The Environment in Focus

Last week on this program, we examined the environmental record of Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan as he runs for re-election on November 6.This week, we’ll look at the environmental platform and history of his Democratic challenger, Ben Jealous. Jealous has never held an elected office. But he’s a former Rhodes Scholar, newspaper reporter and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.At the NAACP, Jealous started the organization’s climate justice program, which emphasizes that minorities and lower income people are often hit hardest by flooding, extreme weather, air pollution, and other impacts of burning fossil fuels.As candidate for Governor, at the top of Jealous’ list of environmental priorities is to have Maryland join California and Hawaii as states that plan to stop using coal and natural gas to generate electricity and switch to 100 percent solar, wind and other clean fuels.

A weekly perspective on the issues and people changing Maryland's natural world

With Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan running for re-election in a majority Democratic state on Nov. 6th, he’s emphasizing his record on the environment as an area to claim a moderate legacy, and to differentiate himself from Republican President Trump, who is highly unpopular in the state.Hogan’s environmental secretary, Ben Grumbles, highlights Governor Hogan’s efforts to reduce pollution into the Chesapeake Bay, including the tons of sediment pouring over the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River.“I would say, number one, would be the strong, bipartisan support for Chesapeake Bay restoration,” said Grumbles, asked to list the governor's top environmental accomplishments. “And I have to fold into that not only the governor’s record funding for the Chesapeake Bay restoration, from Program Open Space, to the 2010 Trust Fund, to full and robust support for the Bay Restoration Fund and the other funding programs. But it’s also about being a strong supporter of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL.”The Bay TMDL – or Total Maximum Daily Load – is the set of EPA pollution limits that the Obama Administration imposed for Chesapeake region states in 2010. And this is where Hogan’s claims of success become as murky as the bay itself has been this summer, with the record-breaking rainfall and large amounts of runoff pollution.

A weekly perspective on the issues and people changing Maryland's natural world

I’m on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, near Denton, standing in a forested wetlands surrounded by miles of corn and soybean fields. Here, in this little island of biodiversity, sweetgum trees and bald cypresses rise up from coffee-colored water.A gentle wind sways the branches, leading spots of light and shadow in a dance over the surface of the water, illuminating tufts of grasses and rotting logs that are home to salamanders and frogs.This place is what is called a “Delmarva Pothole” or “Delmarva Bay.” They are small, isolated, fresh water wetlands that are connected only beneath the ground to nearby streams and rivers.Although few outsiders have ever heard of them, biologists say these potholes – which locals call “whale wallows” -- provide invaluable ecological services for the Chesapeake Bay by filtering runoff pollution being washed by rain off of farm fields.

A weekly perspective on the issues and people changing Maryland's natural world

A white ash tree stands beside my front porch in Baltimore -- its trunk nearly as thick as I am tall, and its branches stretching at least three times the height of my three-story house, shading one side of my roof to the other.It’s about 200 years old, and it started growing back when this section of the city was still farmland beside a stream, decades before the Civil War.

Maryland has experienced the rainiest year on record in more than a century, with the 43 inches falling through August 15 the most since 1889.So much stormwater has been flooding down the Susquehanna River into the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay that the Exelon Power company opened several of the flood gates on the Conowingo Dam, unleashing a torrent of sediment and pollution that had been trapped behind the dam.

I had launched into the Patapsco River from Fort Armistead Park near the base of the Francis Scott Key Bridge south of Baltimore. Truck traffic roared overhead on Route 695. Ahead of me, the morning sun sparkled silver in a rippling path toward the old Sparrows Point steel mill. Behind my back rose the smokestacks of a pair of coal-fired power plants, a chemical factory, sewage plant, and the mounded back of the city’s Quarantine Road landfill.But the sky was blue, the breeze was balmy, and out on the water I felt away from it all.

A weekly perspective on the issues and people changing Maryland's natural world