- When I was going through graduate school, it was a simple thing.

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Well, we ran outta dilution in Chesapeake Bay.

- That's the thing about the water and the ocean.

And you can take all the scientists everywhere and they never understand what goes on there.

There never - Streams and rivers that feed the bay are the bay.

And what happens in those streams and rivers is ultimately gonna happen in the bay.

- The richest estuary in the world, the Chesapeake Bay, 4,600 miles of shoreline, 18 trillion gallons of water, fresh and salt making up what may well be the most complex natural system on earth.

Waters from six states encompassing 64,000 square miles.

Gather here to make a home and spawning ground for 3000 species in the shallow bays and brackish marshes where land and water merge dwell communities of diverse creatures whose survival depends on nature's delicate balance.

Chesapeake means in Algonquin Indian at the big river and the main stem of the bay derives for the most part from one ancient river the Susquehanna 250,000 years ago, say geologists, this is what the bay looked like.

As ice advanced and receded, the oceans drew back and rose the ancient susquehanna.

Flowing down over impermeable rocks carried silts and clays to the southeast where it was joined by the Potomac.

In James.

This is how the bay looked 18,000 years ago when the last and greatest ice age occurred, the bay was 300 feet below its present level.

Since then, the warming ocean has flooded the river valleys and is still rising in a constant natural continuum of change.

The retreat of the last ice age left a bay with a temperate climate and sheltered waters a perfect place for wildlife and thus for settlers.

First came the Indians then England's first permanent company.

Water provided a doorway into the country and the hallway between settlements as it still does today.

Along the fall line where rivers plunged down to meet the tides.

Mills were built and cities grew around them.

At Petersburg, Richmond, Washington, and Baltimore, the water not only provided food and transportation, power, beauty and recreation, but also something else.

A place to put sewage.

Anything you put in the water would be diluted and flushed away.

People fought cities as big as Richmond and Norfolk.

As late as the 1940s were pouring raw sewage into town waterways.

Making the waters too foul for fishing or swimming for the bay proves to be more a trap than a drain for pollution.

It is no wonder for except for the Chesapeake and Delaware canal at the north.

The Bay has only one outlet 12 miles wide at the southeast corner here, outflow meets incoming tides twice a day.

Fresh water being lighter flows outward.

Over top of the incoming salt tides matter thrown onto the water may go out on the surface only to sink and come back underneath.

In this way, the notorious pesticide KEYone has stayed in the James where the edge of the salt layer contacts the edge of the fresh.

Their conflict stirs up sediment creating what is called the maximum turbidity zone.

In this rich, muddy brew, live, plankton, fish, eggs, shellfish, larvae, teeming life that depends on that turmoil.

Sun moon winds and the spinning earth torment the wars.

These forces create great storms.

They also create gentle interlacing currents.

New research suggests just how important these currents are to the life of the bay.

At the mouth of the James, the incoming current runs up the north shore until the tide changes.

Then outflow sweeps down the south shore in a slow wide circle.

If there were a simple outflowing, current oyster larvae spawned here would be dispersed and lost.

With the circular current, the coast gently around and in about 10 days, settle on the shelves of their ancestors, creating one of the finest natural oyster seed in the world.

Blue crab larvae rest and grow in a similar great circle that takes them out of the bay into the Atlantic and brings them back to us again.

Another element that affects the bay's life are temperature zones influenced partly by water depths and partly by inflowing currents.

Striped bass or rockfish.

One of the bay's great and once plentiful, delicacies need and seek cold water.

In the last decade, bay waters have grown gradually warmer because of climate changes and because power plants and some industries borrow bay waters and return them heated.

Meanwhile, pollution has removed oxygen from the deepest waters.

Rockfish are now scarce.

There are many theories about why they have declined.

It may be from over fishing or loss of spawning grounds.

One theory blames temperature in so complex a system as the Chesapeake Bay.

Nothing can change without sending out ripples.

The constant increase of people around and on the bay threatens the delicate ancient balances.

- Fishing is, you know, as a whole is one of the few things left that's, it's like living off the land.

You know, - Drunk grove coming down here.

- Fishermen are water boats.

They're called on the bay like Glen Steele of Whitestone, Virginia are among the first people to feel the effects of a changing Chesapeake for steel.

The bay is the wilderness he goes to to find a living - With deep water, gi, that drift nut.

Primarily what we own, we primarily fish for spot Kroger and large tr and an occasional blue fish is a bycatch, which we don't, you know, we don't zero in on 'cause they're not worth any money to eat our equipment up.

