Chesapeake Bay Virginia’s top environmental issue

Virginia, along with other states and the federal government, has been trying for more than two decades to restore the Chesapeake Bay.

Today, the bay is still in critical condition.

We know that coal-burning power plants add pollution to the bay. So does development. And yet our state continues to grow, and so does our demand for electricity. The Henrico County-based Old Dominion Electric Cooperative is considering building a 1,500-megawatt, coal-burning power plant in Surry County in eastern Virginia.

In January, a new governor inherits the task of balancing Virginia's environmental and energy challenges.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch recently convened a panel of experts to hear their ideas on dealing with Virginia's top environmental issues.

Members of the panel were:

Moderator Cricket White, Hope in the Cities; Rich Batiuk, associate director for science, federal Chesapeake Bay Program; Glen Besa, director, the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club; Robert Burnley, former director, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality; Blue Crump, owner, Cityspace Solar, a business specializing in renewable energy; Barrett Hardiman, vice president of regulatory affairs, Home Builders Association of Virginia; Martha Moore, director of governmental relations, Virginia Farm Bureau; Jack Reasor, president and CEO, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative; Albert Spells, Virginia fisheries coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Joseph Tannery, deputy director, Virginia office of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation; Dennis H. Treacy, vice president for environmental and corporate affairs, Smithfield Foods Inc.; Michael Ward, executive director, Virginia Petroleum Council.

Here are excerpts from the forum.

Va.'s top environmental issue

BATIUK: I think one of the key issues facing Virginia is probably . . . growth and development [and how it can contribute to pollution]. REASOR: Meeting electrical needs and energy generation and energy conservation . . . to meet the development that may or may not occur, clearly is a very important issue. BURNLEY: I think air quality is the biggest [issue] facing us in Virginia right now. . . . It has a direct impact on human health. It has a direct impact on water quality. It has a direct impact on . . . other aspects of our environment. HARDIMAN: I would say that 85 percent of the work that I've been doing the last year and a half has had to do with water quality, and particularly the Chesapeake Bay and the health of the bay, and how development fits into that. So I think that the Chesapeake Bay is probably the biggest issue currently facing Virginia. TANNERY: I would agree, the Chesapeake Bay is the biggest issue facing us. But in tandem with that, I think it would also be sustainability. Figuring out how we're going to move forward economically, and in a way that doesn't create residual impacts on the environment that, in the long term, do us more harm than good. BESA: I think the No. 1 issue . . . is climate change. The effects may be borne a little bit later, but the action has to be taken today. WARD: I think energy needs are everything. Wind, solar, geothermal . . . nuclear. All of the above. CRUMP: I think the most pressing issue is the absence of a clean-energy economy. TREACY: In Virginia, we uniquely have the Chesapeake Bay and water issues at the forefront. Its impact on agriculture is something that's yet to be explored. How are you going to deal with agriculture contributions to water quality? How are you going to deal with runoff? How are you going to deal with the continuing need for [sewage] discharges in the watershed? MOORE: It would be a balance of water-quality [issues and] looking at what the long-term impact of those solutions are. SPELLS: I think it would be growth and development, and its relationship to water-quality issues. . . . What we do in the uplands impacts what happens in the aquatic environment.

