As government at all levels girds to increase efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay, one of the biggest challenges to improving water quality is the continuing growth of people living within the six-state watershed.
While many see a growing population as a symbol of economic stability - see my prior post - the newcomers consume more land, drive more and produce more waste and pollution. Indeed, all the bay cleanup efforts to date have done little more than prevent it from getting worse in the face of an expanding population, now 17 million and counting.
So how do we expect to revive the bay's vitality - and maintain it - as long as more and more people flock to its watershed? A forum Friday organized by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future tackles that question.
Speakers include Brad Heavner, state director of Environment Maryland, Dr. Brian Schwartz, professor of environmental health sciences at Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and Tom Horton, author of multiple books on the Chesapeake, former Sun reporter and columnist, and an advocate for a "no-growth" policy to preserve the bay.
The session, open to the public, will be from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Sheldon Hall, Hopkins School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street. For directions and more, go here.
(2006 Bay Bridge walk, Baltimore Sun photo by Jerry Jackson.)