We go out and find the fish, set the nets in the fish, pick the nets ice to fish live and therefore sell a good product.

There's not that many fishermen that do what we do full time, just a handful.

It's getting fewer all the time.

Hard work, you know, you can't mind hard work.

You have to have the wheel to catch that fish.

- Steel pilots is 44 foot boat out of anti poison creek.

The hard times has the latest equipment, video, fish and direction finders, two-way radios and 4 2400 foot Japanese made monofilament nets, which steel drops to depths of 150 feet is made.

His stepson, Steve Hinson, - We have to have kind of a hunter instinct.

What we do, we have to hunt these fish down before we can catch man, it looks right.

Good.

Yeah man, we'll try that right through the end.

I'll, I'll fish and and look for fish and look for fish till I, I get so disgusted.

I just like to throw my hands up.

I'll have to take a day off to get away to get away from my own mental stress, you know, and then when I'm on the shore, I get pacing back and forth worrying about not being in the base.

So it's just something gets you in your blood that just drives you to it.

I don't know what - Steel has only eight or nine months he can work before the fish migrate elsewhere.

He often puts in 16 or 17 hours a day.

His wife, June, the daughter of a woman runs the business end of things - In the fishing end buffet, I usually try to sell the fish, I make the cartons, I see that the trucks are loaded.

I take care of all the bills, all the paperwork, which is a pile of it.

Keep, try to keep the house money, keep them in clean clothes and I have to shop for the boat and do all the banking.

I sometimes I want enough bows in the day.

Yeah, thank - You.

- Hello?

Yeah, well got some roas but they're not very big.

Oh well 2000 medium CRO is 150.

160 count.

Oh now come on Man.

I can get, I can get 5 cents more than that in Baltimore.

How about the spot?

Well, I tell you what, you gimme the nickel ma on the croker and we'll call it even on the spot.

It's, it's kind of ironic that here lately, well last year or so all you've heard talk about farm aid.

Farm aid.

Well lemme tell you, the fishermen needs a little aid course.

We're so independent.

Most of them that I know are might not even take it, but the government doesn't come along and say, Glenn, I will pay you so much money not to catch spot or I'll pay you so much money not to catch blue fish.

The government doesn't come along when you've got blue fish coming over your ears and trout blooding the market and say, okay, we'll buy these up and we'll freeze them and we'll give it away like we do cheese and butter.

No, I can't see that.

The government helps.

- We are getting 30 cent for spot now and back during the depression they bought 25 cents.

So that tells you something like that.

Why it's so hard to make a living at the price of things today.

It makes it right rough.

It's not as many fish it used to be.

I'm sure that which is a good thing you wouldn't be able to sell anymore.

Rock fish.

Rock fish always brought a good price.

We worked on the rock fish in wintertime and as a pollution increased in the bay, the rock fish decreased that that fish has been a thing in the past now for about eight years.

I guess we haven't even pulled with 'em - What Glen Steel sees and knows about the bay firsthand.

Fisheries experts chart on graphs jack travel stead of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

- Well, since the 1960s we've seen very large decreases in many of the fin fish and oysters.

Oysters Oyster harvest was on the order of 15 million pounds in the 1960s.

Today it's probably less than 5 million pounds.

With respect to the ous fishes, striped bass reached a high in 1972.

There were 3 million pounds landed that year.

This past year, less than 300,000 pounds were landed.

Shad and river herring have also declined significantly.

No one can pinpoint an exact cause.

In some instances though, we know that in part it's overfishing loss of habitat, Stripe, bass and Shad used to spawn well beyond Richmond.

But now with the placement of dams there, that much habitat's been lost.

Certainly pollution has had a a, a major factor in and certainly climate and mother nature has, has played a role as well.

- And what has happened to the number of watermen - About 25 years ago, we would estimate that there are around 10, 12,000 watermen today.

Very difficult to get an absolute handle.

It's felt that they're around 4,500 people, men and women who make their livelihood from the waters of Chesapeake Bay.

On the Virginia side, - The worst problem we have with the politics is that the guys that control these laws are politicians.

They're not fishermen, they don't understand the fishing industry.

They don't understand the habitats that these fish live in and, and they just don't understand the bay environment period.

You know, you can't expect them to, but I think they should research into things a little better than they do before they commit their self to passing laws that hurt these local fishermen.

Every time you go down here to one of these meetings, a scientist comes in and they numbers is all they know.

Statistics.

If you don't have statistics, you can't do nothing.

We have to have the statistics, you know, you have to understand what, what is.

If the fish is something is harming the fish, what's happening to the fish?

You have to understand what's doing it.