The Chesapeake Bay

BATIUK: We're actually dealing with a patient that is still in critical condition. . . . The bay would be a lot worse . . . off if we hadn't been doing [things to help address pollution]. We've got water-quality issues, in terms of lack of oxygen. Lack of underwater grasses, although they've come back somewhat. We still see harmful [algae] blooms. . . . We've got fisheries issues. . . . But we're still growing here in the bay watershed as well. We're expecting another 1.3 million . . . people in the next decade. A lot of those are going to be Virginians. BURNLEY: We have done a lot. . . . What's lacking, it seems to me, is the political will to really attack some of these other, more difficult issues [such as polluted runoff and air pollution]. I think nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment [are the primary causes of the bay's problems. It's] coming out of pipes, waste-water treatment plants, industrial and municipal, and washing off yards and city streets and farms. BESA: [There is a] lack of enforcement [of pollution rules and a] lack of real standards, to get at the root cause, which is basically development . . . and also agriculture. MOORE: People say voluntary efforts haven't worked. I really disagree with that. And the reason I disagree is that we have not had adequate, consistent and reliable funding for the agriculture best-management practices program. This is a program which allows farmers to put best management, science-based practices to improve water quality on their farm. [Also, many farmers' voluntary conservation measures] aren't being accounted for in the whole formula of determining what is the health of the bay. HARDIMAN: Addressing the development side of that . . . we're compensating, or being expected to compensate, for 400 years of development in Virginia. I mean, until the mid-'80s, there was no such thing as stormwater pollution reduction. I mean, stormwater control, for a long time, through the '50s, '60s and '70s, was, you get the water out of the neighborhood as fast as you can to prevent flooding, and you get it into the waters. . . . And now we're having to correct for those issues. And we recognize that that was the wrong way to go. But we think that there's been a target painted on our back.

What needs to be done?

BATIUK: The Chesapeake needs to go on a pretty strict [pollution] diet. . . . The track we're on now, we estimate it's going to be 30, 40, 50 years before we get there. . . . We've got to figure out a different solution than just, "Let's try to do a little bit more of the same." TREACY: My fear is that we are describing the problem as insurmountable. . . . I think we need to recognize our successes in the bay. . . . I think that what we really need is a focus on outcomes -- maybe even a Chesapeake Bay czar approach, if you will, somebody who brings everybody together and makes them accountable. CRUMP: We're flushing toilets with drinking water, as opposed to using rainwater recapturing. . . . I think stopping the way that we're using water is probably going to have an effect. WARD: As far as the impact of our industry on the bay, it's fairly minimal. . . . There is a refinery down in Yorktown, off of the York River . . . that's been there for -- gosh, close to 40 years . . . But there's an example of where there's been a very significant presence and no significant problems through the years. REASOR: It seems to me that it comes down to the same issue that we run across so many times. And that is, how much development do we want, versus the impact it has on the environment? MOORE: I think until you can even have the discussion about enforcement, you've got to coordinate what you're already doing . . . because you don't really know what you're doing and you can't measure the progress. And that has to be the first step. TREACY: There are so many programs that we don't even know what they're doing. There are so many plans that are on shelves in offices all over the Chesapeake Bay region. We've got to rethink it and see if we can't get a little bit better coordination. BATIUK: I think that a restored Chesapeake means a restored neighborhood [with more trees, places to walk and cleaner streams]. It's all tied in together. HARDIMAN: The problem that we run into as a development industry is that we get regulations on all sides when we are trying to develop a piece of property. It's not necessarily that we want to put curb and gutter in, but the locality requires it. We don't want 36-foot-wide streets, the locality requires it. We don't want 10 parking spots per square foot at a commercial site -- the locality requires it. . . . So you can't reduce your . . . footprint. . . . We're concerned about the expense of phosphorus and sediment that we're being asked to reduce. . . . If we can take a development, and then take some of the money that we would have spent on on-site management, and go out to an older neighborhood and retrofit it with stormwater management facilities, that's a much more effective way of capturing a lot more runoff. REASOR: This idea of . . . political reality doesn't mean just in the legislature. . . . Part of it is the whole citizenry. I mean, does the citizenry want to make those changes? Are they willing to do that?

A sense of urgency

BATIUK: Some of us are looking for a Chesapeake that we saw in the 1950s . . . not a John Smith pristine one. Something that's not outside of our reach. But I think also, a system like this -- you can only [stretch it so far, like a rubber band]. At some point, it's not going to be able to sort of come back. BURNLEY: I think there is an urgency. I think if you would ask . . . the watermen who have made a living on the Chesapeake Bay, catching oysters and crabs and fish and everything for generations, they'd tell you something needs to happen pretty quickly or that whole culture is going to be lost.

