Anne Arundel CO (MD) Rivers - In Heart Of Crabbing Country - Among State's Dirtiest

[hatrack]

The scenic rivers around Annapolis, where generations of Marylanders have crabbed and fished, are among the most polluted in the state, researchers said yesterday.

The second annual Chesapeake Bay Report Card gave its lowest grades to the collection of rivers that flow through Anne Arundel County - the Severn, the South, the Magothy, the Rhode and the West - as well as to Southern Maryland's Patuxent River. Researchers from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who gather data on the rivers, gave each a D-minus.

Adding to the dismal news yesterday was the annual Health and Restoration Assessment published by the Chesapeake Bay Program, a multistate government agency charged with cleaning up the bay. It found that the water in nearly 88 percent of the bay and its tributaries does not have enough oxygen in summer to sustain marine life.

"There are some positive signs, and much good work that has been done, but what our reports tell us is that the bay is degraded and in a vulnerable state," said Jeffrey Lape, director of the Chesapeake Bay Program. On the Chesapeake Bay Report Card, the bay's overall grade improved slightly, from a D-plus in 2006 to a C-minus for 2007 - improvement attributed largely to weather. Drought last summer reduced pollution from runoff. The only real success stories were north of Baltimore - the Bush, Gunpowder and Middle rivers each received a B, up from D-plus - and the Choptank, which was second-worst on the list in 2006 but was in the middle of the pack for 2007.

EDIT

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.bay04apr04,0,2293732.story

[Raejeanowl]

1. It's Sadly True

I fished and crabbed in a number of these rivers and creeks as a child in the 50s and 60s. Proudly brought my catches home to eat. And I swam in them, as well, including the Bay itself because we had viable community beaches THEN.

But I've heard of so many diseases over the years, seen the marine deaths, and watched our waterways deteriorate. We have a few virtually "dead" creeks. I'm to the point where you couldn't PAY me to eat locally caught seafood or go wading with an open sore, and I'm only slightly less concerned about the northern bay and eastern shore tributaries.

I live within 1000 yards of Severn Run, which is regularly stocked with trout and people are still crazy enough to fish for it, despite the fact that a regularly malfunctioning sewage pumping station sits adjacent. We also own property on the Magothy, which like most of the waterfront of rivers and creeks is now over-developed to the breaking point, and the storm runoff plus the ever-burgeoning boating population keeps it all well churned up into sludge.

The farms and the horse farms have all become-or are in the process of becoming-malls, strip shopping centers, entertainment venues, McMansion developments.

My forebearers were farmers, oystermen, watermen; six generations back that I know. I can't begin to imagine what they'd think of the place now.

[DCKit]

2. "I can't begin to imagine what they'd think of the place now."

Yes you can, but you're too polite to say it. The phrase "You don't shit where you eat" comes to mind.

Those of us with farmers, fishermen, crabbers, oystermen, etc... in our backgrounds know our forebearers weren't well educated, but we know they weren't stupid enough to poison the land and waters that fed them and their families. They'd take torches to the McMansions and dynamite to the commercial buildings, then come back a year later to plant trees, shrubs and grasses a hundred yards on either side of any waterway.