The Wednesday Wetness

Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Reduce Your Stormwater with Rain Gardens 

Arain garden is a bowl-shaped garden designed to capture and infiltrate stormwater runoff. They are created to receive water from natural rainfall, downspouts, and/or rain barrel overflow and sheet flow from surrounding areas.

Rain gardens are depressed areas that fill up with water when it rains. They have a specialized porous soil that can also hold water. Water fills the garden, then filters into the soil over a period of time after the rain. Water-loving native plants with deep roots help to soak up the captured stormwater. Rain gardens come in many sizes and varieties, from highly engineered street-side bioretention to large-scale bioretention ponds. . .

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Young Girls & Old Trucks garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

Palm Sunday

 With Ines Trocchia:

WINK News, Palm tree grows out of storm drain outside North Fort Myers CVS

Florida is full of palm trees — they line our beaches, neighborhoods and even parking lots. But in North Fort Myers, one palm picked a very unusual place to put down its roots.

A full palm tree is sprouting straight out of a storm drain in front of the CVS on Hancock Bridge Parkway. 

The unusual sight was first brought to WINK News through our WINK Listens event in Cape Coral. A viewer, who wanted to stay off camera, told us about the tree and raised concerns about what it could mean for drainage in the area.

When we looked back at Google Maps imagery from 2022, the drain appeared clear — no greenery. But today, the palm is standing tall out of the concrete.

Lee County tells WINK News the storm drain is on private property, meaning CVS is responsible for its maintenance. CVS tells us they are checking with their landlord about the tree and whose responsible.

We've also reached out to the landlord and state to ask the same question and will update when we get more information.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. 

The Wednesday Wetness

Trash Island in Potomac River off Washington D.C.

WUSA9, 'Trash Island' cleanup underway after tropical storm, DC Water's fleet of trash skimmers is at work in the wake of Debby.

Trash skimmer boats operated by DC Water are responding to clean up the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers in the wake of Tropical Storm Debby. 

On Monday, one of the utility's five skimmers was at work removing debris from the Washington Channel. A "trash island" that formed in the river during storm conditions Friday has broken up, but high waters continue to bring debris from the upper Potomac into the D.C. waterfront area in the wake of the storm. After weeks of hot, dry conditions in the DMV area this summer, the soil has hardened — leading water to roll over it instead of being absorbed. That rolling water has pushed the current mound of debris into the water.

DC Water's skimmers remove between 400 and 500 tons of trash and debris from the Potomac annually, according to John Lisle of DC Water.  Riverkeepers on the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers report improvements in the wake of the opening of the Northeast Boundary Tunnel Project in September of 2023. The underground system is designed to catch pulses of stormwater, debris and sewage overflows during storm events, and divert the pollution to Blue Plains for treatment. The system is providing a 98% reduction in combined sewage overflow volume in an average rainfall year, according to DC water.

During Debby, the system captured more than 100 million gallons of combined sewage overflow that was headed to the Anacostia, according to Lisle. A similar tunnel system is now under construction between the Tidal Basin and Georgetown, and will take six years to complete.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Welcome, Indiana! up at The Other McCain.

Maryland, My Maryland

Chesapeake Bay Mag, Could MD Bottle Trade-In Bill Help Solve Plastic Pollution Problem?

Readers of a certain age might remember something called “deposit bottles,” those soft drink bottles you could take back to the store after you’ve emptied them and get a few cents back. They could be coming back thanks to a pair of bills working their way through the Maryland General Assembly.

Known as the Maryland Bottle Bill, it would lead to deposit fees of 10 cents on bottles of 24 ounces or less and 15 cents on larger bottles. The idea is to sharply reduce the amount of pollution from plastic bottles, reduce litter and at the same time encourage recycling in the state.

More than half the trash in the Anacostia River and Baltimore Harbor, two Chesapeake Bay tributaries that have been declared impaired by the Environmental Protection Agency, comes from discarded bottles, said state Sen. Benjamin Brooks, a Baltimore County Democrat and lead sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.

“Litter floating down our waterways is contributing to a plastic pollution crisis,” he told the Senate Education, Energy and Environment Committee during a hearing last Wednesday (March 5). Meg: Do you want to say last week? Not sure how you want to do the time element.

Most of the bottles that wash up seem to come of the streets from stormwater runoff. If the cities would control their stormwater this would also be significantly reduced.  

“Maryland,” he said, “has a beverage container and plastic pollution crisis and a bottle bill is proven to solve that problem. It has the potential to transform our state and reduce cost to local government.”

Christopher Williams, of the Anacostia Watershed Society, said the plastic “pollutes public spaces and fouls wildlife habitat, interfering with foraging, feeding and other behaviors.” And studies have found that microplastics, created when plastic bottles decompose, damage reproductive systems in sea life and harm humans.

My goodness, what a hassle that would be for both consumers and retailers. Theoretically, but not really practically, all these plastic bottles are recyclable, and hardly anybody recycles them. And a dime isn't worth what it used to be in the good old days before Bidenflation, and it's dubious that it would produce a significant rate of return. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Sleeping In ready as usual at The one and only Other McCain.

