A letter to the editor at PennLive, Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay seems to be a losing cause
My sewer bill, every three months, has an additional added charge that is supposed to go toward cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, according to a recent TV report, the city of Baltimore is dumping raw sewage into the Bay. Now I read in the local newspaper that the city of Harrisburg is doing the same thing and has been for a long time.
Ah, yes, the infamous "flush tax," for which virtually every house in Maryland is charged $5 a month (or $15 a quarter) to help build the infrastructure to help fix the Bay's nutrient problem. Most of it, indeed, goes to upgrading the sewage systems for the major urban areas, but some does go to rural houses in the form of support for denitrifying "mound" septic systems for critical areas.
There apparently is no penalty for doing this even though there are considerable environmental consequences such as drugs, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc. that kill fish make people sick and make the water unsafe to swim and fish. Now I see there is no easy fix to the problem.
Do you imagine the people of Baltimore (who control the state's politics) would long support a system that penalized them in anything more than a nominal way?
I initially was not happy about this $27 assessment to help clean up the Bay but resigned myself to believe it would help. Now it appears to be a losing cause. I do not live near water and all the rain water at my house is absorbed into the ground and is filtered before going anywhere. I am told I am still contributing to the Bay pollution, but I simply can’t see it especially compared to Harrisburg.
Al Lewis, Silver Spring Township, Cumberland County
I'm not quite as concerned as Al, I think we have started to see slow improvement. but I do believe that the Bay scientists and authorities way oversold the benefits, and undersold what it will really cost to make a big difference.
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