Another Mixed Year for the Bay’s Health, Says CBF Report

Positive shad and habitat trends offset by declines in crabs and water quality
Despite positive trends in habitat restoration and improvements in shad populations, the Chesapeake Bay’s overall health did not improve in the past year, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 2000 State of the Bay Report. Problems with blue crabs, water clarity, and pollution offset advances and left the Bay’s score at a 28 out of 100, the same as in 1999.

According to the report, Chesapeake 2000, the new Bay management agreement signed in June 2000, has put in place the basic mechanism to save the Bay, including a tenfold increase in the Bay’s oyster population and a pledge to preserve millions of acres while reducing by 30 percent the rate of loss of forest and farmland to sprawl.

“Dramatic improvement will result if the political will to implement the new Chesapeake Bay agreement is exercised over the next decade,” said CBF President William C. Baker. “All of us who love the Bay must demand nothing less.”

“Habitat restoration and improved fisheries management can take us only so far,” he added. “Our Achilles heel remains a lack of a comprehensive strategy to reduce pollution from all sources. If we want to save the bay we must get serious about water quality.”

Using their scoring system, CBF’s scientists foresee an increase to a health rating of 40 percent by 2010 if the new Bay agreement is fully implemented. With stronger efforts to reduce pollution, protect and restore wetlands, and stop the loss of resource lands to sprawl, the score could be as high as 50 at the end of the decade, CBF said.

The State of the Bay Report, which CBF issued for the first time in 1998, is a comprehensive measure of the Bay’s health. For the report, CBF analyzed 13 factors: oysters, shad, underwater grasses, wetlands, forested buffers, toxics, water clarity, dissolved oxygen, crabs, striped bass (rockfish), resource lands, phosphorus, and nitrogen. CBF scientists compiled and examined the best available historical and up-to-date information on each factor and sought direction and advice from other scientists who study the Bay. Then CBF assigned an index number to each indicator. For example, the index value of 12 given to underwater grasses indicates that this key resource today covers only 12 percent of its historical acreage in the Bay and tributaries.

Taken together, the measure of these indicators offers an immediate description of Bay health. The unspoiled Bay, described by Captain John Smith’s exploration narratives from the 1600s and confirmed in part by modern science, serves as CBF’s benchmark. That original Bay, with its clear water, abundant fish and oysters, and lush growths of submerged vegetation, rates a 100 on CBF’s scale. The average index value of the 13 indicators evaluated by CBF for today’s Bay is 28.

“Today’s Bay is in somewhat better shape than the Bay of 15 years ago,” said Baker. “But continued water quality problems, as evidenced in the nutrient runoff and algae blooms during the rainy summer of 2000, and the over-stressed crab fishery demonstrate the complexity of Bay restoration.”

The score for crabs dropped two points this year, to a score of 46, continuing a downward trend. CBF scientists attributed the decline to intense fishing pressure and far too little underwater grass, vital habitat during critical stages of the crab’s life cycle.

“The Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee has made progress in its efforts to develop a comprehensive plan to manage crabs more effectively and we expect that progress to continue,” said Dr. Michael Hirshfield, CBF’s vice president for resource protection. “But no mater how well we manage the fishery, we will never have a truly healthy blue crab population until we have healthy underwater grasses. And we will never get grasses back until we get serious about reducing polluting nutrients.”

Hirshfield noted that CBF’s scores for water clarity, nitrogen, and phosphorus—important measures of water quality--also dropped this year.

“Last year, our ratings for these indicators improved slightly because the drought reduced runoff and stream flows,” said Hirshfield. “But as normal rainfall returned this year, large quantities of nutrients were washed into the Bay, washing sediments and algae-producing nutrients into the Bay system. We need a Bay that isn’t dependent on a drought to control runoff: we need a Bay that has clear water even when it rains.”

To reach that goal will require both a reduction in pollution from nitrogen, phosphorus and toxic chemicals and a strengthening of the Bay’s natural filtering system—its forests, fields, wetlands, oysters and grasses.

“In the face of population growth and its ugly stepchild sprawl this will not be easy,” Baker said. They will continue to threaten our quality of life and the Bay unless we put in place well known smart growth strategies. And the clock is ticking.”

“We’ll never see a Bay that is as pristine as that which John Smith saw,” he added. “But we believe that if citizens of the watershed demand the Bay’s restoration and pitch-in and if the Bay Program commits to reaching these ambitious goals we can take the Bay’s health to at least a score of 40 percent by the year 2010, and we would hope, with added effort, to reach a score of 50 percent. We must remember how rich our Bay once was, and not settle for a small fraction of what we know it can be. And we must remember that the clock is ticking.”

The 2000 State of the Bay report also listed several ways in which citizen’s can play a role in improving the Bay’s health. Foremost among them was a request for the region’s citizens to set a goal to drive at least ten percent less this year.

“Vehicles account for a third of the airborne nitrogen pollution that eventually ends up choking life in our waterways,” said Hirshfield. “If people can car pool, take public transit, ride their bikes, or walk more places, they can reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.”

Posted: 9-20-2000