Pennsylvania: Lawmakers see opportunity to fix infrastructure

HARRISBURG - The tentative budget deal between Gov. Ed Rendell and state lawmakers calls for borrowing about $2.5 billion for water and sewer projects, bridge repairs and other infrastructure projects.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a3_5pain.6484550jul01,0,2291374.story

Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine Promotes New Transportation Plan

Last week, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine unveiled the Commonwealth's transportation plan he will present to the legislature. This is what he says it will do, and how it would be financed:

Goals

• Cut the highway maintenance deficit.
• Increase local road construction funding and restore support for construction projects statewide.
• Invest in targeted projects to reduce traffic congestion in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, the state's two most congested regions.
• Create a Transportation Change Fund to increase investment in transit, rail, and innovations that would reduce traffic congestion. (He offers the example of expanding ridesharing.)
• Provide incentives for cities and towns to take responsibility for their road construction programs.
• Create incentives for localities to use their land more efficiently by providing dedicated funding for transportation improvements in urban development areas.
• Clarifies local government flexibility to use secondary and urban road funding for transit projects.

Financing

• Increase the statewide motor vehicles sales tax from 3 percent to 4 percent. Do it with a one-half percent increase in January 2009 and another half-percent percent in July 2009.
• Dedicate all motor vehicle sales tax funds to maintenance.
• Increase the statewide annual vehicle registration fee by $10 and dedicate that extra money to maintenance.
• Increase the retail sales tax in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads by 1 percent, except for food and medicine. In our region, the money would go to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.
• Increase the statewide grantor's tax by 25 cents, and put the money into the Transportation Change Fund.
• Lock it up: Any of these tax increases would expire if used for any purpose other than transportation.

Maryland: Global Warming Solutions Act

Smart Growth Measures Part of Strategy Endorsed in Maryland's Global Warming Solutions Act
Source: Baltimore Sun 1/30/2008

With 3,100 miles of shoreline making Maryland ''the fourth-most-vulnerable state to the effects of global warming,'' the lead sponsors of its Global Warming Solutions Act, Senate Environment Subcommittee Democratic Chairman Paul. G. Pinsky and House of Delegates Democratic Majority Leader Kumar Barve, urge the General Assembly ''to take real action on global warming'' this session and pass the act that would cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050, through new statewide efficiency and resource-management programs, including Smart Growth measures.

''Why now? Because we can't continue to wait and debate,'' they write in a Baltimore Sun oped column, warning that delay would damage Maryland's economy and environment, particularly the Chesapeake Bay.

In contrast, they stress, ''the Global Warming Solutions Act would mean significant investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency and green buildings, creating 'green collar' jobs for Marylanders and saving taxpayers money in the long run, while reversing an environmentally destructive trend.''

With the White House failing to join international accords on climate change, ''(w)e no longer can wait for the federal government to act,'' they write. ''Even if voters elect a pro-environment president in November, there is still a long battle ahead in Congress.''

But if Maryland ''joins other states -- California, New Jersey and Hawaii -- that have adopted legislation to fight global warming,'' they point out, ''it can only hasten Congress, and the White House, to approve a national policy.''

Pennsylvainia: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blocks plan to dam Susquehanna

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday that it is denying a permit for an inflatable dam to be built across the Susquehanna River in Wilkes-Barre. The Luzerne County Flood Protection Authority had proposed building a structure that would have reached 9 1/2 feet high and impounded 4 1/2 miles of the free flowing river. The corps said in a statement that the dam was not the least environmentally damaging way to control floods in the area.

Full Story

RFK Jr. and Howard Ernst Crititcal of Maryland's Environmental Efforts

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. Been pretty busy with a graduate course working on my masters degree.

Here's an editorial from the Baltimore Sun by two high profile environmental watch dogs. I heard a speech Ernst gave a couple of years ago. He definitely doesn't hold back anything in his opinions. I haven't read his book Chesapeake Bay Blues yet. Hopefully I'll get to it this year. Cheers!

Maryland's dirty secrets
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Howard Ernst
January 24, 2008
www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.chickenfarms24jan24,0,718905.story

The Chesapeake Bay, where we learned to swim, fish and crab, is dying. And despite millions of taxpayer dollars spent on research and reporting, there has been little action to hold polluters accountable for poisoning our beloved bay.