The statistics not gonna help you preserve that species.

I won't see this big clean in my lifetime, I'm sure of that, but I'd say it's a little better than it was five years ago now enough that you just can't notice it.

- How about the hard times?

You on here Glen?

- I got you Joe.

- What's the count?

The spot or croker's and what's his eyes - Got all spot.

That's beautiful.

- Well, we got about 70 cots I guess.

Oh, maybe 75, I dunno.

Three and a half miles to go to home.

Boy, I can smell them.

Crab cakes and butter beans cooking.

I can't get there.

Soon enough, we got it made.

Now - My maid has not shown up in 30 years.

I don't think she's ever gonna come back.

I think it's a very hard life.

Sometimes it takes more hours than in a day where you think it'll, but I think it's a very satisfying life and I'm not sure that I would ever want to do anything else.

- Any calls from the market.

- Yeah.

Two calls from Baltimore, old bear called and Bert Lee called, so it looks like it's firm up a little bit.

- Price go up in, - Can go up that firm.

I just a little more demand, just no increase in price.

How about this okra?

You said you won some okra.

Uhuh, you said you were gonna eat some okra.

I changed my mind.

- Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge.

It's common sense.

We will begin the long necessary effort to clean up a productive recreational area and a special national resource, the Chesapeake Bay - With those words.

President Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union address declared the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, a national goal.

People like Glen Steele and bay scientists had known for years.

The Bay is becoming dirty.

Its plant and wildlife dying.

That awareness led Congress in 1975 to authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to undertake a scientific study of the bay in 1983.

After eight years and $27 million, the EPA reported its findings.

The picture they drew was worse than many had expected from their report.

The Chesapeake Bay program was created, organized and funded by the major Bay States, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, along with the District of Columbia and the EPA.

Together, they've set aside $200 million to pinpoint the sources of pollution.

The program underwrites and monitors improvements in sewage treatment, in farming practices, in preventing urban runoff, protecting fast lands and wetlands from erosion in managing fisheries and in regulating and protecting against toxic chemicals.

The original report singled out three major areas of concern.

First, nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer and human and animal waste are accumulating in the bay.

Feeding the growth of enormous amounts of algae in the water, the algae die and rot using precious oxygen, leaving too little for fish and shellfish to breathe in the main part of the bay, areas of water, airless and lethal increased 15 fold between 1950 and 1980.

Second toxics and heavy metals from urban and farm runoff and from human and industrial waste are accumulating in the bay.

The toxic metals include tin, cadmium, copper, and lead, the organic chemicals, PCBs, KEYone and DDT and other toxic chemicals like chlorine.

All were found in heaviest concentrations near where people work and live.

Toxics can kill or debilitate animals and people as they accumulate in the food chain.

Some remain poisonous for years or decades.

Finally, the report found that the bay's seagrasses have been dying.

Eelgrass and wi grass, sego, pondweed and horned pondweed, wild celery and water star grass all are dying.

Everyone agrees that time for action is now.

If we are to save the Chesapeake Bay.

- People when they see these plants, it usually gets stuck on their props or their boats.

But if you were a crab and you were looking for a place to stay, these underwater plants really are the places that you want to go.

- The die off of sea seagrasses in the 1970s signaled that the bay was changing faster.

There were earlier die-offs, but not of all the species alive.

Sea grasses add oxygen to the water for fish to breathe.

They provide shelter to baby blue crabs and older ones During molting.

The grasses are food for waterfowl and on the blades of the grass grow.

Tiny organisms epiphytes forming a sort of slime on the leaves.

These and the larger microscopic animals that eat epiphytes are all part of the rich food chain of the estuary.

The grassroots hold the soil and prevent erosion and the leaves help filter particles out of the water by slowing its flow.

As the leaves die, they nourish the seabed and other plants and animals.

Dick Wetzel of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science - And the decline essentially started up river and moved toward the mouth, which suggested that there, that the effect whatever was affecting these plants causing them to die off was a consequence of something associated with the, the western shore of the bay and something associated with it was being put into the river systems.

- More fresh water enters the bay from the larger western rivers where there are more people, farms and industries where the grant from EPA Wetzel and Bob orth together with scientists from the University of Maryland at Horns Point, began trying to find out why the grasses were dying.

They first suspected that herbicides used by farmers and homeowners were getting into the bay.

Tests showed that though this is true, the amounts of herbicides were not strong enough to be killing the seagrasses, but they did find something else.

- This plant is very sensitive in terms of its growth and distribution to very, very small changes in submarine light.