Torrential Rains Cause Sewage, Stormwater Spill

Little Patuxent River

 As you may, or may not, know, the East Coast was hit with major winter storms over the last week, most notably Wednesday, when we had 2 inches of rain, and place up the road had 4 or more. Flood warning were widespread due to overloaded streams, and storm tides up to 5 feet above normal flooded coastal areas. As is often the case, local infrastructure was not adequate to take care of the problems. WUSA 9, 138,000 gallons of sewage overflow leads to precautionary health alert in Howard Co.

A precautionary public health alert has been issued following a sanitary sewer overflow in Savage.

According to the Howard County Health Department, the sanitary sewer overflow happened at 8900 Greenwood Place. The Department of Public Works was first notified of a potential overflow on Tuesday around 10 p.m. 

Personnel noticed the overflow and shut off the valves necessary to stop it. By 10:15 p.m., the overflow had been halted.

Part of the approximately 138,888 gallons of sewage overflow traveled overland and into the Little Patuxent River. Most of the overflow went down a storm drain, which also discharged into the river.

At the time of the overflow, the river had overtopped its banks and was flooding. The health department is alerting the public as a precaution but signs will not be posted as the area is not accessible to the public.

Most of the time, the Little Patuxent River is a small stream, barely trickle in summer, but with the heavy rains, I'm sure it had plenty of water to dilute it with. 

At the DCist, During Storm, New Tunnel Kept 233 Million Gallons Of Sewage Out Of Anacostia River

Tuesday was a wet one, with 2.24 inches of rain falling in the District — the highest single-day rainfall total in the past year. It was also the biggest test of a giant new sewer tunnel running beneath the city, meant to prevent sewage overflows into the Anacostia River and reduce neighborhood flooding.

The Northeast Boundary Tunnel, or NEBT, went online in September, promising to reduce sewage overflows in the Anacostia River by 98%.

During Tuesday’s storm, the tunnel captured 267 million gallons of stormwater and sewage, preventing it from spilling into the river.

“Before this tunnel was built, all of that flow would have overflowed into the Anacostia River,” says John Lisle, a DC Water spokesperson.

The tunnel did fill to capacity at about 8pm on Tuesday. About 112 million gallons were discharged into the Anacostia once the tunnel was full.

Water and sewage captured by the tunnel is later treated at DC Water’s facilities, and then discharged into the Potomac River, sans harmful bacteria and other pollutants. As of Wednesday afternoon, the tunnel was still being pumped out.

The new tunnel is about 5 miles long and is part of a new 13-mile system that has a total capacity of 190 million gallons. Before the project, the District’s old sewers would dump overflow into the Anacostia 84 times a year. Now it’s expected to happen just twice a year.

While the NEBT was designed to help clean up the river, as required by under a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it also helps drain stormwater from low-lying neighborhoods that have a history of flooding including Bloomingdale and LeDroit Park. The tunnel reduces flood risk in the area along Rhode Island Ave., NE, that flooded District Dogs in August, killing 10 pets.

112 million gallons is still a lot of water. 

Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

The BaltimoreBrew, Tired of stormwater lapping at their front door, Baltimore residents join an environmental lawsuit

Visiting with next-door neighbors Pamela Luallen-Williams and Mary Jackson is like finding the multimedia mother lode of data on urban flooding in Baltimore.

The women can produce photos and videos of their block of 35th Street, just off Hillen Road, showing how it looks when heavy rains transform the roadway into a raging river, with water surging over car door handles.

They’ve got years of emails with city officials, who shrugged off these events as “an act of god,” and correspondence with insurance companies, who told them that because they’re not in a flood zone, it wasn’t “a flood.”

What’s more, they’ve got vivid descriptions of what it’s like when the water rapidly rises, engulfing and damaging their parked cars, trucks and, once, the front yard fence when a floating car drifted into it.

“How about that time when Mary’s son had to rescue you from your truck?” Luallen-Williams said to her husband, Warren Williams. “They had to throw you a rope!”

“Yes, I had to get out through the window, and I don’t know how I fit,” recalled Williams, reminding his wife of some of the other rescues, like the time emergency crews had to pluck the driver and passengers out of a submerged MTA bus.

One more thing these women say they have:

Evidence of how stormwater flooding is becoming more frequent and severe in their Ednor Gardens-Lakeside neighborhood, which sits on top of Tiffany Run, an underground stream.

“We had water in the street going back decades,” said Luallen-Williams, whose family acquired the property in 1970.

“But,” she stresses, “it never came up to your front door.”

That began to happen in 1998. Floodwaters have since crept closer to their houses to the point where now, a bad storm will not only fill the basement with water, but on occasion reach up to the first floor as well.

“This,” Luallen-Williams said, standing in her living room and pointing down, “is the new floor we had to put in.”

A freezer, a washer, a dryer, a television, her furnace, clothing and other possessions have been ruined by the overflows of water and, they are sorry to say, by sewage.

“We’ve had poop,” she said grimly, adding that people living on nearby streets, like Alameda Circle, have also begun experiencing more flooding and backups lately. “It’s definitely getting worse.”

