16th WATERSHED WEEKENDS 2018 - We All Live in a Watershed!

The public is encouraged to get involved in the Watershed Alliance of York’s 16^th Watershed Weekends!  
              The purpose of the Watershed Weekends is to get to know your watershed and meet the folks and organizations who are working hard to enhance, restore and protect them. Come join us and learn how you can connect with your watershed.

Watershed Weekend is being held from September 21^st to Sunday, September 30^th, 2018. There are 10 exciting venues to participate in including: York County Envirothon Clay Shoot Fundraiser; Rambo Run Stream Study; PawPaw Festival; Dover Water Treatment Facility Open House; Exploring a York County Stormwater Authority Public Forum; Youth & Family Fishing Day at Kiwanis Lake; Tour York Water Company’s New Lake Redman Pump Station; Family Creek Critter Hike; So, You Want A Rain Garden Presentation; and Codorus Creek Sojourn.

See our free Watershed Weekend Guide at www.watershedallianceofyork.org for venue times and locations, or pick one up at your local library, municipal office, venue sponsor locations, and the York County ANNEX at Pleasant Acres.

The Watershed Alliance of York (WAY) is a coalition of stakeholders committed to being

innovative leaders educating the public and encouraging watershed-based planning, restoration and protection, through locally led initiatives, in York County and beyond. “Doing our part for clean water!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game Fundraiser!

Chesapeake Bay Restoration Funding

The 2018 Federal Budget , as proposed, would eliminate federal funding for the program that coordinates Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts, and environmental groups warned the cut would threaten decades of progress.

It significantly reduces funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. As part of those cuts, it eliminates money that currently goes to the Chesapeake Bay Program.

The program, formed in 1983, received $73 million in federal funds last year, most of which was doled out in grants to states, local governments and community groups for cleanup efforts in the nation's largest estuary. It also coordinates and monitors the efforts of the six Bay watershed states and the District of Columbia in meeting pollution reduction goals.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed — an economic driver that supports fishing, farming, shipping and tourism — spans 64,000 square miles (165,760 square kilometers) in parts of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. After the EPA set bay pollution limits in 2010, the states and D.C. agreed to a "clean water blueprint," a set of plans for how to meet those limits by 2025.

In the past, Chesapeake Bay Program grants have funded projects to restore oyster reefs, protect oyster beds, help reduce polluted runoff, support water quality monitoring and create habitat for animals.

Proposed cuts will return the responsibility for funding "local environmental efforts" to state and local entities, allowing EPA "to focus on its highest national priorities."

Congress will have the final say on the budget, and the Chesapeake Bay Program has support from lawmakers in both parties. A bipartisan group of 17 members of bay states' congressional delegations sent a letter to Trump last month asking him to keep program funding at the same $73 million level.

Does it really make a difference, or matter, whether water quality improvements and protections are funding locally, by states, or the federal government? The money all comes from the same source--you and me. 

What do you think?

CLEAN WATER - Good to the last drop!

There have been numerous writings in the news media the past several weeks expressing concern to outrage at proposed "clean water" cuts to state and federal budgets.

Clean water is life! It is essential for healthy communities, vibrant economies, environmental quality, and the quality of life we enjoy here in Pennsylvania, everyday. Plato summed it up best - “Only what is rare is valuable, and water, which is the best of all things…is also the cheapest.”

A study published in Forbes magazine (Nov. 29, 2012) finds Americans willing to pay more for water according to the Value of Water report, released by global water technology and equipment provider Xylem. The report found that 75 percent of Americans were willing to pay more for water infrastructure that conserves energy and 70 percent were willing to pay more for water to ensure that all Americans have access to clean water.

Last Tuesday, June 6th, Pennsylvania's independent Citizens Advisory Council Tuesday unanimously approved the text of a letter to Senate and House Appropriations Committee Chairs expressing serious concerns about current funding levels at the Department of Environmental Protection saying, in part, “consistent cuts to DEP over the last 2 decades has reached an unsustainable level.”

“At the same time, reliance on federal funding including augmentations and special funds where appropriate have risen to cover the decreasing General Fund dollars, but this solution also has finite applicability.

 Pennsylvania advocates for the Bay and clean water are hoping for new dedicated funding to clean up the Susquehanna River in the midst of another tough budget year in Harrisburg, where environmental programs are being cut again.

Legislation has been introduced to renew Pennsylvania’s popular Growing Greener program [Senate Bill 795 (Killion-R-Delaware)], which over nearly two decades has poured roughly $1.3 billion into protecting water resources and preserving open space and farmland.

