A Time To Reflect; a Time to Move Forward
Keynote Address by Sarah J. Taylor-Rogers, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary, Department of Natural Resources
On behalf of Governor Glendening, welcome to the Eastern shore
of Maryland. The presentations made during this workshop as well
as your deliberations and recommendations are important and timely.
We are once again at the threshold, as we were in the 1970s, facing
the decline of the Chesapeake Bay. In the 1980s, business, government,
and citizens crossed that threshold and aggressively began addressing
causes for the decline in the bay resources. With specific problem
areas identified from the Environmental Protection Agency study
conducted in the late 1970s, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the
Environmental Protection Agency formed the Chesapeake Bay Program.
Working together under a series of agreements; 1983, 1987, 1992
amendments, strategies, directives, and recently enacted priorities,
steps were and are being taken to reduce nutrient pollution in
the bay and its tributaries. In Maryland we have reduced phosphorous
by 38% and nitrogen by 26%. These reductions have helped improve
the water clarity needed by bay grasses which are critical to
the life cycle of crabs and juvenile fish. Furthermore, the long
term effort to prevent toxic contaminants from entering the bay
have also shown promise. Toxic loads from industrial point sources
in Baltimore Harbor have declined by more than 90% in the past
20 years. Integrated pest management has been found to be a cost
effective means to control crop damage while reducing toxic loads
from agriculture. And, a multi-directed approach of preserving
wetlands, saving forests, expanding wild lands, protecting habitat
and upgrading treatment plants, along with reducing nutrient and
toxic pollution, will continue to improve the viability of the
bay and its resources. However, in order to continue moving forward,
vigilance and attention to these approaches will need to be augmented
to include other changes that we are experiencing and which are
subtly affecting the bay.
The state's population is projected to increase by 1.3 million
people between 1990 and 2020, a 28% increase. This is significant
because the bay system and its resources will experience additional
stress. This is also significant because it is this very growth
and development occurring all over the world that has primarily
been attributed as accelerating climatological changes; evidenced
by sea level rise in the bay as well as intensified and more numerous
storm occurrences.
Growth management is something that we have been wrestling with
for years and we have taken some good first steps at trying to
address it. In 1984 the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Program was
enacted, identifying a 1000 foot strip of land along Maryland's
tidal waters as extremely important to protect water quality and
habitat. It was recognized that this strip of land was being developed
and disturbed at such a fast rate that continued encroachment
of that type and nature would eventually hurt the bay unless changes
were made at the local level to the way development and disturbance
occurred. The Growth Act was passed in 1992, affording local governments
the opportunity to take a future look at identifying lands of
a sensitive nature where no development should occur, to areas
for growth that would provide streamlined opportunities for development.
While these are exemplary programs, more needs to be done. We
need to change directions in several ways and grow smarter and
preserve one of our most valuable assets, our local neighborhoods,
as well as protect resources that we may never be able to restore
once they are built upon or used up.
We are adept at asking the questions of: How will we grow? Where
will we grow? How will we continue to support business development
while at the same time protecting our natural resources? We have
not been as adept and consistent in linking these questions to
include and reflect the subtle changes occurring around us - those
evidenced by climate change.
Dr. Stephen Leatherman, in his publication entitled Vanishing
Lands, Sea Level, Society and the Chesapeake Bay, points out
that we must be prepared for a 3 foot overall sea level rise in
the next 100 years. This item of information should influence
where and how new communities exist and help us determine how
long older communities will be able to survive. This item of information,
when factored into the resource management and water quality models,
should enable us to figure out what additional steps we will need
to take to make sure that our bay resources remain viable. And,
this item of information ought to be able to help us determine
what our biggest business on the eastern shore, agriculture, can
do to maintain productivity while dealing with higher water tables
and increased flooding. And all of this evokes the question of
where do we invest our limited financial resources in dealing
with what has been termed as "the inevitable."
Given the group assembled today and the wealth of knowledge that
you possess in living with this issue on a day to day basis and
in researching it, these questions are posed:
1) How can we bring this issue more into the limelight so that
our policy makers, planners and managers keep this in the forefront
of their planning and decision making?
2) What do you believe to be the specific consequences for
Maryland as a result of these climatological changes that all
of you can agree on?
3) What time frame would you suggest as being sensible in which
to begin to address these changes (consequences)?
4) What practical steps and ideas can be taken at the local
level and at the state level that will enable Maryland and Virginia
to cross this threshold and successfully address this issue?
5) Should there be a state-wide policy providing specific guidelines
pertaining to sea level rise, shore erosion, and storm damage
that state agencies should evaluate before making final financial
and planning decisions? And if so, what would that policy look
like?
Finally, I believe that we have several components that may comprise
parts of an overall approach toward addressing the trends that
we see happening (i.e., use of dune and setback lines on the coast,
preference of non-structural shore erosion techniques to structural
ones in the bay, the use of transferable development rights by
some local governments to protect highly erodible soils and eroding
shoreline areas from development). How do we expand upon these
components and incorporate them into a comprehensive approach
for dealing with these climatological changes? What more is needed?
To conclude from an article entitled "Trouble in Paradise" by
Jack Lewis: EPA Journal Vol. 15 (1989): "Only by striking
and sustaining a proper balance between man and nature can the
economies and the ecosphere of America's sea coasts continue to
be life sustaining sources of plenty."
I challenge you to answer these questions and to help us strike
a path into the future across the threshold.
