Accelerating the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay could generate thousands of jobs and yield hundreds of millions of dollars in income, revenue, property values and other benefits, says a new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
"The Chesapeake Bay can be a fertile source of jobs as well as crabs and rockfish," contends Kim Coble, Maryland executive director for the Annapolis-based environmental group. On the other hand, she adds, the estuary's long decline already has cost the region economically, and could cost still more if left unaddressed.
The report comes on the day that Maryland, the District of Columbia and other bay watershed states are supposed to submit their final plans to the Environmental Protection Agency for boosting their bay cleanup efforts. The EPA hopes to use those plans in finalizing its "pollution diet" for restoring the Chesapeake's water quality by year's end.
But it also comes amid a chorus of complaints from farmers, developers and local and state officials across the six-state region that increasing bay cleanup efforts will cost untold billions they can ill afford to pay in this recession. Critics warn the EPA's pollution diet will bust strained budgets, require tax increases and generally cause economic devastation. Lawsuits challenging federal authority to order states to boost bay cleanup efforts appear likely.
Even in its degraded condition, the bay still is a significant job and income generator, the report says. Though the seafood industry is a shadow of its historic self, it still employed about 11,000 people in Maryland who earned $150 million in 2008. About 7,200 people worked in recreational fishing, while recreational boating supported 35,025 jobs in an industry estimated to be worth more than $2 billion annually.
Installing pollution controls and restoring lost wildlife habitat can generate and sustain jobs, the report contends. A University of Virginia study projected that 12,000 temporary one-year jobs could be created if that state's farmers took sufficient steps to reduce polluted runoff from their lands by planting trees alongside streams and sowing cover crops in their fields in winter.
Similarly, the foundation says, upgrading sewage treatment plants supports hundreds of construction jobs, while upgrading residential septic systems also provides work for installers, electricians and other trades people. An example of that cited in the report is Mayer Brothers, Inc., in Elkridge, which reportedly avoided having to lay off employees when it won a contract from the Maryland Department of the Environment to help furnish new septic technology. And an Arbutus company employs 115 fulltime plus 100 subcontractors in doing work to mitigate for the storm-water pollution produced by development, it notes.
Better water quality also should boost property values, the report argues, pointing to a study suggesting a six percent increase along Maryland's western shore if waterfrtont bacteria levels could be reduced to safely swimmable levels.
There's no hiding the fact that cleaning up the bay costs money, and increasing the effort is likely to cost more. But the foundation report argues there's an upside to that expense that cleanup critics are overlooking.
(Construction under way to upgrade Baltimore's Patapsco wastewater treatment plant, October 2010. Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)