Now there's a variety of ways that, that you can change light in a water column and one, the most obvious way is to enter is to increase the number of particles in the water to make it cloudier, to make it more turd - Nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus run into the river from farmlands and from sewage plants.

In warm months, these nutrients feed the growth of algae, tiny plants that float in the water and block light from the grasses below.

In addition, microscopic epiphytes thrive in warm nutrient-rich water cloaking the grasses from the light to determine the extent of the die off and to keep track of annual changes.

Orth and his team took aerial photographs of all the Virginia Rivers and the main stem.

They learned that the Potomac James and Rappahannock rivers have lost almost all their saltwater grasses flying at a height to match their pictures to their maps.

They took pictures every 30 seconds.

They thus compiled a history of the bay saltwater grassbeds.

The pictures have been put in computers and made into maps so that scientists can see the history of each grassed.

- Where we had highest concentrations of nutrients.

We had the greatest declines of submerged aquatic vegetation and these were in the up bay areas of the Chesapeake Bay and the up river areas where we had low concentrations of nutrients.

The bay grasses were doing very well and this was principally in the lower Chesapeake Bay.

- Some of the research at Vims is done by computer model.

- What we're simulating here is how increasing epi fight lows on the leaf surface will affect eelgrass growth and survival.

And we're in the model.

We're controlling epi fight growth by invertebrate grazers, which are included to to graze epiphytes off of the leaves to remove the epiphytes.

- More microscopic animals to eat away the epiphytes would mean more light would get to the grasses and enable them to thrive.

The computer plots the probabilities.

Vims research led the states to make plans to reduce nutrients in the bay's, rivers, Virginia plans to reduce phosphorus by 20% by the year 2000 and to hold the nitrogen levels to what they were in 1980.

Orth and other vim scientists in recent months have begun to study how seagrasses work as a habitat, especially for the bay delicacy.

The blue crab scientists are seeking methods to revegetate the grass beds.

Their success so far has been mixed, - Which suggested us that conditions for growth of the vegetation are good.

We're, what we're trying to do is let the plants tell us whether water quality conditions are okay.

If they are, then you know that really says a lot about perhaps what's going on in terms of bay water quality.

- Most of the dirt in the water runs off the land.

A rainfall simulator is a manmade rainstorm to show farmers how much topsoil rain washes away.

It shows they can save soil and the fertilizers and chemicals in it if they use conservation.

Best management practices, BMPs, these BMPs include growing crops without repeated deep plowing that bears the soil to erosion with present day farming.

A slope above a river can typically lose as much as 15 tons of topsoil a year per acre, - But especially with each ton of topsoil, our researchers tell us that the value of the fertilizer, the phosphorus and nitrogen attached to that soil is about $7 per acre.

So that if a farmer's losing 10 tons of soil per acre per year, he may be losing as much as $70 in fertilizer each year and that's his profit on that acre.

- The EPA study found that 39% of the phosphorus and 67% of the nitrogen that reaches the bay comes from crop and pasture land from fertilizer or animal waste.

- We've contracted with the Ag Engineering Department of Virginia Tech to build and operate this rainfall simulator around the state.

It's a ex an extremely graphic demonstration to our farmers of exactly what's happening on their land when they put these different practices in place - With our conventional tillage plot.

Of course all we have is bare soil and we have the soybeans coming up.

We see that we have a tremendous amount of runoff coming off these plots.

We can see there's a lot of sediment in this is, you know, what we expect with conventional farming techniques.

This other plot here, this is our con, our no-till plot.

We have a lot of residue which is left from the last soybean crop we have there.

There's some weeds that have been killed back and some grass that's been killed back.

- Raindrops that hit leaves and twigs break up into tiny droplets that soak into the soil, unlike the drops that hit their soil, pack it down and wash it away.

- Since we have less water running over the soil surface, we don't have the energy to transport as much soil in that runoff, so we're only, we're probably only getting about 10% of the amount of soil coming off this no-till plot that we're getting coming off the conventional till plot.

- Trent Toliver has put in BMPs on his farm near Saluta, Virginia.

- I felt like there was going to be a difference, but I didn't know it was going to be that much difference.

It was surprising to me and I've seen rain and I've seen runoff, but it was surprising to me how much difference there was collected on that very small piece of land.

- We've really hung our hat, so to speak, on no-till.

This will go a long way.

It's a practical thing for the farmer, - But no-till gives us an advantage of being able to put the crop in earlier because it's a single operation, it requires less labor.

For farmers who do not have a great labor force or a lot of machinery, it has even greater advantages because they don't have that machine labor cost.