Unlike tidal flooding and storm tides, storm water flooding is entirely a problem of a municipal government, a failing of planning adequate drainage, and/or allowing changes in the existing drainage in such a way that increases it's impact. 

Bring on the Beavers!

Fast Company, You could build a storm management system for $2 million—or you could use beavers "Environmental restoration is a multibillion-dollar business. In her book “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America,” Leilla Philip explores how the rodents can provide crucial ecosystem services, for free."

McGill is the founder of a visionary environmental restoration company called Ecotone, based in Forest Park, Maryland. A slim man dressed in jeans and a green T-shirt, he exudes enthusiasm and confidence. McGill gives a quick nod then disappears into a thicket of willows.
. . .
McGill is proud to be known in the environmental restoration industry as the “beaver whisperer.” He’s evangelical in his belief that beavers can help solve environmental problems. He thinks it is a tragedy that they are part of our history, but not part of our culture. Here in the Chesapeake watershed, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey where he does most of his work, he has been striving since 2016 to help shift the culture around beavers and stream restoration by showcasing what he calls the “ecosystem services” of beavers. Let the rodents do the work is one of his mottos.

 

He believes it is possible to “reseed” the East Coast landscape with beaver, and he has done enough restoration work with them now to prove that these efforts work and can make a difference, saving his clients, which include individual landowners, farmers, towns, and municipalities, a great deal of money. Environmental restoration is now a multibillion- dollar business throughout the United States, but especially in Maryland where in part due to the incredible rate of development, every county is now under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency to help clean the water running into the Chesapeake Bay.
. . .
“To build a storm water management pond with that kind of water retention would cost one to two million dollars,” he says matter-of-factly. I am visibly stunned at the price. “One to two million?”

“Yes,” answers McGill. “You have to build the embankment, the core, an outlet structure, you have to design and plan the whole thing. We’ve built those; we have contracts with counties throughout Maryland where it is one after the other. But beavers did all this . . .” He swings his arm in a wide gesture for emphasis. Moira, who has been listening, interjects with a grin, “For zero dollars!” She laughs, and so does McGill, both of them energized and delighted by this thought.

If he is worried about losing business because beavers can create storm-water retention ponds for about a million dollars cheaper than his company can, McGill does not show it.

“We do stormwater management, construction, renovation, fire retention areas, we do a lot of stream wetland restoration,” he continues, “but the thing is the water quality benefits of a beaver pond are very much similar to what we want to see in an engineered storm management pond.”

I like the idea of letting beavers spread, but it's not without issues. Beavers build their dams and lodges for their own reasons, not your's or anyone else's. Mostly that reason is to get access to the food they eat (the cambium of trees and shrubs) by water. When beavers get started in an area, they progressively strip the woody vegetation from around their ponds until it's too far, or too dangerous to walk or waddle from the water to the food and back. Once it's not longer practical for them to get the food, they move to a new area. Not exactly desirable for a storm control system. In an area populated by humans, they're apt to cut down and eat decorative trees. Also, they really don't know or understand they people have some structure they don't want flooded, like roads, back yards, power stations, and scientific research projects.

On the plus side, they produce an excellent pelt, good for making top hats, or fur coats, and, in a pinch, they can be eaten. I hear the tail is a real treat, though I have no personal experience. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Monday: St. Stephen’s Day Edition up and running at The Other McCain.

MDE Lets PG County of the Hook in Stormwater Pollution

MDE, Dept. of the Environment announces stormwater enforcement settlement with Prince George’s County

BALTIMORE (June 1, 2021) – The Maryland Department of the Environment announced an agreement with Prince George’s County to resolve violations of the county’s municipal stormwater permit.

The agreement, outlined in a consent decree filed in Prince George’s County Circuit Court, imposes a $475,000 penalty for the failure to complete all of the stormwater runoff reduction work required by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permit issued by MDE to the county in 2014. The penalty can be satisfied through the construction of one or more MDE-approved supplemental environmental projects by December 31, 2024.

The consent decree also requires timely completion of stormwater work still remaining under the 2014 MS4 permit. The settlement calls for additional penalties for failure to meet progress milestones.

“This enforcement action reflects the state’s priority on preventing stormwater pollution and growing green infrastructure for clean water and climate resilience throughout the Chesapeake Bay,” said Maryland Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles. “We appreciate Prince George’s County for stepping up to improve environmental performance under its permit and agreeing to an enforcement decree, including penalties, schedules, and supplemental environmental projects.”

Under the MS4 permit, Prince George’s County was required to implement stormwater treatment practices on 20% of its untreated impervious surface area – totaling 6,105 acres – by the end of the five-year permit term. MDE’s approved restoration total for the county is 2,387 acres, resulting in a deficit of 3,718 impervious acres that have not been restored as required, the consent decree states.

So they've been in violation for at least 5 years? How much are typical fines under NPDES? From EPA, 2012 NPDES General Permit for Stormwater Discharges

The CWA provides that any person who knowingly violates permit conditions implementing Sections 301, 302, 306, 307, 308, 318, or 405 of the Act is subject to a fine of not less than $5,000 nor more than $50,000 per day of violation, or by imprisonment for not more than 3 years, or both.

