Stormwater management and pollution reduction have been an uphill battle for the municipalities of Maryland State over the last decade or so.
Particularly in the older cities, stormwater picks up a lot of contaminants when it runs out of the city streets and back into the environment, which has led to some attractive solutions over the years.
In the past, Baltimore has tackled the issue by introducing high-tech street sweepers that vacuum dirt and garbage off the streets periodically, which helps some but doesn’t completely solve the problem.
It is an expensive solution with its flaws, such as when people don’t move their cars on the days when the streets are being swept.
Some of the Baltimore counties have been actively involved in stream restoration, hoping that the ecosystem will be more balanced if stormwater can run off into those streams within the cities.
Others have installed stormwater detention ponds and treatment plants to deal with the polluted runoff. However, these solutions are not effective enough to address the problem.
The Baltimore Sun’s article “New report faults Maryland for failing to plan for stormwater pollution in Chesapeake Bay” reports the Environmental Integrity Project’s (EIP) 2020 assessment finding, which says that the persistent stormwater pollution stems from the lack of enforcement of water pollution laws in Maryland over the last decades and the lack of the state government’s plan and funding.
The article says that Maryland and Pennsylvania’s lax implementation of environmental laws and regulations has allowed stormwater runoff containing nitrogen pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay, detrimental to its aquatic life and human health and safety. Both states are responsible for 90% of stormwater pollution in the Bay.
It calls on the federal, state and local governments to respond immediately and save the health of the Bay.
Two years from the EIP’s report, Maryland’s enforcement of water pollution laws has gone from bad to worse, according to the Bay Journal’s report, “Water pollution inspections, enforcement hit 20-year low in Maryland, report finds“.
Some excerpts from the report are as follows:
- A coalition group composed of Canter for Progressive Reform, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Chesapeake Legal Alliance and Environmental Integrity Project has released an “enforcement scorecard” of the Maryland Department of the Environment’s (MDE) compliance and enforcement activities.
- According to their scorecard, the MDE has a 39% decline in water-related inspection and a 67% drop in enforcement actions. The lax enforcement has increased non-compliance of up to 75% of all processing plants, auto salvage yards, and landfills from 2017 to 2020. Though nearly half of them were repeat offenders, the coalition report says that only 14 formal enforcement actions were taken.
- The MDE’s weakened enforcement actions are due to the budget and staffing cuts that the agency has suffered in the past two decades. State government funding has also declined by one-third, according to the report.
- Doug Myers, a senior Maryland scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, says, “We can’t fix pollution problems that aren’t being identified due to lack of inspections and enforcement by MDE”.
- Two new bills are pending to boost Maryland’s enforcement of state laws. The first will give it more freedom to pursue violators and increase penalties for some offenders, and the second will compel the MDE to hire more staff and conduct more inspections.
The long-term management of stormwater networks and associated environmental protection is complex, multifaceted, and inter-agency.
These complex issues are increasing with ongoing climate change effects.
Good infrastructure management of stormwater networks involves a broad and holistic view of the networks’ purpose, outcomes, and impacts in managing storm flooding and environmental impacts.
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