But the Growing Greener program is running short of money, and lawmakers have yet to figure out how to pay for a new round of projects.

Nor are they any closer to finding the increased funds needed to deal with Pennsylvania’s polluted streams and rivers, its lax oversight of drinking water safety or its federally mandated obligation to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

It is clear to me that "clean water" should be the Commonwealth's number #1 priority! All else come afterwards. The Pennsylvania Constitution states:  

§ 27.  Natural resources and the public estate.

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

(May 18, 1971, P.L.769, J.R.3).

What is the cost of clean water? According to the Circle of Blue's annual report on water rates, between 2010 and 2017 a family of four using 150 gallons per day on average, increase nationally from $72 to $108 per month.

 

So, how do we pay for clean water? In the simplest of terms, there are three ways to pay for clean water:

1. Consumptive use (i.e., drinking water)
2. Productive use (e.g., anybody who uses the public domain of water to produce goods and/or services for profit), and
3. Restorative use (i.e., wastewater treatment; pollution abatement and mitigation; source water protection).

I've always been reminded of the value of clean water from the old Maxwell House coffee commercial - "good to the last drop".

We'd like to hear from you and your ideas and suggestions on how Pennsylvania should fund clean water sustainably for today, and future generations.


 

Chesapeake Bay Implementation Plan Listening Session June 5, Formal Comment Period Now Open

Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Planning Steering Committee hosted a Chesapeake Bay Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan Kickoff and Listening Session June 5 at the Radisson Hotel in Camp Hill, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

DEP also formally published notice in the June 3 PA Bulletin. The comment period on the planning process is open and will be accepting comments until July 7.

The purpose of the June 5 listening session is to gather ideas on how to meet the Chesapeake Bay cleanup milestone in each of these areas: urban and suburban stormwater, wastewater, agriculture, forestry, funding and local planning and area goals. 

Public input is specifically being invited to determine what initiatives are needed in agriculture, forestry, funding, local planning, stormwater and wastewater to improve the health of local streams, rivers and lakes.

The public is encouraged to answer the following questions in their comments: 

1. What key elements need to be included for this effort to be a success? What priority issues must be addressed in the Phase 3 WIP for you to consider it a success?
2. That measurable outcome does the Commonwealth need to achieve by 2025 that would make this effort successful? 
3. Is there a particular initiative, action, partnership or training that would aid this effort?, and 
4. Are there possibilities for continuing and enhancing current projects or initiatives?

In 2010, the EPA established a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) to address chlorophyll-A, dissolved oxygen and clarity impairments within the Chesapeake Bay. A TMDL is a regulatory term in the Federal Clean Water Act describing a value of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a body of water can receive while still meeting water quality standards.

Nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment are the main pollutants to the Chesapeake Bay that cause the previously listed issues. WIPs are the roadmaps for how the Chesapeake Bay states, in partnership with Federal and local governments, will achieve the Chesapeake Bay TMDL allocations.

The Commonwealth is mandated by the EPA to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment levels in waterways in the Chesapeake Bay watershed counties by 2025.

The Commonwealth fell short of its Phase 1 goal, set in 2010, and Phase 2 goal, set in 2012.

This year, the EPA is conducting a midpoint assessment of these levels, the results of which will define how the Commonwealth designs its Phase 3 WIP to achieve the desired reductions in pollutants.

Since the Commonwealth has not met the EPA's requirements to reduce water pollution under the requirements of Federal court orders and regulations, the Commonwealth is working to focus and increase resources and technical assistance, reinvigorate partnerships and create a culture of compliance in protecting the Commonwealth's water quality.

Comments, including comments submitted by e-mail, must include the originator's name and address. Commentators are encouraged to submit comments using the Department's online eComment system. You can also see the comments submitted by others on that webpage. Written comments should be submitted by e-mail to: ecomment@pa.gov or by mail to the Department of Environmental Protection, Policy Office, Rachel Carson State Office Building, P.O. Box 2063, Harrisburg, PA 17105-2063.  Comments submitted by facsimile will not be accepted.

Over Two Hundred Kick Off Planning to Reduce Water Pollution in Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed Counties

This past Monday, June 5th, 2017, more than 200 Pennsylvanians representing local governments, the farming community, and other stakeholders gathered today to share ideas for a plan to best achieve federally mandated water pollution reductions in the state’s 43 counties in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and improve the environment and economy for all.

 

The Departments of Environmental Protection, Agriculture, and Conservation and Natural Resources are partnering in leading the charge.

 

“Clean water is essential to Pennsylvanians’ quality of life,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell. “We want vital communities. We need healthy farms. We need economic development, jobs, and thriving businesses. All of this depends on clean water sources.”