Drive around the country roads of the Delmarva Peninsula and you will find the leading source of the desecration of the bay and its estuarine tributaries: toxic animal waste piled outside chicken houses, sprayed over fields and running into the ditches, creeks and streams that flow to the Chesapeake.

For too long, Maryland's commercial chicken industry has been using the Chesapeake Bay, once a global treasure, as its personal dumping ground for illicit and harmful wastes. Billions of pounds of chicken litter have flowed into the bay in the decades since international poultry conglomerates such as Perdue and Tyson located their multimillion-dollar operations in the Delmarva Peninsula.

The destruction of our waterways by factory farms is illegal under this
nation's environmental laws, which contemplate transparency and cooperative enforcement among the federal government, state environmental agencies and citizens. Yet too many of Maryland's political leaders and poultry industry officials have partnered in a carefully choreographed dance around the many legal tools designed to protect our precious water resources. Together, they've succeeded in undermining all levels of safeguards to ensure that the poultry industry can continue to act in secrecy and without accountability.

On the federal level, the Clean Water Act provides a framework for holding polluters accountable by requiring all dischargers to obtain permits to control harmful substances. Factory chicken producers are no exception. Yet, defying federal law, Maryland holds out as one of the last states in the country not to require these pollution permits for poultry facilities; a draft permit released this month by Maryland's Department of the Environment that is purported to comply with federal laws falls woefully short.

While much of the authority to implement and enforce the Clean Water Act is delegated to state environmental agencies such as MDE, Maryland's 1998 Water Quality Improvement Act wrested oversight of chicken farms away from MDE in favor of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, essentially allowing the poultry industry to self-regulate and the Chesapeake Bay to slowly waste away.

Perhaps most egregiously, Maryland's citizens are being denied their
fundamental rights under this political-industrial compact. Under current law, Maryland chicken farmers must file nutrient management plans with the MDA, describing how they control and dispose of their billion pounds of chicken waste each year. In states across the country, including Virginia and Pennsylvania, these plans are public documents that empower citizens with an invaluable tool to monitor irresponsible behavior and allow for citizen enforcement of environmental regulations. Yet the MDA shields the poultry industry by refusing to make nutrient management plans public. Why the secrecy? Why are there no federally required permits for poultry operations in Maryland? And why can't state citizens gain access to public documents? There are no permits to review and no records to inspect. Maryland's poultry industry is operating under a state-sponsored cloak of darkness designed to protect it from any scrutiny.

It is time to shine a light on improper industry practices. Allowing public access to nutrient management plans is the first step in empowering citizens to protect their communities and waterways. The many chicken growers that are acting responsibly have nothing to fear from the transparency that would be gained by allowing public access to waste-disposal plans. And those in the industry who pollute our waters or fail to develop and properly implement waste-disposal plans would rightfully be subject to enforcement by state and federal government, or citizens, for their illegal activities.

The bay and our local waters are not privately owned commodities.
Maryland's citizens have the right to clean water and healthy communities, and this right depends on public knowledge of where and how the largest industry on the Eastern Shore is disposing of its waste.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Howard Ernst, author of "Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics, and the Struggle to Save the Bay," is senior scholar at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

Groups challenge Virginia on polluting wastewater plant

Dec 10, 2007
by William C. Flook,
The Examiner
Groups challenge state on polluting wastewater plant

Virginia LCV Releases 2008 Issue Briefings

The Virginia League of Conservation Voters recently released its issue briefing book for 2008.

In it, they publish a series of white papers identifying what they consider to be the most important environmental/conservation policy issues facing Virginia. Issues cover the gambit of environmental areas including: climate change, Energy Efficiency, Transportation Funding and VDOT Reform, Wetlands Protection, Land Conservation, Wetlands Protection, and Citizen Boards. Also includes evaluations of proposed legislation and identifies policy solutions for the Commonwealth. Read the briefing book at the link below.

2008 Virginia Conservation Briefing Book

Importance of Minority Participation in Environmentalism

The following is an excerpt from this month's Bay Journal.

We may carry the mantra of improved water quality just for the benefit of living resources a little too far. Of course, we all want a cleaner environment to improve the ecosystem and bolster the populations of blue crabs, oysters, rockfish, brook trout and submerged aquatic vegetation. But we also need to recognize that a cleaner, healthier environment not only benefits the living resources, but also the people in the watershed. It not just a water quality issue, it is a quality of life issue.

