The Environment in Focus

After a spring of wretched downpours and cold, cloudy weather, summer has finally begun -- at least unofficially -- and the bullfrogs are singing its praise.I slide my kayak into the lake at Tuckahoe State Park on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It’s a sunny, breezy afternoon, and the lake is fringed by swaying reeds and the arrow-shaped leaves of water plants -- called Tuckahoe – whose roots were an important source of food for Native Americans.

I was paddling down the Big Gunpowder Falls near Sparks, Maryland, when I saw a great blue heron standing on a log in the river, tall and elegant. As I drifted closer, it launched into the air and flew over my head, its six-foot wingspan and knife-like beak all the more impressive at close range.Nearby, atop the riverbank, was a house. I thought: what is the economic value of this heron to that homeowner? Would he be able to sell his house for $505,000 instead of $500,000 if a buyer saw the heron before agreeing to the price? Or maybe the location and the view of the river are all that matter in the fast-moving world of real estate transactions.

In a laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, zoologist Rob Aguilar examines bottles containing preserved specimens of an astonishing array of different varieties of aquatic life.“We have speckled swimming crabs, long finned squid, jackknife clam, ponderous arc,” said Aguilar, scrutinizing a thick mussel with a serrated shell. “This is a fish-gill isopod. And this is a big marine leach that prefers to be on skates and rays.”

Tom Pelton reports on environmental matters

Last month, during an Earth Day event staged with timber industry executives at a school in Georgia, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the Trump Administration would officially consider the clearcutting and burning of forests to be good for the climate.The administration declared that burning wood – or “biomass,” as it’s called in industry jargon – to generate electricity is “carbon neutral.” Why? Because the carbon dioxide pollution that wood-fueled power plants release will allegedly be balanced out by the industry’s replanting of trees. This “carbon neutral” designation means EPA will grant the rapidly-growing biomass industry exemptions from any future carbon dioxide pollution control rules.One of the biggest beneficiaries of the policy shift is a Bethesda, Maryland-based company called Enviva Biomass. Enviva is the world’s largest producer of industrial wood pellets, and it owns manufacturing plants in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida.

Kevin Omland, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, stands below a highway overpass towering above a wooded stream valley in the Patapsco Valley State Park, just southwest of Baltimore.He aims his binoculars up at a scraggly nest of sticks that ravens built in the steel beams beneath Interstate 195. “Give yourself a second and you can see three young,” Omland said. “They are hanging out there quite peacefully. Not flapping, maybe stretching a little bit.” “Wow!---- I replied. ----Three large, black, sinister looking dudes sitting up on their nest under the bridge -- kind of ominous.----“Tom, you’re squinting incorrectly. Those are beautiful creatures,” Omland said. “They are going to have marvelous iridescent plumage in just a few days.”

Last week, this program discussed the spending and mismanagement scandals plaguing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and how they are increasing pressure on President Trump to fire EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.But if Pruitt goes, who is next in line to run EPA? The U.S. Senate recently held hearings to confirm EPA’s new deputy administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who will automatically step up should his boss step down.Wheeler, an environmental lawyer from Ohio, emphasized his work as EPA attorney, from 1991 to 1995. “The environment today is cleaner than it has ever been in modern times,” Wheeler said. “As a nation, we have made tremendous progress since the 1970’s, and we have to build upon that progress.”

Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt appeared before a U.S. House committee to answer questions about several scandals that have marked his administration.“Good morning, Administrator Pruitt, and welcome back to the environment subcommittee,” said Congressman John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois, chairman of the Environment Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland, a Democrat, was among those who grilled the EPA Administrator. Pruitt is a former Oklahoma attorney general who works in close concert with his state’s oil and gas industry to roll back environmental regulations that impact that industry.“We’ve trying to keep up with the ethical lapses of the Trump Administration, and which I will tell you is kind of a full-time job,” Sarbanes said. “And you certainly have been at the center of some of that focus. To date, five independent federal investigations have been initiated at this committee’s request, and more than eight independent federal reviews.”

The Maryland Department of the Environment recently released its annual report on the agency’s efforts to enforce environmental laws in the state.Tim Wheeler, associate editor and editor for the Bay Journal, examined the state’s water pollution enforcement numbers as part of his ongoing scrutiny of the bay cleanup.

In a park in West Baltimore, a spectacular arched stone bridge rises over a stream called the Gwynns Falls, which flows into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay.Although the bridge is beautiful and trees beside the stream are blossoming, when you look at the stream, you see that the Gwynns Falls is troubled. A whirpool of sludge twists under the bridge, with a gyre of Styrofoam cups and plastic bottles.