 

To succeed, the plan must be locally implementable, said McDonnell, accounting for economic realities as well as environmental benefits of clean local waters. This makes on-the-ground committed action essential. 

 

Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding noted that “the agricultural sector accounts for the lion’s share of the clean water challenge. The plan developed from today’s listening session must recognize the co-equal goals of improving water quality while preserving healthy and viable farms.”

 

“We know that many farmers have been voluntarily implementing best management practices on their own sites,” Redding noted, citing positive success stories, such as the best management practices some farmers have initiated on their own. “The 2016 survey tracked and quantified impressive on-farm measures taken at the farmers’ own expense,” he added.

 

DCNR Secretary Cindy Dunn emphasized the importance of connecting more Pennsylvanians to their local streams, rivers, and lakes to help them understand the impact land use has on water. Having trees and other vegetation on a river bank, for example, plays a key role in keeping sediment out of the water. “When land is healthy, water is healthy,” Dunn said, noting that DCNR is working on developing public outreach in this area.

 

The discussions formed the bulk of a daylong public meeting at the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg in Camp Hill hosted by the steering committee leading development of Phase 3 of Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plan. 

 

Participants represented township, city, and county governments; the agriculture community; conservation districts; river basin commissions; watershed associations; conservancies; businesses; colleges; and many other entities.

 

In breakout groups, they discussed initiatives they believe are needed in agriculture, forestry, funding, local planning, stormwater, and wastewater to improve the health of local streams, rivers, and lakes. For anyone who couldn’t attend in person, a public online comment period is open through July 7 on DEP eComments.

 

Pennsylvania is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment levels in waters in its Bay watershed counties by 2025. The Commonwealth has fallen considerably short of its Phase 1 goal, set in 2010, and Phase 2 goal, set in 2012. 

 

While Pennsylvania has made significant progress toward meeting the EPA targets, particularly since launch of the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Strategy, considerable work remains to be done.
 

The event was scheduled to coincide with the second annual Chesapeake Bay Awareness Week, June 3-10, instituted by the Chesapeake Bay Program.

 

The Watershed Alliance of York (WAY), Inc. was present and participated by leading two discussion sessions, one each on:

• Need for continuous real-tim water quality monitoring at the local level, and 
• Enforcing the existing environmental laws and regulations to create positive tension and voluntary compliance 

 Lively discussions were had during both sessions and group consensus on key outcomes and partners were presented to DEP.

 

I encourage all York Countians to get involved and be heard! Clean water is critical to community health, vibrant economies, and the quality of life we all enjoy.

 Putting the Bay’s woes in perspective

It’s easy to feel despondent about the rapidity of the progress of the Bay's cleanup. The harder we work to control pollution, the more intractable it can seem. We move forward with upgrades to major wastewater plants, only to stumble with whole towns on failing septic systems.  Or lawmakers pass legislation to combat a major pollution or public health problem, only to weaken the law later or make exceptions that don’t solve the problem. There is much that remains undone. But compared with a lot of places, our region is so far ahead that even a cynic like me savors the moment.

Brief History of Water Pollution

Pollution is not a new phenomenon. In fact, pollution has been a problem since the appearance of our earliest ancestors[1]. Increasing human populations have opened the door to more bacteria and disease. During the Middle Ages, diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever broke out all across Europe. These epidemics were directly related to unsanitary conditions caused by human and animal wastes, and garbage. In 1347, thebacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by rats and spread by fleas, caused the "Black Death" -- an outbreak of bubonic plague. Unsanitary conditions provided the perfect environment for the deadly bacteria to flourish.

By the 1800s, people began to understand that unsanitary living conditions and water contamination contributed to disease epidemics. This new awareness prompted major cities to take measures to control waste and garbage. In the mid-1850s, Chicago built the first major sewage system in the United States to treat wastewater. Soon, many other U.S. cities followed Chicago's lead.
Map of the layout of sewers in Chicago at the end of 1857. Chicago built one of the first sewage systems in the United States to treat wastewater. (Source: NOAA)

Improved sanitary conditions and less disease were important factors in making cities healthier places to live, and helped encourage people to move to urban areas. As cities became more populated towards the end of the 19th century, industrialized cities across Europe and the United States were experiencing a new kind of pollution: waste from industries and factories. In 1897, a report to the Royal Commission on River Pollution detailed the gross industrial contamination of the Tawe River in Wales, noting that it was polluted by "alkali works, copper works, sulfuric acid liquid, sulfate of iron from tin-plate works, and by slag, cinders and smallcoal"[2].

