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The Environment in Focus is a weekly perspective on the issues and people changing Maryland's natural world. There's a story behind every bend of the Chesapeake Bay's 11,684 miles of shoreline, in every abandoned coal mine in the Appalachian Mountains, in every exotic beetle menacing our forests and in every loophole snuck into pollution control laws in Annapolis. Tom Pelton gives you a tour of this landscape every Wednesday morning at 9:35 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. He describes the people behind the news and discusses the broader government policies and trends shaping our ecology -- our land, our air and our Bay.
Tom Pelton is senior writer for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. From 1997 until 2008, he was a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, where he won national awards for his environmental reporting. He's hosted "The Environment in Focus" since 2007.
The Environment in Focus is sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, which conserves the lands and waters on which all life depends. In Maryland, our work spans from the Chesapeake Bay to our western forests, protecting clean water and air, preserving recreational opportunities and saving our natural legacy for future generations.
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Offshore wind farm. iStockphoto.
The Maryland General Assembly is debating whether or not to require power companies to help pay for the construction of a billion-dollar-plus offshore wind farm east of Ocean City. The economic viability of offshore wind, however, is threatened by the scheduled expiration of federal tax credits for wind power and cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing in the region's Marcellus shale rock formation.
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Dennis Whigham, senior botanist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, is trying to bring back species of orchids that are threatened and nearly extinct.
Orchids are sometimes called "the smartest plants in the world" because of their ingenious ability to trick insects and people into helping with their pollination and transport. But many of the 25,000 known species of orchids are threatened or endangered, and Dennis Whigham and colleagues at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center are investigating why--and trying to bring them back.
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Tundra swans lift off a frozen field on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
The epic journey of tundra swans from Canada and the northern U.S. states to Maryland and Virginia is one of the most beautiful things you can see and hear in the Chesapeake region's winters. But the arctic angels are visiting less and less often, because water pollution and disease are destroying their food supply of underwater grasses and shellfish.
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Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is building "green" alleys, parking lots and basketball courts with holes in them to absorb stormwater runoff pollution.
Cities and towns across the Chesapeake Bay region are struggling with how to reduce stormwater runoff pollution and meet new federal pollution limits. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is proposing an interesting idea: to rebuild itself into a "big green sponge" to absorb rainwater. Questions remain, however, about whether building water-permeable parking lots, alleys, and parks will solve the city's chronic sewage overflow problems.
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An air pollution control device called a scrubber rises at the Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant south of Baltimore, with plant chemical technician Melissa Sampson at left.
Before an air pollution control law passed the Maryland General Assembly in 2006, critics claimed that compelling coal-fired power plants to install billion-dollar filter systems called scrubbers would force plants to close down, causing blackouts and layoffs. But none of the dire predictions came true--and the Brandon Shores power plant south of Baltimore actually increased its workforce to run its new scrubbers, providing evidence that environmental regulations are not "job killers."
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Photo of common loon from iStockphoto
The Chesapeake Bay is an important stopover for many species of migratory birds, including common loons, which visit every fall as they fly south toward warmer regions for the winter. But the number of loons counted on the Choptank River and other Bay tributaries appears to be falling, perhaps because a primary food for the birds -- small, oily fish called menhaden -- are being overfished by industrial fleets out of Virginia.
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American eel. Photo credit: NOAA.
The American eel, or Anguilla rostrada, is one of the strangest and most contrarian fishes in the world, with a migration pattern opposite that of most species. But its populations are declining, in part because of overfishing for seafood markets in Europe and Asia, and because a growing number of their streams are blocked by dams and development.
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Dairy farmer Ron Holter works a milking machine in Frederick County, Maryland.
More than half of Maryland's dairy farms have gone out of business over the last decade because of intense competition from mega dairies in the West and Midwest. But instead of getting bigger to survive, Ron Holter and other cutting-edge dairymen are earning more money by going back in time -- by grazing their cows instead of confining them in large buildings, which helps the environment and public health.
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George Kelly.
Maryland and surrounding states plan to use pollution credit trading as a central part of their strategy to meet new EPA pollution limits for the Chesapeake Bay. George Kelly, founder of Environmental Banc & Exchange, believes that a market-based approach will reduce fertilizer runoff pollution on farms, although others are skeptical.
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EPA Bay Czar Jeff Corbin points to runoff pollution caused by rain storm.
Near-record rainfall from Tropical Storm Lee flushed so much mud, trash, and contaminants into the Chesapeake Bay that NASA satellite photos showed a huge brown stain nearly the length of Maryland. EPA Bay Czar Jeff Corbin says the runoff pollution was a vivid illustration of the need for the improved stormwater control systems that will be required by EPA's new Bay pollution "diet"--if these limits survive court challenges and political attacks from industry groups.
 Contact Tom Pelton at pelton.tom@gmail.com |
