley, MD. The main culprits for the river’s deteriorating health are agricultural runoff and suburban sprawl due to a booming local population. This CAP post looks at some useful responses.
Global warming is on the national and global agenda, but we could very well be on the brink of a global water crisis. Water scarcity has received some attention from the media, but water pollution problems remain. And not just in China: Washingtonians are currently banned from swimming in the Potomac, the river that cradles the nation’s capital and feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.
The main culprit for the river’s deteriorating health is suburban sprawl due to a booming local population. More sprawl means less forest and more concrete, asphalt, and turf grass. These “impervious” surfaces, which today cover 25 percent of the Potomac watershed, disrupt the water cycle: rather than being filtered by soil and plant roots, rainwater rushes into storm drains. The runoff, loaded with road grease, trash, and silt, empties out into the Potomac and its tributaries. On the way there, it warms, accelerates, and often mingles with raw sewage spilling over from the area’s combined rainwater sewer systems.
What does this hot, fast, dirty runoff do to the river? Impacts range from unsafe quantities of toxins and increased bacterial concentrations to eroded streams, deteriorating ecosystems, and fish kills from dark, oxygen-starved water.
But it’s not just the suburbs that are to blame. Agricultural byproducts such as fertilizer and chicken manure are also finding their way into the Potomac. The resulting cocktail of nutrients, hormones, and fecal bacteria feeds algae blooms and dead zones downstream in the Chesapeake Bay. And although nutrient levels have been declining for the past three decades, they remain far above their mandated caps.
If the pollution wasn’t bad enough, Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times recently profiled the “intersex” fish that now grace the Potomac. According to a recent survey over 80 percent of male smallmouth bass in the river now have eggs growing in their testes. The precise cause of this deformity remains unknown, but scientists suspect endocrine disruptors from chicken (remember that manure) or human hormones (which result from birth-control pills and flow right through waste treatment plants). In humans, endocrine disruptors have been linked to early puberty, obesity, diabetes, and both breast and prostate cancer. Keep in mind that these hermaphrodite fish are swimming around in D.C.’s tap water.
What is to be done? As with many environmental problems the solution is smart policy. Local governments should protect existing forests and replant strategic areas along the watershed. They should also mandate the use of low-impact development practices. LID seeks to minimize the suburb’s footprint on rivers by preserving a site’s natural offset-absorbing features””such as existing vegetation and drainage courses””and treating the remaining stormwater onsite using green roofs, porous pavements, and highway medians full of water-absorbing plants.
To incentivize this shift, the EPA should update the federal Clear Water Act by including stormwater permits with numeric limits, which are lacking in the current ineffective regulations that govern new development. These new rules will in turn require local governments to build the capacity necessary to review community stormwater plans and enforce runoff limits.
Research on the intersex fish and on endocrine disruptors is ongoing. The EPA is currently moving to test the compounds. It should accelerate this testing and regulate if necessary.
Remember: Rivers throughout the country are being polluted by agriculture and suburbanization. But change rarely happens without individuals pressuring the political process. Improving our nation’s health and environment is not a spectator sport, so call on your representatives to act on this issue and inquire about greening your roof.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
We’ve come a long way from the 70′s when rivers were so polluted they would catch fire and burn for days.
Ok, not that far really, we still have a very long way to go. The Potomac and the Susquehanna are major contributors to the huge mess that is the Chesapeake bay.
Rivers’ Song
As I thought about our choices
I heard the River’s many voices.
“I am the River Life’s Water,
mother, father son and daughter.
I flow between the works of man
and clean myself as best I can.
Wherever Earth’s great cultures rose
you’ll find a river also flows.
All that has made you runs in me,
I washed life’s salts down to the sea.
It is in my estuary,
Life’s most fertile sanctuary,
where my fresh waters mix with salt,
That I feel man’s worst assault.
The bounty of this place could feed
uncounted species what they need.
I am the River
Water of Life
I am your lover, husband, and wife.
If your young race is to survive-
We Rivers must be kept alive.
we Rivers must be kept alive.”
Ted Getzel
1980
A good book about our water troubles is “Keepers of the Spring” by Fred Pearce. There have been a few good Docs done lately on it too, one all about the Chesapeake Bay. The dead zones are growing at an alarming rate. The fish they call the “Stripper” has became infected with a large bacteria from being forced up into warmer waters in summer because of dead zones with no o2 in the cooler deeper waters. Clean water will be a very big problem as temps go up and streams and rivers heat up.
Ted that is beautiful!
Yesterday I read a local blog on this topic:
http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/chesapeake-bay-speake-of-the-devil/
And, irony of ironies, today the NYT publishes a feel-good story about cruising around the Bay eating crabs without any mention of the environmentally beleaguered ecosystem.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/travel/12crab.html?8dpc
Which reminds me of a story they ran last fall that infuriated me, recommending that readers drive their cars all over Vermont to enjoy the fall foliage of the trees that are being murdered by the fumes people spew.
The NYT is nothing but propaganda for the plutocracy.
Thank you Climate Progress for being sane.
A useful study by Jacob and Lopez is scheduled to be published this summer, titled “Is Denser Greener? An evaluation of higher density development as an urban stormwater-quality best management practice.”
Link:
http://www.urban-nature.org/publications/documents/DenserisGreener_JAWRA_v3.pdf
The study concludes:
“Because well designed, higher density is emerging as a key parameter in defining walkable, more livable cities (Farr, 2008), it would seem that building a denser city is not only not contrary to improving runoff water quality from urban areas, it may be the single most important practice any city can undertake to improve the surrounding environment.”
Note that Manhattan-style towers are not required to reap the stormwater benefits of denser development. Jacob and Lopez find that a townhouse neighborhood like Capitol Hill can reduce runoff volume and pollutant loading per dwelling by 70%-80% compared to medium-low density suburbs. Compact neighborhoods, designed with LID and planned in combination with natural lands preservation, is the best way to improve water quality.
Unfortunately, the great majority of stormwater policies at the national, state and local level are biased against higher urban densities. The problem is that everything is measured and administered site by site. Going by that narrow approach, suburban sprawl wins. It’s pretty easy to install swales and buffers on a 1-acre suburban lot. It’s much harder and more expensive to get the same performance by installing cisterns and storage tanks on in-town lots.
The better policy would be to take the larger view of what is best for the watershed, write stormwater policy that supports denser development, and also develop public-private partnerships so that existing urban areas can be retrofitted with shared stormwater solutions. A good place to begin learning about this topic is the EPA book, “Using Smart Growth Techniques as Stormwater Best Management Practices.”
Link:
http://www.epa.gov/dced/pdf/sg_stormwater_BMP.pdf
Good to see you draw attention to this Joe. I myself had a column out in my University newspaper about how politicians in MD are talking out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to the Chesapeake.
http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/chesapeake-bay-speake-of-the-devil/