In the United States, industrial chemicals and wastes, including sulfuric acid, soda ash, muriatic acid, limes, dyes, wood pulp, and animal byproducts from industrial mills contaminated waters in the Northeast.

Water and air pollution in U.S. urban areas continued to increase well into the 20th century. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, which flows into Lake Erie, became so polluted that the water erupted into flames! The first fire occurred in 1936, when a spark from a blowtorch ignited floating debris and oils. Over the next 30 years, the river caught fire several more times.

The Cuyahoga River on fire in 1952. On the far left you can see firefighters battling the blaze from a bridge. (Source: NOAA)

In 1969, another major fire erupted. This time, with the help of news and magazine coverage, the fire prompted the nation to take immediate action against water pollution. The public response to this event helped create the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (1972), commonly called the Clean Water Act. This legislation provides money to improve sewage treatment plants (STPs) and sets limits on the things that industries and STPs can discharge into the water. The Cuyahoga River fires also provided the motivation to create the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement; establish federal and state environmental protection agencies (Environmental Protection Agency, 2003); and pass the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which prohibits the discharge of oil into navigable rivers.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Earth. Pollution: A brief history  http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/155294/

Water pollution is on the rise globally

• Virtually all goods-producing activities generate pollutants as unwanted by-products.

• The most important water contaminants created by human activities are microbial pathogens, nutrients, oxygen-consuming materials, heavy metals and persistent organic matter, as well as suspended sediments, nutrients, pesticides and oxygen-consuming substances, much of it from non-point sources.  Heat, which raises the temperature of the receiving water, can also be a pollutant. Pollutants are typically the cause of major water quality degradation around the world.

• Globally, the most prevalent water quality problem is eutrophication, a result of high-nutrient loads (mainly phosphorus and nitrogen), which substantially impairs beneficial uses of water.

• Projected food production needs and increasing wastewater effluents associated with an increasing population over the next three decades suggest a 10%-15% increase in the river input of nitrogen loads into coastal ecosystems, continuing the trend observed during 1970-95.

• More than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas. 

• Many industries – some of them known to be heavily polluting (such as leather and chemicals) – are moving from high-income countries to emerging market economies.

• Despite improvements in some regions, water pollution is on the rise globally. 

•    Source: United Nations World Water Assessment Program (WWAP) http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/water/wwap/facts-and-figures/all-facts-wwdr3/fact-15-water-pollution/
  

   

   

   
  

  Pollution Causes 40 Percent Of Deaths Worldwide

• About 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution, concludes a Cornell researcher. Such environmental degradation, coupled with the growth in world population, are major causes behind the rapid increase in human diseases, which the World Health Organization has recently reported. Both factors contribute to the malnourishment and disease susceptibility of 3.7 billion people, he says.
  
  Source: Cornell University. "Pollution Causes 40 Percent Of Deaths Worldwide, Study Finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 August 2007. .

Water Pollution - What's in the Water

As technology improves, scientists are able to detect more pollutants, and at smaller concentrations, in Earth’s freshwater bodies. Containing traces of contaminants ranging from birth control pills and sunscreen to pesticides and petroleum, our planet's lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater are often a chemical cocktail.

Beyond synthetic pollution, freshwater is also the end point for biological waste, in the form of human sewage, animal excrement, and rainwater runoff flavored by nutrient-rich fertilizers from yards and farms. These nutrients find their way through river systems into seas, sometimes creating coastal ocean zones void of oxygen—and therefore aquatic life—and making the connection between land and sea painfully obvious. When you dump paint down the drain, it often ends up in the ocean, via freshwater systems.

In the developed world, regulation has restricted industry and agricultural operations from pouring pollutants into lakes, streams, and rivers. Technology has also offered a solution in the form of expensive filtration and treatment plants that make our drinking water safe to consume. Some cities are even promoting "green" infrastructure, such as green roofs and rain gardens, as a way to naturally filter out pollutants. But you may find a different picture in parts of the developing world, where there is less infrastructure—politically, economically, and technically—to deal with the barrage of pollution threats facing freshwater and all of the species that rely on it.

 Fast Facts

• In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters, polluting the usable water supply.

• On average, 99 million pounds (45 million kilograms) of fertilizers and chemicals are used each year.
• Portland, Oregon, is actively pursing “green roofs” and “green streets” to prevent sewer overflows into the Willamette River. Chicago, Illinois, now has more than 517,000 acres (209,222 hectares) of vegetated roofs—more than any other U.S. city—which are helping to catch storm water, cool the urban environment, and provide opportunities for rooftop gardens.

Source: National Geographic: Freshwater 101  http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/pollution/