Five years at a minimum of $5,000 per day? That's a lot of money, far more than $450,000 (I could do the math, but why bother?). 

Maybe Pennsylvania Should Sue Them

Since Maryland is planning to sue Pennsylvania for its failures in the Chesapeake Bay clean up. Maryland needs to explore better ways to manage storm runoff

It is time that our state and local governments look beyond evaluating stormwater management primarily by the cost-per-pound of pollution a project might remove. Certainly, nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment are critical pollutants in urban waterways, as in the Chesapeake Bay. But in urban areas, we can gain much more than pollution reduction if we evaluate stormwater management options more holistically. For example, pairing stream restoration with upstream and distributed greening practices that benefit our communities.

Blue Water Baltimore recently released a report describing the multiple benefits of “green stormwater infrastructure.” These are practices like removing pavement, capturing rainwater in cisterns and planting native trees and plants that soak up rain and use nutrients to grow. They can reduce the volume and velocity of stormwater and provide other important benefits in urban areas including cleaner air and water, lower summer temperatures, improved health outcomes and even reduced crime.

What if our agencies, elected officials, community leaders and funders could come together to develop a more holistic way to move beyond treating problems like stormwater in a silo and instead look comprehensively at how funding, projects and programs can make our neighborhoods and natural areas more resilient to climate and storms?

Storm water management is one of the area in which Maryland is falling behind on the Bay clean up plans, and it is almost exclusively because the big urban areas simply won't pay for their share.

Maryland’s Chesapeake Suit Could Go Straight to Supreme Court  - Bloomberg Environment

Extra Wet Year Affects Bay

Bay health impacted by record flows - Largest amount of fresh water to enter the Chesapeake Bay since 1937

In 2019, more fresh water flowed into the Chesapeake Bay than it has in any of the past 82 years. The average freshwater streamflow into the Bay over the past year was 130,750 cubic feet per second—the highest since data collection began in 1937. To put this into perspective, 130,750 cubic feet is about 978,077 gallons. In comparison, an average Olympic-sized swimming pool holds approximately 660,253 gallons of water. That’s more than one pool entering the Bay every second!

These historic flows, which followed the record-breaking rainfall seen in 2018, caused Bay-wide changes in salinity. The extreme rainfall also washed nutrient and sediment pollution into the Bay, which depleted dissolved oxygen that aquatic species depend on for survival, and dramatically impacted the Bay’s underwater grass habitat and other living resources.

Hmm. That's interesting, since 2009 until now, 20 year, we've had 5 years below normal and 5 years above. Sound's like things are going on about normal.

However, the extreme amounts of rain that led to these heavy flows of freshwater between 2018 and 2019 dramatically impacted salinity levels throughout the entire Bay. Beginning in May 2018, salinity levels in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay were below-average, a situation which persisted for 17 consecutive months. A record-low level of salinity was observed in February 2019 in this area, and the months that followed continued to hover near record-low levels.

As of October 2019, waters in the lower Bay have returned to their normal salinity levels. However, the months of high flows has dramatically impacted plant and animal life in these regions. This has impacted the habitat for spawning fish, the distribution of underwater grasses and oysters, and increased the presence of Dermo and MSX, which are oyster-killing parasites.

Some effects:

After a promising year, underwater grasses have taken a step back . . .

Oysters restoration heavily impaired in upper Bay . . .

Blue crab populations are improving . . .

Invasive species are taking advantage of increased freshwater flows . . .

Dead zones continue to grow . . .

Which, other than crabs improving, are all sort of what you'd expect from an exceptionally wet year.  One of these years soon, we'll have a drought, and then they'll be complaining about all the bad things droughts cause, too

Can "Smart" Ponds Save the Bay?

Well, they can't hurt. Maryland Introduces 'Smart Ponds,' Saving Chesapeake Bay, Taxpayer Money

Environmentalists are turning to ponds to help save the Chesapeake Bay. But these are not ordinary ponds - they're called smart ponds.

It's the latest technology in Bay restoration. One is located just north of the Fruitland Walmart behind a chain-linked fence near the parking lot.

It's a program with a public-private partnership including the Maryland Department of Transportation and Walmart. Leaders from across the state celebrated the news on Tuesday.

"This will be a national program and Maryland will be first," MDOT Secretary Pete Rahn said.

Three more ponds scattered across the state will work to reduce stormwater pollution. MDOT Assistant Secretary Charles Glass says the project took nearly two years to complete.

"A smart pond actually can control holding back some of the water," Glass said. "That means you have more time for sedimentation, which removes nutrients."

But what is a "smart" pond. I had to google another article to get a rudimentary description of how they work:

“Normally this pond would just drain, and it wouldn’t do anything else, but water would fall and come in from parking lot and buildings and then it would just fill up and then drain,” Dr. Charles Glass, Assistant Secretary for the Maryland Department of Transportation, said.

But with this new technology unveiled, ponds like one in Fruitland will be able to sustain themselves more effectively.

“This technology a little allows it to fill up, and, like a bathtub, hold the water if we want to, or release the water if we want to based on storms coming or storms already being passed,” Dr. Glass said.