- But no-till cannot be done every year or weeds and pests take over during the years it is used.

Farmers need more pesticides and herbicides to keep down the weeds that tilling regularly destroys - As a whole.

It takes about 14% additional herbicide to practice no till.

But if you reduce your runoff by more than 50%, there is a net reduction of herbicides to the surface waters of the state.

By using no tip, - The extra herbicides used.

Some parts stays in the soil, some is broken down to other compounds, some may soak into the groundwater from which welds draw leaking water.

- This is something we're very concerned about and we have extensive research going on right now to determine the effect of herbicide on both surface and groundwaters of the state.

- Other best management practices include mulching, crop rotation, leaving filter strips alongside crop land and buffer zones along waterways and creating ponds and lagoons to catch runoff.

All of the agricultural programs in the Bay are voluntary though the states will help pay part of a farmer's costs.

Keith Butman heads the Virginia Council on the environment.

- We've had over 1400 farmers participate in the cost share program and we don't know how many others are are participating because they have seen the results and found that it's simply in their best interest to do it on their own.

As a direct result of the cost share program that the state is implementing, we have reduced by about 323,000 tons the amount of soil that would've otherwise entered the bays waters through agricultural runoff and we estimate based on that about 1.8 million pounds of phosphorus is no longer entering the Bay system that otherwise would've.

- The best management practices such as conservation tillage and better nutrient management are two ways of protecting the bay.

And farmers concerned about pollution have been helping.

However, - To put in the best management practices does take money and with the farmers in their economic plight with the very low grain prices, with the reduced yields from the drought this year, I'm afraid, is gonna make it a little more difficult for people to carry out their conservation plan.

- A recent Virginia Department of Agriculture report estimated that as many as 4,000 farm families may go out of business the next two years in the state.

That's a farm loss rate worse than during the Great Depression.

Officials worry that agribusiness and absentee owners buying up the land will not feel the same personal concern for the environment that many residents have.

Another key agricultural region in the bay lies along the Susquehanna River in the heart of Pennsylvania's Dutch farm country in Lancaster County, for example, live one quarter of all the livestock in the state, animals make manure, rain washes it downstream.

Since 1984, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Soil and Water Conservation has signed cost share contracts with 92 farmers covering such best management practices as animal storage systems and lagoons.

It's a start.

There are 12,000 farmers along the lower Susquehanna.

A common conservation practice in Pennsylvania is contour plowing.

Farmers in Virginia used to practice contour plowing more than they do now.

Now - With the advent of the tremendous machine size machine that our farmers are using today and are almost forced with labor costs, - They're in real - Contour plowing requires extra effort and personal attention as many BMP and conservation practices do in order to pay off.

- If you ask really what, what's the key to the future of Chesapeake Bay and it's land use around the bay, urbanization of the bay is che beginning.

The processes that that work in the bay very seldom are affected by something that's actually occurs directly in the water.

Sure factors like dredging and so forth may impact it, but most of the impacts are what are we using the adjacent land and what's coming off the adjacent land, either through the pipe or just running over the shore.

So land use is the key to the future in Chesapeake Bay.

- The great public and political support for a bay cleanup slows when the subject of land use is raised.

Norm Larson heads the Habitat Management Division of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

- Citizens want the air managed because we all own the air.

No one questions that no one can privately own the air.

Citizens are generally content to let government manage the water because they're generally willing to concede that they don't own the water.

Although that's a little more open to argument.

But don't, don't touch my land because I own that and and I don't want anybody telling me what I can do on my land.

- But government has begun more and more to regulate land use near the bay.

In 1972, Virginia passed the Wetlands Act and in 1980 added legislation protecting coastal dunes.

Anyone wanting to build on or otherwise alter title wetlands must apply for a permit and describe his plans.

They will be reviewed by either a local wetlands board or in areas that have not set up boards by the Marine Resources Commission.

Public comment is invited and often heated if the construction will destroy marshland.

The owner may be required as the Navy was at Norfolk Willoughby Bay to build a replacement marsh nearby or instead of a bulkhead, an owner may be limited to building rip wrap or gabions.

The irregular surfaces absorb some of the erosive wave force and provide some protection to tiny creatures.

Sometimes a request will be turned down to protect this most fertile nursery ground.

It is a difficult new area for governments to enter where there are few precedents for deciding how to balance the economic ambitions of developers against the long-term loss to the environment.

- In evaluating a proposal, it's very difficult for X number of bushels of oysters to equate to a condominium as an example.

So unless we can somehow equate eternity or a very large number of years, a thousand years or something, assuming that that resource will go on and on forever is the only way that you'll be able to make the scale balance.

