This op-ed originally ran in the Baltimore Sun.
Last summer, when floodwaters nearly wiped out Old Ellicott City, many people looked at the damage as bad luck caused by a 500-year storm. The truth is that such storms are no longer rare events. The Northeast United States has experienced a staggering 70 percent increase in intense rainstorms thanks to climate change. Unfortunately, efforts in the Chesapeake Bay region to adapt policies to address these threats are lagging far behind, and without broad and meaningful action, more property damage, injuries and loss of life are likely. Heavier and more frequent rains, among other impacts of climate change, also pose a threat to the massive effort to clean up the bay.
On Wednesday, Maryland's secretaries of the departments of agriculture, natural resources and environment will have a chance to turn the tide. They will be meeting with federal officials and their counterparts from other states in the region to discuss where we stand and where we are headed at the midpoint of the region's 15-year effort to follow a "pollution diet" for the bay.
One of the key questions before Secretaries Joe Bartenfelder, Mark Belton and Ben Grumbles is whether the bay pollution diet should factor in the effects of our changing climate. The science is strong. Increased rainfall will wash more pollution into the bay. Rising sea levels will substantially reduce the estuary's extensive tidal wetlands, reducing their ability to absorb nutrients and sediment pollution. Rain gardens, stream restorations and other "best management practices" will be less effective if they are geared to past rainfall totals rather than to future projections based on robust climate change modeling.
All told, bay experts estimate that climate change will require a modest increase in effort to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution to meet 2025 water quality goals. Further, they maintain that local jurisdictions must take into account climate change when designing and building restoration practices to ensure that restored wetlands or rain gardens, for example, can withstand future sea level rise and intensified storms.
Showing 2,822 results
David Flores | February 28, 2017
This op-ed originally ran in the Baltimore Sun. Last summer, when floodwaters nearly wiped out Old Ellicott City, many people looked at the damage as bad luck caused by a 500-year storm. The truth is that such storms are no longer rare events. The Northeast United States has experienced a staggering 70 percent increase in […]
Evan Isaacson | February 27, 2017
The ascension of Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ushers in a new chapter in the long story of cooperative federalism in the administration of U.S. environmental laws. Pruitt's words and actions as the Attorney General of Oklahoma suggest that, as much as any other issue, idea, or policy, federalism will […]
Daniel Farber | February 21, 2017
At a national meeting of state utility regulators, the head of the group recently said that the Clean Power Plan was basically dead, but this might not matter because “arguably, you’re seeing market-based decarbonization” due to technological changes. Case in point: Texas. Market trends are pushing Republican stronghold Texas toward a cleaner grid. ERCOT, which operates […]
William Funk | February 14, 2017
The so-called Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act) has already passed the House this year, as it did in previous sessions. The current version, which amends the Congressional Review Act (CRA), differs somewhat from previous versions but still suffers from a fatal flaw – it is unconstitutional. The current REINS […]
David Driesen | February 6, 2017
To carry out their duty under the Constitution, senators must ask themselves the following question when considering a president’s cabinet nominee: Will this person faithfully execute the laws, even if the president wishes to ignore them and carry out a contrary policy? Unless the answer to that question is a clear “Yes,” they must reject […]
Evan Isaacson | February 2, 2017
This week, the Chesapeake Bay Program released its annual Bay Barometer report. Along with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's annual State of the Bay and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Bay Report Card, the Bay Program's report closes out the assessments of the Bay for 2016 (for what it's worth, CPR Member […]
Matt Shudtz | January 31, 2017
As long as Donald Trump is in the White House, progressives should harbor no delusions that the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going to be a wool-socks-in-Birkenstocks tree hugger. Scott Pruitt is certainly no such individual. But nor is he a person with the experience, depth of understanding of the agency’s programs, […]
Amy Sinden | January 31, 2017
Remember how Donald Trump bragged he was going to run the country like a business? Imagine if before Trump could open a new casino, he was bound by a rule to close two existing casinos, and the costs of the new casino couldn’t exceed the cost savings from no longer operating the old ones. Would this […]
David Driesen | January 30, 2017
Donald Trump based his candidacy on the claim that he would serve working-class people who established politicians have neglected. He promised $1 trillion of infrastructure investment over 10 years, which could generate a lot of blue-collar employment while potentially repairing crumbling bridges and roads, replacing antiquated wastewater treatment systems (in Flint and elsewhere), and creating […]