It's still not entirely clear if the pond is an autonomous robot which gets a weather forecast and decides whether or not to retain more water, or whether it reports to a central facility, which makes the decision. Either way, it's kind of a cool idea, but just wait until Russia starts hacking our retention ponds.

Shit Still Don't Flow Up Hill

1.3 Million Gallons of Sewage "Floods" Baltimore Harbor

Heavy rainfall flooded areas all over Maryland, Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia Monday. While the flash floods and harrowing water rescues are now over, the pollution in our waterways remains.

According to Blue Water Baltimore, Baltimore City’s riverkeeper organization, 1.3 million gallons of sewage spilled into the Jones Falls, and in turn, the Inner Harbor on Monday morning.

From 3 a.m. to 2 p.m, the National Weather Service says, radar showed a 100-mile-long “high precipitation supercell” dumping three to six inches of rain on the region. Baltimore’s Department of Public Works (DPW) acknowledged the sewage release, posting on Twitter:

” Heavy rainfall has caused water/sewer release through structured outfalls into the Jones Falls. These outfalls were designed 100 years ago to do just that. They will be eliminated in the next few years.”

But sewage isn’t all that made its way from the Jones Falls into the harbor, feeding into the Patapsco River and the Bay. A large sediment plume appeared around the Inner Harbor’s most popular attractions, stretching from the Maryland Science Center to the USS Constellation and the National Aquarium.

Emily Davidson, who works high atop the T. Rowe Price office building on Pratt Street, captured a birds’ eye view of the discolored harbor.

We did get a lot of rain, and this happens every time that happens so I'm not shocked, but it's long past time for Baltimore to clean up it's act. They've had a hundred years. Literally.

Can Beavers Save the Bay?

Tom Horton at the Bay Journal: Leave it to beavers: Species’ ability to alter land should be revisited

There are promising programs to counteract polluted runoff, such as planting thousands of miles of vegetated buffers along rivers and streams. But those efforts are far behind schedule, and they don’t specifically call for the vegetation to be forest, the best buffer.

And while such greening of the Bay’s lands is good, we know that far better would be green and wet; and that’s where we need to reconsider and actively restore the beaver.

No creature on Earth, save for modern humans, has more capacity to transform a landscape; and in designing a landscape that produces excellent water quality, the beaver has no equal.

Beavers ruled the hydrology of North America for a million years or more, until just the last few centuries, when fur trapping reduced populations from an estimated 100 million or more to less than half a million. In the Chesapeake, from millions to thousands is a fair estimate.

Through damming and ponding, beavers stanched the shedding of water from the watershed, cleansed it, filtered it, held back floods, let rain soak in to keep water tables high and streams running even in drought. They created luxurious habitats for a stunning variety of amphibians, fish, waterfowl and mammals.

In recent decades, beavers have come back to the point where a solid body of science in Canada and the United States confirms they were this continent’s most important keystone species — a species whose functioning underpins a whole ecosystem.

My class this year listened to a young man in the stream-restoration business say that in many cases, the work that his company does might be done as well or better by just releasing beavers.

But it is illegal to do that, he said.

That’s a mindset that needs to change. It will take education to overcome prevailing views of beavers as tree-chewing, property-flooding nuisances. They can be, but there are technologies to help us coexist — piping that keeps beaver ponds deep enough for the animals without flooding, for example.

I'd like to hear more about that, because everywhere I hear beavers invading suburban spaces, it goes badly, initially for people, but then, usually for the beavers too. Beavers simply have no understanding of our needs to keep our roads and houses free of water and our landscaping uneaten. Why would they? They're a rodent, and not equpped with the finest brains. Not content staying out of the way, they eat themselves out of the home they're in, then move on to the next stream, whether or not people care. This usually results in the beavers being relocated, or if they're unlucky, turned into a beaver pelt coat.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Monday: Camila Cabello up and running.

Did the 2018 Rains Drown the Bay's Progress?

We recorded 73 inches of rain here. Washington and Baltimore both had record years. Scientists waiting to see if record 2018 rainfall dampens Bay recovery in the Bay Journal. 

The water-fouling nutrients and sediment that were also flushed into the Bay by record-setting rainfall throughout the region will test the staying power of recent water quality improvements to the nation’s largest estuary.

At risk are improving trends for the Chesapeake’s fish-stressing “dead zone” and the restoration of its vital underwater grass beds and oyster populations.

Some cleanup efforts seemed to withstand the repeated downpours, but others faltered. Farmers struggled to plant pollution-absorbing cover crops, for instance.

It will be months before anyone can fully gauge the impact of higher-than-normal river flows that began flooding the Chesapeake in May and persisted through the rest of the year. August, September and November all set records for freshwater flows into the Bay, and December flows were running far above normal in its three largest tributaries, the Susquehanna, Potomac and James rivers.

The one thing about the higher flows is that it will cause the Bay to flush out faster. I suspect there will be some shorter term damage in the upper Bay, with excess freshwater and sediment having set back SAV and oysters, but a recovery will be rapid. It has been observed that high flow years generally lead to improved Striped Bass recruitment, so that's a positive.