- At present, Virginia has no law restricting what is done on freshwater wetlands.

Two of its 30 counties bordering the bay, lack even zoning regulations and of the 28 with zoning 10 have no professional planners to oversee that development is orderly.

Insensible state Senator Joseph Gartland has championed land use laws in Virginia.

- There's another factor which has come to light come to at least that I've begun to understand and appreciate more and that is the, the relative poverty of these rural area local jurisdictions that are on the shorelines of the back.

We've heard of some local boards of supervisors in the northern neck have affirmatively decided that their way to increase the tax base in those jurisdictions is to permit intense development of the shoreline.

- In Maryland, the new critical areas Act has been called the most advanced environmental legislation in the country.

By 1988, anyone wanting to clear build on or farm on the dry land within 1000 feet of the high tide, mark must get permission from a local government board something like Virginia's wetlands boards.

The board will set requirements to protect the bay from erosion and polluted runoff to design the law.

Maryland had two years of study and 18 public hearings to run the hearings and listen to all sides.

Marilyn's governor Harry Hughes appointed a judge named Solomon.

- I think the objective that we met was that we were called on to bring together people who had adverse interests in many instances and people who had similar interests and to see if we could come up with a program that would protect the integrity of the Chesapeake Bay and that all of these interests could live with - What kind of environmental criteria were adopted.

- Baller City is in the middle of redeveloping an area on the waterfront that was primarily warehouse property.

Well, that's fine.

We're all in favor of that 'cause that's a good healthy condition.

We say to them, look, one of the criteria requires that if you are gonna remove trees, that you've got to replace them.

Now another one is that where you've got water quality, you've got to show that the use you are going to make of the particular area will improve the water quality that already exists there by at least 10%.

- Another criterion requires that new construction leave a 100 foot buffer strip along all tidal wetlands to filter runoff and prevent erosion.

The construction and real estate industries objected that such a requirement would waste waterfront land hurt business and the state's economy.

- We don't agree with that.

If anything, we think that it will ultimately mean an a benefit to the Maryland economy.

The owners of the land themselves, I'm inclined to believe, are gonna wake up realizing that they own a bonanza.

When land becomes short, it increases in value.

- When I'm talking about land use control in the context of of the bay and its tributaries, I'm talking about interests that are more than purely local.

They're regional, some of them are statewide and it's, it's just doesn't make sense for the state to leave those interests to the decision of local governing bodies or to the non-decision.

The inaction non-decision is a, is a, is a contradiction in terms it's impossible to not decide something in in government.

I've come to conclude because if you do nothing, that's a decision and it's gonna have its effect.

- 'cause one of the things I'd like to see is when you go into comprehensive planning, comprehensive zoning, we have water uses incorporated into that zoning thinking.

Our 1983 water use committee recommended, although it's never been impacted, that by a certain date, the general of Maryland and Virginia Pass legislation requiring the localities on the bay to come up with a comprehensive water use plan.

Where do you want the marinas to go?

Where do you want the boat landings to go?

Where do you want to be able to support and and continue to support shellfish?

Where do you want your primary water recreation area plan for water use?

As well as planning for land use - Zoning regulations, laws to protect freshwater wetlands and the staff and planners to oversee such programs.

All needs Virginia operating under a hiring freeze Since 1981 has only four inspectors to review wetlands permits and to assure compliance.

In 1980, the staff was processing 800 applications.

- Well, last year we processed 1,642 applications and we're projecting by 1990 that will again double to 3,200 or more.

And so if we're going to provide the service and allow the public an opportunity to review and comment on these, we're going to need more staff in order to do that.

- While lawmakers decide what laws to enact and administrative bodies face the workload, there are things waterfront landowners can do.

Private citizens can also give land outright to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.

A group of citizens in Gloucester banded together and bought a wilderness area of dragon run and gave it to the foundation to preserve it.

- Well, I took my first trip on drag and run in 1954, I think it was.

I was really impressed with the absolute absence of civilization.

I was used to the woods, but it was really deep woods compared to what I was used to and the added enhancement of the beautiful bald cypress trees and the work of the beaver just made it enchanting and I fell in love with it and I've been going back ever since.

- Jimmy Morgan is a Gloucester pharmacist.

He and 25 friends raised the money to buy 300 acres along the freshwater stream that empties into the Bianca Tank River.

Along much of dragon run is reclaimed wilderness.

There used to be more farming.

Here, loggers continue to bulldoze loblolly pines in places down to the water's edge.

The dragon keeps coming back.

