For the past two days the Choose Clean Water Coalition has been holding its fourth annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland -- home of the National Aquarium, the last baseball team to field four twenty-game winners (there have been only two), Attman's corned beef and, of course, Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.
The Coalition is a collection of non-profits that have united together to advocate for cleaning up streams and rivers that flow to the Chesapeake Bay. PennFuture is a member of the CCWC Steering Committee and as state lead, we coordinate the work of various non-profits in Pennsylvania whose individual missions and work contributes to cleaning waters in the Bay watershed.
The Bay has long been polluted - its water quality fails to be good enough to provide the aquatic uses protected under the federal Clean Water Act. As a result, the six states that makeup the Bay watershed are under a legal obligation to put in place a complex program of cleanup plans designed to clean up the Bay. Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River watershed contributes fifty percent of fresh water that enters the Bay - so Pennsylvanians will play a critical role in achieving the goals of the Clean Water Act.
The goal of Bay cleanup will have local benefits to Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River itself has shown signs that its health is in serious trouble. By cleaning up the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvanians will benefit the local economy while benefitting the larger Bay watershed.
The pollutants that need to be removed from the bay are nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment. Not surprisingly, farmlands account for 43% of nitrogen, 45% of phosphorous and 60% of sediment pollution in the Bay. But in addition to farmlands, recent concerns have been raised about nutrient and sediment contributions being made from deforested areas associated with shale gas development in the northern tier counties of Pennsylvania that drain to the Susquehanna River.
One of the primary goals of the Choose Clean Water Coalition is to share information and coordinate strategies among citizen non-profits in order to ensure that the federal and state governments that are responsible for implementing these cleanup plans do so successfully and on time.
