Too Big to Swale

Fortunately (and wittingly) we have avoided major overflow incidents from wastewater treatment plants here in Maryland for the past several years. Easier to overlook (and we have) are nonpoint sources of water pollution, which are classified as agricultural, urban, forest, and rural, i.e. septic systems. We have become pretty wise to containing hazardous materials, but the pollutants that are choking our bays and rivers with algae are everyday elements carried in the water seeping through or running over the land. There are over 500 potential water pollutants managed in various parts of Maryland, but one ubiquitous element, nitrogen, is the major problem nutrient feeding the algae invasion of our tidal waters.

Photo by Neil Williamson (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Agriculture is the largest contributor to nitrogen pollution and likely to remain so for many years. This could be because agriculture has consolidated its operations disproportionately to its proper ecological scale. Farms these days, in spite of their vast acreage, are generally family operations. Driven by globalization, agriculture has become a very competitive industry, so much that Maryland farmers would not settle for local administration of their part of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). They needed more consistent application of the standards that constitute the nutrient diet for the Bay, so TMDL for agriculture is managed at the state level.

However, it is the counties who are responsible for their reducing all of their nutrient flows (including agriculture) below set targets or risk losing their federal funding for infrastructure. In other words, the counties have accountability, but no authority for the behavior of their agricultural sectors. It should be no surprise that they have to shoot beyond their targets in the other sectors in order to make up for the lack of progress by agriculture. (I only have data from St. Mary's County, but am assuming that this subversion of local authority has the same effect everywhere.)

Am I being unfair to the agristocracy? Don't I realize they are working hard to make sure I don't go to bed hungry? No. If anybody has been unfair to them, it's the drafters of the TMDL limits. If those limits are unrealistic or biased, they should be changed. Until then, I'm sticking with my view that Ag is too big to swale and follow other Best Management Practices (BMP's) in fulfillment of their responsibility to help clean up the Bay.

Saving the Bay with Sewage

With the increase in heavy rain events (the past two weeks here, for example), the chances of having a wastewater treatment plant overflow to the watershed are growing. These incidents occur often enough for us to understand how devastating they are to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. All of the efforts going into reduce nonpoint source pollution can be obviated in a day by the point source pollution of a major overflow incident. Reporting of incidents is easy to check on the state's database.

Nonetheless, the suggestions by the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science to reverse a decades-long trend of deteriorating conditions in Calvert County's tidal waters still emphasized nonpoint source measures, such as upgrades to septic systems and riparian buffers. That's where I come in, as perhaps the first Master Watershed Steward in Calvert County (once I complete the Watershed Steward's Academy this fall and capstone project sometime next year). The role of a Watershed Steward is to educate residents and encourage measures to mitigate nonpoint source pollution of the watershed.

Aside from the usual arsenal of methods to correct various nonpoint source problems, I'm hoping to introduce biochar in buried compost filters and bunker spawn in future projects.

Photo by sandwichgirl  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Back on the topic of wastewater treatment, Biocharo  (+Kathleen Draper) posted her ideas for the top ten ways to scale up biochar production without inviting deforestation.  The number one underutilized feedstock is sewage sludge. Here in Calvert County, our dried sewage sludge is trucked off to Virginia where they find a way to turn it into fertilizer. While there may be some pollution problems with that approach, making the sludge into biochar should correct them. Not only that, we could use county-owned land right near the Appeal sewage treatment plant to set up a pyrolysis facility. Combined with pyrolysis of yard and lumber waste, this would give the county a growing income stream and save on trucking costs of sludge sent off to Virginia. Even if the local agricultural market isn't ready for it by then, there is plenty of use we could make of biochar as a stormwater management tool, while getting carbon sequestration credit for the state's greenhouse gas reduction plan.

No Free Lunch

Here in the 19th wealthiest county in the nation, we are without a metropolitan area unless you count the piece where I live, which is lumped together with part of St. Mary's county. We have a lot of farms in either county, so there should be no lack of wholesome food.

That being the case, what is behind the long-standing campaigns to grow and distribute free food to the "hunger community" in our area? Do such organized efforts alleviate long-term poverty? Do they invite outsiders desperate for food?

Two programs that stand out most are Farming4Hunger and End Hunger in Calvert County. Farming4Hunger appears to have the more honest appellation, since hunger might be a product of their efforts. Ending hunger is, of course, impossible and disingenuous as a campaign name.