Recent Rains Overwhelmed New Anacostia Sewage Tunnel

New Sewer Tunnel Kept 3.3 Billion Gallons Of Sewage Out Of Anacostia River. Why Isn’t It Any Cleaner?

The Anacostia River was supposed to get a lot cleaner this past summer, after DC Water completed a major new sewer tunnel. But water testing shows bacteria counts were, in some cases, higher in the summer of 2018 compared to 2017.

What happened? The short answer: rain. Lots and lots of rain.

D.C.’s combined sewer system mixes stormwater and sewage in the same pipes. When storms fill up those pipes, the system is designed to overflow into the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and Rock Creek. The water utility is under a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency to stop dumping into the waterways. The first major part of that project went online in March. So far, the new tunnel system has captured and treated 3.3 billion gallons of combined sewage and stormwater — the equivalent of 5,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The tunnel is performing better than expected, preventing 89 percent of overflows, compared to the 81 percent DC Water expected.

“We’re pretty happy with the performance of the tunnel so far,” says John Cassidy, program manager with DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project.

Still, the tunnel was no match for what Mother Nature had in store. Year-to-date, 2018 is Washington’s second-rainiest year on record (trailing 1889 by a fraction of an inch). And the rain has tended to come in big bursts — which are more likely to overwhelm the drainage system and cause overflows. There was so much rain that 300 to 400 million gallons spilled into the Anacostia despite the new tunnel (this is still less than one Olympic-sized poolful).

 When I worked in the Anacostia River, we had to get Hepatitis A shots. I still would.

Rain Rain, Go Away!

What this summer’s rainfall could mean for the Bay - Record-high water flows test the Bay’s resilience

This summer has been a wet one for much of the Chesapeake Bay region. Pennsylvania saw its wettest July and August on record, and both Virginia and Maryland received much more rain than normal, with Maryland chalking up its second-wettest July. All of this led to the Bay receiving unusually high amounts of fresh water.

The Susquehanna River, which begins near Cooperstown, N.Y., flows through Pennsylvania and enters the Bay at Havre De Grace, Md., is the Bay’s largest tributary. Normally, it contributes about half of the Bay’s fresh water. This summer, the Susquehanna has reached record high flows, peaking in July at 375,000 cubic feet per second, the highest flow the river has seen since Tropical Storm Lee in 2011.

Because of the high amount of water flowing down the Susquehanna, Exelon, the operator of the Conowingo Dam which sits on the river, opened the dam’s floodgates multiple times. That’s unusual for summertime, since flows tend to be higher in the late spring and early fall.

Opening the dam released debris that had built up behind its walls, including everything from tree trunks and branches to plastic bags and water bottles. The volume of debris was the largest in 20 years, according to Exelon. In a statement, they noted that so far this summer, they removed 1,800 tons of trash from behind the dam, compared to the usual average of 600 tons. . .

Besides the trash what else does this mean for the Chesapeake Bay?

The Bay is less salty. It sure is.

This year, we’ve seen record freshwater flows from the Susquehanna River and other major Bay tributaries such as the Potomac River, diluting the Bay and making it less salty. Waters in the south are still saltier, but the salinity gradient has been pushed down, and areas in the middle have less salt than usual. . . .Changes in the location of fresh and saltier waters, in turn, could have wide-ranging impacts on the Bay’s plant and animal life.

Shellfish, particularly oysters, could be impaired.

Oysters require salty waters and they can’t move if conditions change. They can close their shells, but only for a short period before they begin to suffer. Also, extra sediment that arrives in the Bay with additional fresh water flows could smother reefs and suffocate oysters.

“We’ve had mortality due to freshwater in the past,” said Michael, “but we won’t know the extent of the mortality until we conduct the surveys.” DNR expects to finish surveying oyster reefs by the end of the year.

An influx of fresh water isn’t always bad for oysters; it could provide a bit of relief from disease. In an interview with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), Ryan Carnegie, a research associate professor at VIMS, noted, “MSX disease may largely be purged from Chesapeake Bay oyster populations as the parasite Haplosporidium nelsoni cannot withstand salinities below 10 [parts per thousand].”

Blue crabs, on the other hand, can move to where conditions are more favorable, although they can tolerate fresher water. In the Bay itself, they seem to be staying farther south and at the edges, where salinity and dissolved oxygen levels are higher. In the rivers, DNR trawls show upriver sites containing more crabs, which is normal for this time of year

Finfish are moving to new places (I expect a dramatic expansion of the Northern Snakehead population)

Just like crabs, when salinity changes, finfish can move to areas better suited for them. This means salt-loving fish move south, and freshwater fish begin to appear in areas they aren’t normally seen.

Underwater grasses will decline, but this year will test their overall resilience.

Luckily, the damage doesn't seem too extensive, although we won’t know the full impact until the aerial surveys are completed in Maryland and Virginia. Brooke Landry, a biologist with DNR, noted how the grasses at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, in an area called the Susquehanna Flats, have been holding up. “After the July [rain] event, the water over the SAV bed was clear. You could see grasses in eight feet of water and fish swimming around as well.” Although there was some impact on the grasses, it was primarily at the edge of the bed where those grasses were buffering the sediment from reaching the grasses in the inner bed.