We have failed over the years to properly frame the issue and to put it into a context that reaches beyond the traditional environmental community.

-snip-

Full article at link below

Source:
David Bancroft
More minority involvement needed in Bay cleanup
Bay Journal: The Chesapeake Bay Newspaper
Dec 2007

Also, see related BICEP posts:
Environmentalism for All

Maryland Task Force on Minority Participation in the Environmental Community Releases Final Report

Michigan: Governor signs Long Awaited Environmental Justice Executive Directive

VIRGINIA: Arlington County Looks at Creative Solutions to Moving People in Revised Master Transportation Plan

A national model for multimodal mobility and transit-oriented development since at least 1997, Arlington County's Master Transportation Plan (MTP) is being completely revised to make this widely known western Washington, D.C. suburb even more town-like and livable by 2030, with County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson saying the long overdue revision "pulls us into the 21st century with some truly creative solutions to the growing problem of moving people in an efficient, environmentally sensitive way" by further reducing their need to drive cars.



Source:

Arlington County, VA Press Release

Maryland Task Force on Minority Participation in the Environmental Community Releases Final Report

The Task Force was charged with evaluating minority participation in the environmental community and make recommendations for improved participation.

The report addresses four main areas of concerns centered on: 1) the lack of minorities in key policy positions throughout the state government; 2) the lack of attention and funding support that traditional environmental organizations directed at minority issues and concerns; 3) the lack of minority participation in the efforts to protect and restore the Chesapeake and Coastal Bay watersheds, and 4) the lack of public education programs directly connecting minority health issues to the disparate environmental conditions that prevail in some communities. Read the full report here.

Contact:

Vince Leggett
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
410.570.1187
VLeggett@dnr.state.md.us

Taking from land preservation for bay program

From Tom Pelton
Baltimore Sun
Bay and Environment Blog
November 13, 2007

progress to take from one environmental program to give to another?
In this case, does it make sense to take millions of dollars that would be used to preserve forests and fields, and instead hand the cash to farmers and stream reconstruction companies for runoff control projects?

That's what the Maryland Senate, led by President Thomas "Mike" Miller, is proposing to do, and Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration isn't opposed to the concept. But the Maryland House of Delegates isn't yet on board. And some preservationists think it's a bad idea -- a modern form of robbing Peter to pay Paul -- that would undermine a successful and popular environmental program. Moreover, the critics say, preserving forests and open spaces is the best way to filter runoff and stop pollution into the bay. So cutting this effort for the sake of an unproven concept raises questions.

The state Senate recently cast preliminary votes in favor of a bill that would take about $20 million a year that would have gone to the more than 30 year old Program Open Space, which pays to preserve land and build playgrounds. The money would go instead to Senate President Miller's proposed new "Chesapeake Bay 2010 Fund." (Until last week, it was called the "Green Fund," but Miller said that wasn't going to pass, and he nixed the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's idea of imposing $20 fees on homeowners statewide). Under Miller's new version of the bay fund, that $20 million would be combined with another $30 million from motor vehicle taxes. The grand total of $50 million a year would go to projects meant to combat runoff pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. Farmers would get money to refrain from using fertilizer while planting cover crops in the fall and winter, as well as money to plant buffer strips of trees to protect streams. Stream reconstruction companies would also be paid to build stormwater control dams and ponds in urban waterways.

The proposal is evolving, with House leaders suggesting that the money all come from vehicle taxes.

Dru-Schmidt Perkins, executive director of a preservation group called 1000 Friends of Maryland, said that taking money from Program Open Space would hurt efforts to keep pollution from flowing into the bay. If land is not preserved through this program, it often is gobbled up by developers, which means more pollution into the bay, she said.

"This program prevents land from being converted into new development. So it makes no sense to raid this program," said Perkins. "It's completely unacceptable. We know how urgently funds are needed to preserve open spaces. We are millions and millions short in that fund...It does not help Maryland to shortcut one program that helps the environment to help another. It does not work."

She noted that Gov. O'Malley, during his election campaigns last year, repeatedly promised to "fully fund" Program Open Space, and not raid the preservation funds, as governors have for years.