Energy concerns

REASOR: I think the big issue . . . is the continuing growth of power needs in this state. And a lot of that goes back to development. But not all of it is development. A lot of it is just part of our society . . . and then it becomes, "So how do you meet that demand?" And I think you have to do it at least two or three different ways. And probably the best way we can do that is by energy conservation practices, and encouraging people to make changes in their lifestyle, basically, in how they use electricity. Secondly, we have to work on demand response, and encouraging [businesses] to do a better job in how they have a need for electricity, and how they grow their business and their industry. . . . Then you have to look at, how do we generate the future power that we're going to need? And certainly from our perspective, you have to look at all the alternatives out there . . . whether it be wind, whether it be solar, biomass, coal, nuclear. All of those have to be part of the mix going forward. TREACY: I think it's important for your readers to know that all these forms of energy have extraordinary permit requirements associated with them. It's the job of [government agencies] to make sure that they require state-of-the-art pollution control on these things. TANNERY: I agree that these facilities have to get permits. But that doesn't always translate into meaning that the environment is protected. . . . Take the bay, for example. It's overloaded. It can't handle any more nitrogen going into the system. Yet it's quite feasible that [the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative] could get a permit that allows several million pounds of nitrogen to go up into the air [from a new power plant] and fall into the bay. BURNLEY: [Pollution is] bad for people, it's bad for the environment, it's bad for the economy. When the air's polluted, economic development stops. Nobody wants to bring new industry to an area that's got a low quality of life. REASOR: The problem we run into . . . is that practically all the renewable [fuels] that have any hope of being viable in this region are intermittent types of renewable. And there is a difference between intermittent power and base load [continually available] power. And we have to have both. . . . Base load generation really only comes from either a nuclear facility or a coal facility, or in some limited instances, a gas facility. And all of those have environmental issues, there's no question about it. SPELLS: You're going to need a variety of approaches here to meet our energy needs. But I think the people need to understand, too, that we will not meet those needs just by building [power plants]. We have to change our lifestyles and how we use our electricity. You know, when that incandescent bulb blows out, how about getting a fluorescent one? [But] there's trade-offs on whatever we do. Because in those fluorescent bulbs is mercury. TANNERY: Wind and other sources can provide the base load power. It's a question of scale. . . . Here in Virginia, we have . . . about Class 6 winds, right off the Atlantic Coast, right off of Virginia Beach. That alone has been estimated in the Virginia Energy Plan to be able to provide 28,000 megawatts. That's about -- that, with land supply wind -- could equal about 20 ODEC Surry power plants. BESA: I think we're on the cusp of a new energy paradigm. . . . And we have incredible opportunities to make these investments, to change this energy paradigm, to create clean-energy jobs, and to, at the same time, address this critical issue of climate change. It, to me, is sort of the elephant in the room here that few people have talked about. . . . If you have a 1-meter sea-level rise [from climate change] in the next hundred years, which is basically probably optimistically what we can expect . . . you're going to lose half the wetlands in the bay. CRUMP: We can have a huge impact with these [renewable power] sources, while still working in conjunction with base load power. But, you know, one of the misconceptions that I always hear is, "Well, don't you need to be in the Southwest? Isn't the sun that much more powerful in California and Arizona, and things like that?" And the reality is . . . Germany has more solar per capita than anywhere in the world. TANNERY: The time to act is now. I think from what we've talked about with the bay, it's just one great example of how . . . we're headed down the wrong path, and it's time to rethink and change. I'm a little worried that people are viewing the economy and the environment as mutually exclusive. I don't think that needs to be the case. [A] degraded environment has significant economic impacts that can't be ignored. WARD: Energy and the environment are linked, from here on out. .. Every time we think about . . . the next energy project . . . the environment has to be taken in consideration. At the same time, when you talk about protecting the environment, you've got to think of it in terms of: How is that accomplished and we still maintain jobs, the economy, our lifestyles, and provide the energy that's needed? SPELLS: It's important that we, nontraditional partners, sit and talk with each other. . . . And it's going to take carrots and sticks as well. Some people are going to respond to those incentives. Some people won't respond until you hit them with a stick. And I think there's a place for each of those things. Dialogue, education. The carrot and the stick. I think we'll be OK.