By Karl Blankenship, Chesapeake Bay Journal
The Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort is facing major headwinds that threaten the region’s longstanding goal to implement by 2025 all of the actions needed to restore the Bay’s health.
Draft figures presented to state and federal officials in December show that the combined impact of growth, climate change and the filling of the Conowingo Dam reservoir offset much of the nitrogen reduction efforts undertaken since 2010, when the most recent Bay pollution control plan was put into place.
As a result, officials left the December meeting agreeing that they would write plans to offset the increased nutrient loads, but did not clearly commit to fully implementing those actions, at least for Conowingo and climate change, by the original 2025 cleanup deadline.
“We’re going to continue to talk about that in February,” said Ben Grumbles, secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment. “That is a big number, there is no doubt about that.”
Grumbles, who chaired the meeting of the Bay Program Principals Staff Committee, which includes state agency heads and senior federal officials, said it was important to get agreement among the states on the path forward, but added he was “not supportive of kicking the can down the road.”
The numbers emerged from the state-federal Bay Program’s “midpoint assessment” of cleanup efforts — 2018 is the midway point between 2010, when the latest Bay cleanup goals were set, and the 2025 deadline for implementing plans to reach those goals.
Through the multi-year midpoint assessment process, state and federal officials reviewed new science, adopted new computer models for assessing the movement of nutrients through the watershed and their impact on the Bay, and are revising nutrient reduction goals needed to restore clean water throughout the Chesapeake.
Based on that new information, each state is to update its watershed implementation plan later this year, detailing the actions that will be needed to achieve their share of the cleanup.
Those actions include such things as upgrading wastewater treatment plants, installing new controls to capture stormwater from developed areas or planting streamside forest buffers or cover crops to soak up excess nutrients from farmland.
The region faces a daunting task. Through 2016 — the most recent figures available — the region was less than a third of the way to meeting its 2025 goal for reducing nitrogen.
The vast majority of the shortfall, though, is in Pennsylvania.
While states remain committed to meeting their original 2025 cleanup obligations and to offsetting the impacts of new growth between now and then, they balked at firmly committing to offset the impacts of Conowingo and climate change which, factored together, offset much of the nitrogen reduction efforts taken since 2010.
Conowingo Dam once captured a significant portion of the nutrients that came down the Susquehanna River, the Bay’s largest tributary — and largest source of nutrients. Nutrients, trapped in sediment that accumulated behind the dam, were effectively cut off from their path toward the Bay. Recent studies, though, have shown the reservoir behind the dam is now filled with sediment, and most nutrients simply flow past it.
State officials at the December meeting agreed to develop a plan for additional nutrient reductions to offset the impact of Conowingo, but they did not commit to fully implementing it by 2025.
Climate change increases nutrients in the Bay because more rainfall and greater storm intensity drive a larger amount of nutrients off the land and into streams. The original Bay cleanup goals were based on modeling that assumed steady climate conditions from the early 1990s through 2025.
Instead, average precipitation during that period is expected to increase by slightly more than 3 percent, increasing the expected size of the climate-related nutrient load.
State officials were caught off guard by the magnitude of the climate change numbers, which boosted the estimates of nitrogen reaching the Bay by nearly 4 percent.
In addition, they expressed concern that changing climate patterns, such as increased rainfall, would likely change the effectiveness of some nutrient control practices. Stormwater ponds may not be able to handle more intense storms, for instance, while increased flooding could affect others.
After extensive debate, officials agreed that their watershed implementation plans would generally describe how the states will address nutrient loads from climate change, but delayed quantifying the needed amount of reductions until 2021.
Delaying the inclusion of numeric goals was intended to give scientists more time to refine their estimates and to identify which nutrient control practices are most likely to withstand changing climate conditions.
“We need to get a better understanding of what those practices are and where they need to go,” said Nicki Kasi, who is overseeing development of Pennsylvania’s nutrient reduction strategies for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. “Once we understand where they need to go to be effective, then we can take another look at that. This is all early draft.”
Grumbles said the states are “all agreeing that we do need to factor it in, and we need to have a strong approach to it. But it is going to take some time to get the numbers right.” He pledged to keep the issue “on the front burner.”