- Well, geologically the dragon is supposed to be over a million years old and when you think of the fact that it's been there for a million years and we stand to lose it in the next 10 or 15, that's really scary.

It has been described as a unique ecosystem that is that, that you won't find the same mix of fauna and flora and in the stream anywhere.

Well, the biggest threat that I see is the, is the potential development.

I see what's happening here in Gloucester County over the past five and 10 years and where the population is almost doubling you.

It's bound to affect the dragon run.

You're talking about saving the bay first, save the streams and rivers and then you'll save the bay up here on the dragon run.

It seems like we're a long way from Chesapeake Bay, probably 30 or 40 miles, but the dragon runs into the panka tank, which runs into the bay, and what we do up here is really a part of Chesapeake Bay - 1900 natural streams empty into the Chesapeake Bay.

Thousands of manmade ones due to from early days.

Industries and cities have used the water as a free sewer thinking.

The bay would flush itself clean in truth.

Toxic chemicals tend to sink and are stored in bottom mud or, or taken up by microscopic creatures and accumulate in the bodies of larger ones that eat them.

- In our monitoring of of the Chesapeake, we're finding hundreds of compounds in its sediments.

Many of them are p ahhs, they're we're also finding the pesticides and the polychlorinated b fennels.

In general, the concentrations are higher in the northern Chesapeake than in the south.

- Toxics originate near population and industrial centers and they tend to stay near their point of origin.

Here at Hopewell on the James Allied Chemical and its subsidiary put 100 tons of the pesticide KEYone into the river between 1966 and 1975.

KEYone is not biodegradable.

That is, it does not stop being poisonous.

The lower James has been closed now 11 years to most kinds of commercial and sport fishing.

The ban may last 100 years by some estimates, like most contaminants, KEYone settles to the bottom.

Dr.

Huett was one of the original scientists looking for a cure to the KEYone problem.

- One thing to do is you have an area highly contaminated is to dredge it or dig it up.

The problem you have there is, as we mentioned, the world's a closed system.

You have to do something with that dredge material and now all of a sudden you, you, you have a toxic waste on your hand, so it's in some cases the cure, IE the dredging may be worse than the disease.

- Other industrial areas are contaminated with other toxics.

- The Elizabeth River has been the center of human activity or a center of human activity for 300 years or more, and as such, it's not surprising that it has some pollution problems, a lot of industries on it.

It has in the bottom sediments the highest concentration of p hs of any place on earth as far as we can tell any estuary.

One of the major contaminants in the Chesapeake base system is a group of, of compounds known as poly nuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, also known as ps.

Creo, for instance, is basically a, a mixture of high concentrations of PS and we have in the, for instance, the Elizabeth River, a pretty serious pollution problem.

Because of ps we, we actually seek LOBs of Creo in the sediment - Toad fish and other bottom dwelling animals suffer from toxic concentrations in the sediments.

A crew from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science takes samples to monitor their condition - Fish in that area where, where there are very high concentrations, this is up the southern, what we call the southern branch, have a number of, of maladies among them are cataracts.

For instance, nearly a hundred percent of the gray trout and, and croker over eight inches in length and these highly contaminated areas are blind with cataracts.

There are skin lesions or sores or ulcers on the skin and fin rot where some of the fins have basically been eroded or missing, and we believe this is due to the fact that the animals in this river have a very depressed cellular immune system.

Our graduate students, some of them call it fish aids.

Our harbors are seen to be the, the sites of highest contamination, the Elizabeth River and Baltimore Harbor.

We are studying these areas intently because this may be what the forerunner of what the whole Chesapeake is going to look like if we're not careful.

- National attention is being brought to a new toxic chemical - Tribunal tin or TBT is a pesticide.

Our main concern is its use as an ingredient in antifouling paints.

Antifouling paints are used on the halls of large and small vessels to keep off growth barnacles and things that that can grow on a haul and flow a boat down the same toxic properties that allow it to work so well as an anti Fallon also make it very toxic to aquatic life such as oysters and crabs and fish.

- It was noted in France several years ago that oysters in the vicinity of marinas where there were large numbers of recreational vessels, had a very abnormal shell growth.

It was concluded by guessing a little bit and some very good laboratory experimentation.

The causative agent for this abnormal shell growth was Tri butyl 10.

- There is no evidence that exists that says that TBT presents a problem in the workplace or in the, in the environment.

What many people have referred to in the past are laboratory studies, which have been run that show that, you know, small amounts of TBT could be toxic at small parts to various different shellfish.

The fact of the matter is this is in a controlled laboratory environment.

