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Thursday, August 14, 2014

In One Month, The Chesapeake Bay’s ‘Most Critical’ Pollution Issue Could Be Unsolvable

For more than 30 years, states and environmental groups have been fighting to clean up the heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay. But according to some, the tremendous effort will all be for nothing if one issue isn’t addressed soon: the Conowingo Dam.

“The Conowingo Dam is a sediment trap,” said Chip MacLeod, general counsel at the Clean Chesapeake Coalition. “It’s been in existence for 85 years, and it’s never been dredged or maintained. If we do nothing to dredge that sediment, the bay is doomed.”

Today, approximately 175 million tons of polluted sediment sits trapped behind the Conowingo hydroelectric power dam in northeastern Maryland, a product of nearly a century of build-up from clay, silt, fertilizer runoff, and sewage plant runoff from Pennsylvania and New York. The sediment — enough to fill about 80 football stadiums — contains phosphorus, nitrogen, and other harmful nutrients that can cloud waters, sprout toxic algae bacteria, harm ecosystems, kill aquatic life, and sully drinking water.

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6 comments:

  1. this article and the video you posted last week should go viral. everyone needs to see and hear this info over and over and over until they GET IT.

    EPA and all you sucklings; leave the rest of us alone. go after the culprits that continue to pollute our waterways. AGAIN; leave us alone.

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  2. Don't worry, Babs will be right on this... and O'Malley, Brown, etc.

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  3. Once the deal making is done the dredging will have to be taxpayer funded.

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  4. 8:23 - "Prepare for Ludicrous Fees"!

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  5. So, this is what killed generation after generations of seagulls on the bay and tunnel.

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  6. Do we always start out attempting to do the right thing and end up in this kind of mess....or.... do these folks honestly sneak around planning to destroy the bay?

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