Beth McGee, director of science and agricultural programs with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said she was “really disappointed” that the states would not commit to including climate-related nutrient reduction goals in new cleanup plans, even if it meant those nutrient reductions could not be achieved until after 2025.
“You can’t pick and choose what science you like just because climate change turned out to be a bigger number than we anticipated,” she said.
David Flores, climate adoption policy analyst at the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform, said the decision to leave numbers out of the planning process was “outrageous” and that it would reduce the urgency to address the problem. “They are not even advancing a reasonable rationale for why they shouldn’t just acknowledge the numbers,” he said. “No one is arguing there is not some load of pollution that is attributable to climate change.”
On the issue of Conowingo, though, McGee praised the framework being developed to address the impacts from the dam.
Under the emerging plan, all of the states in the watershed will steer a portion of their federal Chesapeake Bay restoration grants to fund implementation of the Conowingo plan, and Maryland will seek contributions from Exelon Corp., the dam’s owner, as part of its relicensing agreement.
It’s unlikely, though, that actions to offset Conowingo’s impact will be fully implemented by the original cleanup deadline.
“I think we are kidding ourselves if we think we are going to do that by 2025,” McGee said. At the same time, she added, “we certainly don’t want to see it kicked too far down the road.”
The joint funding would also help Pennsylvania, the state faced with implementing the majority of the nutrient reduction practices needed to offset increased nutrients from Conowingo.
“The devil is going to be in the details to see how that plays out, but I’ve been optimistic as far as to the direction it is going,” said Kasi of Pennsylvania’s DEP. “It is a realistic way of moving forward together.”
Excess nutrients foul the Bay by spurring algae blooms that cloud the water, blocking sunlight to underwater grasses, which provide shelter and food for fish, shellfish and waterfowl. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom and decompose in a process that draws oxygen from the water, creating oxygen-starved dead zones.
The Bay cleanup plan -- formally known as the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, and often referred as the Bay’s “pollution diet”-- sets nutrient levels intended to clear the Chesapeake’s water and ensure that enough oxygen is available to support everything from bottom-dwelling worms to the striped bass that swim along the surface.
But several places, all of which are in Maryland, would fail to meet clean water goals even when all the nutrient reductions required under the TMDL were achieved, computer models showed. In those places, Maryland and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved temporary variances, which allow the state’s water quality standards to be exceeded.
McGee said she was open to extending the time frame for fully implementing actions to offset Conowingo and climate change impacts beyond 2025 because, if the needed actions seem unachievable, states may instead push to expand variances or make other decisions that would weaken the clean water goals.
“We don’t want to lower the bar,” she said. “We want to keep the bar the same but maybe take a little bit longer to get over it.”
About the Midpoint Assessment and its Update
Current pollution reduction goals were established for the Chesapeake Bay in 2010 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the Bay’s Total Maximum Daily Load, often referred to as a “pollution diet,” which sets nutrient and sediment caps for each state and river. The pollution reduction goals are intended to reduce algal blooms, improve water clarity and enhance oxygen levels to sustain fish, crabs, oysters and other aquatic life.
The TMDL calls for reducing the amount of nitrogen entering the Bay from about 260 million pounds in 2010 to about 192 million pounds in 2025, and reducing the amount of phosphorus from 19.2 million pounds to 14.5 million pounds annually.
Responsibility for the reductions was divided among the states that drain into the Bay — Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York — and the District of Columbia.
Actions to achieve those caps were to be fully implemented by 2025, although it would take several years for those practices to become fully effective. It takes times for trees planted in a streamside buffer to grow, for instance, so the full impact would not be seen in the Chesapeake until later.
This year, the state-federal Bay Program is completing a “midpoint assessment” of the TMDL goals to determine what course corrections, if any, are needed to meet that deadline.
The assessment, which is coming to a close, examined the impact of issues not fully understood when the TMDL was written, including climate change and the filling of the reservoir behind Conowingo Dam.
It also included the development of updated computer models to better understand where nutrients are coming from, their impact on water quality and the effectiveness of various nutrient control practices.