The dead zone may be smaller than anticipated. Good news?

This summer’s additional rains came as storms, with stronger winds and more overcast days. Strong, frequent winds have helped to mix up the Bay’s water and inhibit algae’s ability to thrive.

“Algae like sunny, calm weather,” said Michael. “Because this summer has been so cloudy and overcast, we haven’t seen a lot of algal blooms this year.” In fact, DNR’s monitoring cruise observed the best ever hypoxia conditions (meaning the smallest amount) in the Bay for the end of July, and near average conditions for August.

Noah?

The Chesapeake Bay news feed just figured out that the Chesapeake Bay's problems from Hurricane Florence didn't end when the rain did:

Debris at Conowingo Dam
Photo by MDDNR

Baltimore Sun: Florence has moved on, but high waters still may send torrent of pollution to Chesapeake

Hurricane Florence has moved on, but the storm is nonetheless forecast to deliver another potentially damaging slug of floodwaters and pollution to the Chesapeake Bay over the next few days.

Rising waters on the Susquehanna River are expected to crest Thursday night, prompting the operator of the Conowingo Dam to again open floodgates that allow sediment, nutrient pollution and trash flowing down from Pennsylvania to reach the Chesapeake Bay. Exelon Corp. has already collected three times more debris from the rim of the dam over the past nine months than it normally does over an entire year.

Scientists and bay advocates say the latest surge could be enough to ensure that the estuary’s improving health takes a hit. The region’s second-rainiest summer on record has already washed unusual amounts of pollution and debris into the bay at a time when freshwater flows into its waterways are normally at their lowest.

Putting that into perspective

And a good video of it at: Conowingo Dam opens the floodgates

From the Annapolis Crapital Gazette: Dam debris keeps coming as Conowingo officials are set to open gates Thursday

On Thursday, seven to 10 gates of the dam are scheduled to be opened again to relieve pressure from the remnants of Hurricane Florence.
Some 200,000 cubic feet of water per second are expected to flow through the dam Thursday night.

Aside from the potential environmental damage wrought by the influx of silt-laden fresh water from the Susquehanna River, above the dam the debris is a hazard for boats on the water and a frustrating chore for marinas along the bay and its tributaries.

Frank Carver, captain of Loosen Up charters out of Deale, said he had not seen a lot of detritus floating in the past few days but saw a lot accumulating around Thomas Point Wednesday.

“But two months ago, that was the worst I have ever seen in my 50 years on the bay,” he said. His charter company usually takes two trips a day, shoving off before dawn and again after lunch. At the end of July he had to cancel fully booked trips.

We were gone for the advent and passing of Florence, but everything at home survived fine. The marina pulled my boat out of the slip in an abundance of caution, but at least I got the hull pressure washed.

But floating debris is no joke; Pete lost an engine to a debris strike two years ago.

Recent Freshet Killing Chesapeake Bay Clams

Pollution, Freshwater Killing White Clams in Chesapeake Bay

The pollution flowing from up north through the Conowingo Dam has now spread into the Chesapeake Bay and has reached the Eastern Shore.Queen Anne's County watermen say, along with all that pollution, is tons of freshwater, bringing no good to marine life in the bay. For salt-water creatures, especially white clams, it's imminent death.

In a video posted to social media last week, waterman Dennis Hampton documented the dying clams. While a conveyor belt brought aboard empty shells and clams, Hampton holds two in his hand - their necks swinging loose and lifeless. "They're on their last leg," Hampton said.

Thursday afternoon, Hampton was back on the same boat, but tied up this time at the pier. The 61 year-old waterman says he has no reason to go out as clams continue to die."From that time until now, it's been straight downhill," Hampton said. "Clams, crabs, oysters, eels are all dying. It's got our ecosystem in an uproar." Hampton says demand for clams is growing, and with less in the water to catch, the price of a bushel has jumped from $70 to $100 just this week.

"Three times in my life, I've seen the Bay die off. The problem is, this time, it could've been avoided," Hampton said. Hampton points the finger at the Conowingo Dam, whose parent company, Exelon, opened up at least 11 gates last week to relieve the dam of water."It's just wrong on so many levels," Hampton said.

And if Conowingo Dam hadn't been there, it would have run straight through.

Maryland's Department of Natural Resources is still working to examine the impact."Based on feedback and reports from commercial watermen and seafood processors, the white clam industry has been significantly impacted," Communications Manager Stephen Schatz said in a statement. "The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is working to quantify the impact by conducting scientific surveys to measure clam abundance, quality, mortality and size."

One of the things about living in an estuary is that conditions are subject to change depending on the weather. Quick changes can cause major die offs, but the kind of organisms that succeed in such areas are resilient, and will come back when conditions improve.

But Don't Worry, It's Safe!

50 million gallons of wastewater dumped into the Susquehanna; officials say it shouldn’t affect local drinking water and by wastewater, they mean mixed sewage, industrial waste and stormwater runoff.

A city in southern New York has dumped more than 50 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the Susquehanna River this month.

