Annapolis Capital Punishment

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Chesapeake Bay Program was born and CP was there. I was in my early 20’s, and excited about what might come forth. I met Louis Goldstein, former Maryland comptroller and iconic political figure and I sat with the dean of Chesapeake journalists, Tom Horton, as we watched then Governor Harry Hughes next to my childhood hero-Jacques Cousteau on a big-screen tv. We were at James Mason University in Fairfax but reporters were not invited into the main banquet. Jacques Cousteau was right upstairs but he and Governor Hughes had their backs turned, seemingly ignoring each other. Cousteau gave a speech, which if I recall correctly, was mainly about how important our Bay is and how important it was to restore the Bay, what it would show and mean symbolically and in a very real sense for other efforts to protect marine life.

The article I wrote for the small newspaper appeared as a cover story, with a biq question-mark superimposed over a map of the Bay with the question, “Will This Conference Save the Bay?” Here it is 2008 and I am a bit wiser and I guess we’ve found-at least according to many experts, critics and news accounts and the answer is simply “No.”

This does not mean the massive, multi-governmental Chesapeake Bay Program is a total waste. The knowledge, the monitoring data, the modeling, the cooperative efforts, sharing of information, and the long, slow effort to enlighten the public has had some payoffs. Of course more and more people clearing more and more land, and putting in more and more inputs is just the American way, and we’ve gotten richer, fatter and more wasteful the past 25 years, so how could we blame this on anyone but ourselves? How could some $25 million dollar program stop this? However, any progress we have made—or will make, will be because of “thou-shalts” and “thou-shalt nots” rather than “let’s all agree on voluntary actions.”

Certainly an account of what we’ve done right and wrong and what we are to do next would take volumes, but I believe that it comes down to too many people in a very big watershed all sending things flowing into a fairly small volume of water and nobody wishes to make the drastic changes needed to reverse the foul tide. Our system does not seem to figure this out, but it is geared to make grand pronouncements, create huge programs and otherwise make it seem like we are making progress.

When I served as the assistant to the director of the Chesapeake Bay Program, I occasionally made heretical suggestions that maybe we should close up shop and simply apply all the money we spent every year to buying up land for conservation throughout the watershed. That did not win me any friends in the Bay Program Office. They had their jobs to protect. I though it was the Bay I had to protect. Silly me.

I think we’ve proven the limitations of this huge program which I once proudly supported and served. Not so much anymore. I like to say the strength of the Bay Program is that it is a multi-governmental partnership based on a consensual agreement with targeted goals based on science. In the next breath, I always say the downfall of the Bay Program is that it is a multi-governmental partnership based on a consensual agreement with targeted goals based on science.

I truly thought we would have by now achieved what most everyone thought was the most achievable goal, that of upgrading all of the water treatment plans to state of the art performance to vastly reduce phosphorus and nitrogen enrichment. It has never been met although it is easy to do compared to controlling farm runoff or mobile sources of nitrogen compounds, i.e. cars. Had there not been a Bay Program, I feel certain that the Bay would be much worse off, unless of course we had conserved all that precious land instead…of course it is vastly more complex that that.

Learn more at chesapeakebayprogram .