Some 17 million people live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. They all poop and they all pee. For almost all of them, when they flush their toilet, their waste flows through a sewage system to a wastewater treatment plant, into a public waterway and ultimately into the Chesapeake Bay. Nutrients in wastewater are one of the chief sources of pollution for the Bay and one of the easiest to prevent.
There are 265 major wastewater treatment plants that treat the sewage before discharging it into the Bay watershed. They are designed to removed nutrients from the sewage before dumping it into the Bay. They vary greatly in their effectiveness. These plants collectively discharge more than 50 million pounds of nitrogen into the Bay each year. Nitrogen pollution in the bay cause algae blooms that block sunlight from underwater grasses and deplete dissolved oxygen in the Bay.
The good news is that the technology exists to sharply reduce the amount of nitrogen and other pollutants that reach the Bay from sewage treatment plants. Because the plants are centralized, it's relatively easy to deal with this problem.
To take responsibility for the safe disposal of our wastes, we need to pressure our political leaders to take immediate steps to upgrade existing sewage treatment plants to reduce nitrogen discharge to 3 milligrams or less per liter. This will go a long way toward reducing nitrogen pollution in the Bay and make a start toward actually restoring the Bay instead of just talking about it. But it will cost money. I said it would be easy, I didn't say it would be cheap.
Maryland has made a start with the 'flush tax' introduced by Governor Ehrlich, but we need to do more. Waste treatment plants in the Baltimore area need significant improvement and there are many smaller plants that are simply ineffective.
But Maryland is doing well compared to Pennsylvania and Virginia. Virginia discharges more than double the amount of nitrogen pollution from wastewater plants as Maryland. the Norfolk/Newport News area and the Washington DC area including Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax are discharging huge amounts. And Virginia's rate of improvement is unacceptably slow. Virginians who say they care about the Bay need to step up to the plate now and call their leaders to demand improvement in their wastewater treatment facilities.
In Pennsylvania, of the 123 major sewage treatment plants, 3 meet the goal of 3 milligrams nitrogen or less per liter - a goal they agreed to meet. Pennsylvanians should be ashamed of their performance in this area and should take immediate action to improve the situation. The Susquehanna River should be more than just a sewer dumping Pennsyvania's waste into Maryland and Virginia.
Sure, it will take money. But these are not poor states. There seems to be plenty of money to spend on I-pods, wide-screen TV's and $5 cups of coffee; how about spending some on really saving one of our most precious natural resources?
If you want to find out more, there's excellent information here.
[The picture above shows raw sewage pouring into a waterway. It was taken by Trey Ratcliff and is licensed under creative commons]
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