The city of Binghamton, which lies less than 10 miles north of the Pennsylvania border, released the effluent in two separate incidents — one of which lasted more than six days. City officials blamed the discharge on heavy rains and flooding, according to the Times Leader, which provides coverage in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area.

The 464-mile-long river, which begins in Cooperstown, New York, and flows south into the Chesapeake Bay, passes between Lancaster and York counties.Numerous municipalities here draw drinking water from the river, including Lancaster city and Columbia Borough.

Charlotte Katzenmoyer, public works director for the city, said Wednesday that neither she nor anyone at Lancaster’s water plants was notified of the spill. “Which is disappointing, to say the least,” she said. “We certainly want to know about discharges like this.”

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued a statement saying no Pennsylvania municipalities were impacted by the wastewater spill. The New York State DEC said the discharge came from combined sewer overflow, which collects domestic sewage, industrial wastewater and stormwater runoff into a common pipe that flows into a wastewater treatment facility, the Times Leader reported.

It's probably not going to do anything as long as the water treatment at the downstream cities is up to snuff. But it does illustrate how the cities are failing to live up the their end of the Chesapeake Bay Diet, by cleaning up their wastewater treatment and how stormwater treatment is one of the big problems still facing the Bay.

At 7.5 gallons per cubic foot, 50 million gallons represents about 4 hours of the Susquehanna River flows at Oswego, assuming storm flows of 30,000 cfs. Less time if the flows were greater.

And I Think It's Going to Rain Today, Too

Rainstorm bearing down on us this afternoon

Too late, really, it already did: WaPo: Surge of storm water and pollution through the Conowingo Dam has scientists worried

A surge of storm water and pollution from Pennsylvania and New York was flowing into the Chesapeake Bay through the Conowingo Dam again last week, raising concerns that the relentlessly rainy summer could threaten oyster reproduction and throw off bay ecology for some time.

Even as scientists were assessing the environmental impact from recent storms, rising Susquehanna River waters were prompting dam operator Exelon Corp. to open Conowingo floodgates for the second time in three weeks, sending a deluge of muddy brown water into the upper Chesapeake.

“The water right now really looks like chocolate milk,” said Cindy Palinkas, an associate professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Then she hasn't been around that much.

Palinkas led a research trip last week to a large bed of grasses at the mouth of the Susquehanna. Scientists were already concerned about the impact the record July rainfall could have on oysters, which need salty water to reproduce successfully. And they still have questions about the long-term effects of an influx of nutrient pollution and plastics that the floodwaters carried.

Zebra Swallowtail puddling on the beach

Now, the bay is facing another round of stress.

“It’s the event that doesn’t go away. It keeps unfolding,” said Doug Myers, Maryland senior scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Exelon officials expected to open 10 to 13 of the Conowingo’s 52 gates Thursday, about half as many as they opened during late July flooding.

The company has been the target of criticism from Gov. Larry Hogan, whose administration has demanded that it do more to prevent pollution from getting past the dam. Exelon responded by suing the state, saying it should not be held responsible for pollution it doesn’t create.

But they made the mistake of buy the asset that protects the Bay. I mean, used to protect the Bay.

Hogan said that he recently had “a pretty direct discussion with the chairman of Exelon” and that he plans to continue to press the company to help in Chesapeake cleanup efforts. He said the state will meanwhile solicit proposals within the next month for a test project to dredge sediment and nutrients that have built up behind the dam.

The nonstop rain and flooding are only making the problem worse, said Mark Belton, Hogan’s secretary of natural resources.
“We have been watching very closely the flow of the Conowingo Dam . . . to understand the nutrients that are coming over and to understand what type of debris might be coming over,” he said. “That’s really gunked up the bay.”

It could still be weeks or months before the repercussions of all the storms become clear in the Chesapeake. Scientists worry that large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus washed into waterways could fuel algae blooms that could eventually strip portions of the bay of oxygen. Large amounts of sediment could smother plants and shellfish and block sunlight.

But they aren’t seeing their worst fears yet — in fact, for now, the rains have cleared the bay of a lot of algae, Myers said. “The entire bay has been flushed of some of the normal harmful algae species that might bloom in the summertime,” he said.

That surge of fresh water is not good for all creatures in the bay, though. Oysters need warm, salty water to spawn larvae that end up attaching to reefs, becoming what are known as spat. But all the rain has prevented ocean water from making its way into the middle and upper portions of the bay.

Myers said bay foundation scientists aren’t seeing signs of the next generation of oysters anywhere in the middle and upper portions of the bay. Water near Annapolis is almost fresh enough to drink, he joked, but if it doesn’t become saltier before fall, that could be devastating for oysters.

“If it gets cool before it gets salty again, then they may not reproduce this year,” he said.

In the northernmost reaches of the Chesapeake, if waters stay too fresh for too long, it could kill some adult oysters, said Michael Roman, director of the University of Maryland center’s Horn Point Laboratory. But the species is resilient.

“They’re adapted to these conditions,” Roman said. “It is rare to have this much fresh water coming in in July like we’ve had, but I’m sure it’s happened before.”