- Tribunal 10 is one of the most toxic compounds that, that I have ever seen and or reported in literature, and it it, it looks like it may well be a thousand times more toxic than say for instance Keone - Lee Thomas is the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

- It's not unusual for us to find a paint or, or some other chemical substance that only recently in the last several years have we begun to find that their toxicity, characteristics of that substance that have an impact that nobody envisioned when it was first authorized for use.

- Part of the trouble of studying TBT has been in learning how to measure it.

Imagine filling the Astrodome with water, adding a teaspoon of sugar and testing the water for sweetness.

You have an idea of what parts per trillion means.

Here at Vims Bay, water samples are mixed with solvents which absorb the TBT while the water is drained away.

By such means, each two liter sample is reduced to a few drops.

Though this is far from being pure TBT, it is strong enough to measure while the study goes on.

Japan has joined the nations with regulations against TBT.

Congress has put a temporary ban on its use on navy ships and North Carolina has established limits on how much TBT industries may dump into public waterways.

At the Hopewell Virginia sewage treatment plant, 90% of the inflow comes from industries only two of which treat and remove some toxic chemicals before they enter the plant.

The state permit for the Hopewell plant does not mention any requirement to remove any chemicals.

The Hopewell plant is one of 3000 public and private treatment plants emptying into the bays, rivers and streams.

Under EPA guidelines, each state has an agency to design issue and enforce permits that say how much and what each plant is allowed to put into a river.

In Virginia, the State Water Control Board has been criticized for being lax in permit enforcement.

- We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of enforcement actions over the last three years.

1984, the water board took about 30 enforcement actions.

In 1986, the physical year just finished.

We took about 130 enforcement actions - In the area of domestic sewage treatment plant waste.

We are certainly doing a basic job in controlling the point source discharge that results in pollution going into the Bay system, but there's much more that needs to be done.

- In 1985, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation studied 16 publicly owned plants on the lower James.

- Basically what we found was that while most of those plants were in compliance with their discharge permit, the permit limitations really weren't adequate - At at present.

The the permits that are, that are issued by the, the state water control ward, almost without exception, don't require the removal or treatment of, of nutrients or, or toxics.

- One of the stumbling blocks has been that the EPA has not created guidelines for most toxics or nutrients to say how much is too much.

There are no standards.

What does a treatment plant do?

Primary treatment settles out solids.

The liquid waste is disinfected usually with chlorine and poured in the waterways.

Secondary treatment removes material that can rot.

The few plants that do advance treatment, remove other suspended materials, sun chemicals or nutrients.

The EPA says Virginia and Maryland have 75 public plants that need construction upgrades.

Until recently, nitrogen removal has been prohibitively expensive.

Phosphorus can be reduced in part at the source.

Maryland and the District of Columbia have banned phosphate detergents.

Virginia is considering a ban.

A pilot project at Lambert's point in Norfolk has experimented with biological removal of phosphorus and nitrogen.

Its success could lead toward a major advance in nutrient removal.

- What we do is we create an environment for the right type of bacteria.

Some of these bacteria will take up nitrogen, others will take up phosphorus.

We feel that it's one of the most developments since really the invention of secondary treatment, which occurred in the 1920s.

The pilot plant can be operated at about the same cost as normal secondary treatment.

- Cost savings are important now that federal money for sewage plant construction is drying up.

- The issue of how much money and for how long under the construction grants program is one that Congress is wrestling with.

Now.

The administration had submitted a suggestion that that funding should be phased out over the next four years.

- Meanwhile, by 1988, the EPA will require all public treatment plans to meet at least secondary standards of Virginia's 246 plants.

115 do not, and of these some 20 are expected to be unable to meet the deadline.

Because of financial hardships.

More money than in the past for construction and upgrading will have to come from localities.

We are beginning to know what must be done.

If the Chesapeake Bay is to be safe, the job will take not only money, but time.

Our children, if they are to inherit the Bay, will also inherit the responsibility to care for it.

- The Chesapeake Bay cannot be cleaned up by government alone.

It requires citizen understanding of the problem, citizen participation in the solving of the problem.

In fact, the commitment of government to cleaning up the bay requires citizen understanding and commitment and support.

Without that citizen role, the role of government is not likely to be as strong and as sustained over a period of time.

- For millennia, the Bay has been the home of millions of creatures and now around its shores or some 11 million people competing for its use.

The talk about a bay cleanup really has at its heart, not clean up, but ways to slow the dirty, which unchecked will destroy this fertile wilderness and playground and resource.

Now is the time to act or it will be too late to preserve the future.