"Local governments urgently need these funds to run recreation programs and have ball fields for their kids," said Perkins.


Rick Abbruzzese, spokesman for Gov. O'Malley, said the governor will work with whatever compromise the House and Senate leaders come up with. But Abbruzesse said the administration doesn't disagree with the concept of taking from Program Open Space to help pay for bay restoration.

"It's a valid use of those dollars," Abbruzzese said. "If you use funds from Program Open Space that restore the Chesapeake Bay, I would argue that you are fulfilling the goal of Program Open Space."

And he added that the senate is also proposing the closing of a loophole on transfer taxes for corporate properties. That could bring $14 million or more a year into Program Open Space, reducing the size of the cut. Local governments could also get some more money through the closing of this loophole, and they could spend this money on parks if they want, he said.

The specifics may be hammered out in the next few days in Annapolis.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/blog/2007/11/taking_from_open_space_for_the.html

Growth in Chesapeake Bay Watershed Outpacing Restoration

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Inspector General (IG) released on Sept. 10 an evaluation report stating that development growth in the Bay watershed is outpacing Bay restoration efforts. The report was written in response to Congressional requests to evaluate how well the EPA is assisting its Chesapeake Bay partners in restoring the estuary.

The Bay watershed's population is over 16.5 million and growing by more than 170,000 residents annually. The rapid rate of population growth and related residential and commercial development means that this is the only pollution sector in the Bay watershed that is still growing.

In the Bay Program's 2006 Bay Health and Restoration Assessment, it was estimated that increases in pollution due to development have surpassed the gains achieved to date from improved landscape design and stormwater management practices. This estimation from Bay Program scientists has now been corroborated by the IG report.

Source: Chesapeake Bay Program
http://www.chesapeakebay.net/newsepaig092607.htm

Floodplain and Stormwater Conference, October 25

The Maryland Association of Floodplain and Stormwater Managers will host their conference on October 25 in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. For more information, please see the registration form.

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Declares Drought Disaster Designation for Entire State Maryland

State and federal officials estimate that farmers in Maryland have lost between 30 and 60 percent of their crops due to the severe dry weather and excessive heat from June 1 that has continued through the summer months. This designation makes Maryland farm operators eligible to apply for low-interest emergency loans from the USDA Farm Service Agency. See Maryland Dept of Ag Aug 22, 2007 press release:

Govenor O'malley Announces Federal Drought Assistance to Help Maryland Farmers

More on Maryland Environmental Design

A new law in Maryland will take effect next year for design standards. The new law requires MDE to establish regulations and a model ordinance that requires implementation of environmental site design to the maximum extent practicable. Developers will be required to demonstrate that ESD has been implemented to the maximum extent practicable and that standard best management practices have been used only where absolutely necessary.
Read it all in the Maryland Society of Professional Engineers latest newsletter here

Anne Arundel County, MD Receives $1 Million From State For Stream Restoration

On Wednesday Gov. Martin O'Malley announced a $1 million grant to help restore part of Cowhide Branch, one of the main tributaries of the troubled Weems Creek. Weems Creek resides in the Severn River watershed in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The entire restoration project will cost $2.3 million, with AA County chipping in $1.3 million.

The Cowhide Branch sub watershed covers about 535 acres, with 52 percent covered by impervious surfaces like parking lots, roads, and roofs. Research shows more than 14 percent of impervious surface in an area seriously impairs a watershed. The Cowhide has suffered serious impairment for many years. Many point to the 1993 incident when a stormwater retention pond adjacent to the stream area failed and collapsed after heavy rains had moved through the area. The pond failure release thousands of gallons of sediment laden water into Weems Creek, then, eventually into the Severn River. This, combined with continuing development, and increased impervious surface area within the watershed, Weems Creek has not had a chance to rejuvenate itself naturally.

I was really glad to hear about the award from the state to help restore this section of the creek. AA County should be commended for the work it has been doing over the past several years with its environment/restoration programs. This project is a small, yet valuable step toward restoring the Chesapeake Bay. But there is a long way to go.

New Maryland DNR Environmental Design Program

Maryland Environmental Design Program
Environmental Design Program provides the business community, local governments and interested citizens with the information and on-site technical assistance they need to identify, implement and evaluate actions to enhance and restore natural resources in and around developed environments.

http://www.dnr.maryland.gov/ed/