Chesapeake Bay

Pollution from rainwater flushing over streets, parking lots, and suburban lawns is growing in the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland lawmakers last year required the state's largest municipalities to create stormwater pollution control fees. But some local officials are rebelling. (Photo from Chesapeake Bay Program.)

Smallmouth bass are one of the most popular freshwater sport fish, worth about $150 million a year to Maryland's economy alone in sales of everything from boats to fishing rods. But die-offs and disease have hit smallmouth in five Chesapeake Bay tributaries in recent years. Scientists theorize that a "perfect storm" of pollutants, parasites, and rising temperatures may be to blame. Photo of bass with skin discoloration from Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

The number of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay declined by over 60 percent in the past year.  But the number of fertile females is up. Why the changes--and what does cannibalism have to do with it? We ask Maryland's Department of Natural Resources.

April 24, 2013

A bill that passed the General Assembly earlier this month would give farmers a 10-year exemption from any new state and local pollution laws. . . if they've put sufficient mechanisms in place to reduce runoff. Bay Journal reporter Rona Kobell will tell us what needs to happen for the law to be effective.

John Hodgman will be in southern Maryland Saturday for the annual Mark Twain Lecture Series on American Humor and Culture at St. Mary's College. We'll talk to Hodgman, and to Ben Click, the St. Mary's English professor and Twain-o-phile who started the series.

April 17, 2013

March 25, 2013

Happy Maryland Day! Three-hundred and seventy-nine years ago, the first European settlers landed on Maryland soil at St. Clement’s Island in what is now St. Mary’s County.

Should Maryland taxpayers foot the legal bills for a Perdue farmer who was sued for polluting the Chesapeake Bay? Apparently so. At the behest of the O’Malley administration, the House of Delegates approved up to $300,000 for an Eastern Shore farm that raised cornish hens for poultry giant Perdue. The Hudson family won a lawsuit brought by the New York Waterkeeper Alliance, litigated by the environmental law clinic at the University of Maryland and criticized by Gov. O’Malley.

Climate change and rising sea levels have combined with naturally subsiding land around the Chesapeake Bay to wash away dozens of islands. But Tangier Island Mayor James "Ooker" Eskridge, a waterman, describes how his historic community is fighting to slow erosion with a new jetty to protect the harbor and an experimental system of buoys to reduce the impact of waves.