What’s next?
The new computer models were approved for management use. The models produced revised nutrient reduction goals for each state, which were released as drafts and now fall under a four-month review.
Under those revisions, the amount of nutrient reductions needed to reach Bay goals — not accounting for the impact of climate change and Conowingo — remains similar to before.
But the draft numbers show some changes at the state level.
Pennsylvania’s job, for instance, gets slightly easier, while Maryland’s task gets harder. But the impacts of climate change, Conowingo and growth are challenges for everyone, with the greatest increased burden falling on Pennsylvania.
After the numbers are finalized, states are responsible for updating their watershed implementation plans by Feb. 8, 2019, with input from local governments and others, to show how they will achieve those nutrient goals. After public review, the plans should be finalized in June 2019.
Key Issues
-- Conowingo Dam
-- The Problem: The reservoir behind the 94-foot-high dam near the mouth of the Susquehanna River is essentially filled with sediment, and therefore no longer trapping a portion of the sediment, phosphorus and nitrogen flowing downstream.
-- The Impact: About 6 million additional pounds of nitrogen and about 260,000 additional pounds of phosphorus are reaching the Chesapeake in an average year than previously thought.
-- The Policy: Bay states will create a plan to fund and conduct nutrient reduction activities needed to reduce or offset the additional nutrient load from behind the dam.
Because all of the Bay states benefited when the dam was trapping nutrients, they have all agreed to contribute a portion of their federal Bay cleanup funding to help fund pollution control solutions. Contributions will also be sought from Exelon, the dam’s owner.
-- Climate Change
-- The Problem: Climate change has increased precipitation and the intensity of storms in the Chesapeake region. Both are driving more water-fouling nutrients into the Bay. Warming water temperatures can reduce dissolved oxygen for aquatic animals.
-- The Impact: The original computer model used to calculate the 2025 cleanup goals did not anticipate such impacts as a 3 percent increase in precipitation since the early 1990s, or changes in storm intensity. Updated calculations show that, by 2025, an additional 9 million additional pounds of nitrogen and 385,000 pounds of phosphorus will be reaching the Bay each year.
-- The Policy: Bay states will update their watershed implementation plans to broadly describe how they will address the additional nutrient and sediment loads resulting from climate change. But states will not be required to incorporate numeric targets in their plans until after 2021, when the Bay Program will complete additional climate-related estimates and analyses of runoff control practices. States would then use this information to revise their watershed plans with strategies for addressing those specific loads. The draft policy does not specifically require that actions needed to offset additional climate related loads be implemented by 2025.
-- Future Growth
-- The Problem: Increasing amounts of people, farm animals and developed land, along with the loss of nutrient-absorbing forests, will increase the amount of nutrients running off the land and reaching the Bay.
-- The Impact: By 2025, the Bay Program’s computer models estimate that increased growth and related land use changes will result in an additional 4 million pounds of nitrogen and 154,000 pounds of phosphorus entering the Bay.
-- The Policy: Previously, states have tried to offset pollution from growth after-the-fact through a variety of tactics such as sewage treatment updates, tree planting and stormwater management. But tracking among jurisdictions has been uneven and has resulted in some surprises as new data have become available. Instead, forecasts of growth will be incorporated into the nutrient reduction goals given to each state, which will now account for growth upfront when they write new watershed implementation plans.
The forecasts will be revisited every two years, with nutrient reductions goals being adjusted up or down based on the latest information. Some land conservation advocates see this as a positive move because, for the first time, it will allow states to get nutrient reduction credit for protecting environmentally sensitive land such as forests.
If fewer forests are developed than predicted, their nutrient reduction burden would decrease as well.
[Note: The PA Chesapeake Bay Watershed Planning Committee meets Friday and will hear a presentation from EPA on methods for accounting for grown in setting pollution reduction goals. Click Here for more.]
For more information on cleaning up streams and rivers in Pennsylvania to meet Chesapeake Bay obligations, visit DEP’s PA Chesapeake Bay Watershed Planning Steering Committee webpage.
(Photo: Conowingo Dam, just before the PA-Maryland border)
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