The phrase "hunger community" is used in the annual report of Farming4Hunger and smacks of a caste system that implies separation of persons who rely on handouts for food. Joining the hunger community could enable a person to leave aside at least some of their struggle for basic necessities and enjoy some of the finer pleasures of life such as a home, a car, and pets.

Wait..., did I just say that a home, car, and pets are not necessities? Millions of Syrians and other migrants have come to that conclusion. The pets actually were probably temporary necessities for a meal or two, but the home and car were left behind, becoming aspirations once again as raw survival became the prime motivator.

The struggles of these refugees will go on for decades,

Photo by Stu Mayhew (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

mainly so their children may enjoy a better life. The irony is that many of them have a better chance of dealing with the economic turmoil ahead than the staid classes among whom they have infiltrated. What of those here in the 19th richest county in the USA who are insulated from those hardships. Will their children know how to dig themselves out?

Stasis. That is what is behind food giveaways. We want big ag to continue, so we have programs like Farming4Hunger that says the way to get food is through farming as we know it, and supports farmers who can't sell part of their crop on the market. We want people to think well of our charity, either as churches or corporations, so we sponsor programs like End Hunger in Calvert County which should be looking for ways to put themselves out of business, but seem interested in endless growth.

This stasis will not bring stability. Our current food system and growth paradigm is unsustainable. People need to be taught how to grow food and protect the soil. Those things, in themselves, are a struggle for anyone, but there's really no free lunch.

Fields (of Fire?)

Like a life-sized game of Stratego, the lines are being drawn between pastoral landscapes and sprawling development in Maryland. With the enactment of renewed Program Open Space (POS) legislation that expands and reclaims some of the legacy funding to create agricultural and conservation easements in perpetuity, landowners who want to dedicate some of their holdings to posterity have a little help through POS.

Photo by Jean  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Quite sensibly, the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Program targets prime farmland and the Maryland Rural Legacy Program similarly targets areas that have high value to local ecology. For Calvert County, the latter includes an area along the Patuxent River north of Huntingtown, the area between Prince Frederick and Port Republic, and most of the Patuxent River side of the peninsula south of St. Leonard. Statewide, the targeted ecological areas form a semblance of wildlife corridors that could offer resilience to a multitude of species in this time of climate chaos.

Another recent governmental move to stymie loss of agricultural land in Calvert County was the limiting of transferable development rights (TDRs) to farmland, as opposed to the former practice of setting aside residential lots, such as the one I merged to my place of residence at minimal cost a couple of years ago.

Another factor favoring a regrarian Maryland is a faltering economy driven, in the main, by world population exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. While suburban sprawl is projected to continue apace in our state, economic disruptions and declining resources will, at least, temper growth in the coming decades.

In fact, do you see what's happening in Europe with the wave of refugees flowing out of the Middle East? That is what our countrysides could experience in a few years with waves of unemployed, starving urbanites looking for sustenance outside of dried up food deserts. Project Open Space funds might be best spent on building campgrounds in preparation for such fiascos.

Agricultural land preservation probably won't be able to keep pace against greed and Gaia, so your best insurance at this point may be found among those who have been planning for catastrophe.  The PrepCon this weekend in St. Leonard coincides with Calvert Green Living, which I have already signed-up for. Either event may be a good use of your time if you are concerned about surviving the future.

Beyond Chemicals

While I see a need to have soil restoration promoted in the next version of the Calvert County Comprehensive Plan, there are already many elements of the plan and ongoing institutions promoting soil conservation. The Comprehensive Plan includes "Sediment flows from development and farming" as a threat to the vision that

Our wetlands, streams, and forests support thriving plant and animal communities.

The corresponding action is "Develop soil conservation and water quality plans for farms."

When you look into the Best Management Practices of the Soil Conservation District, it appears that they have this whole issue pretty well in hand (at least among the farms on the list of cooperators). Many of these best practices lead to soil restoration in addition to soil conservation. At least one of the BMPs, however, is potentially counterproductive - that is, perpetuation of chemical fertilizers.

Photo by Paul Riismandel (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The problem with chemical fertilizers is that they can reduce the soil biota population below a critical level where the microorganisms make the soil ecosystem work in the plants' favor. This results in the need to use more fertilizer to achieve the same results as in previous years and the soil undergoes a death spiral until it is no longer economical to farm.  Many of the trace nutrients used by plants are generated by the proliferation of soil microorganisms and could be uneconomical to add directly as we do commonly applied macronutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (N, P, K).

It may be possible to restore soil humus by intensive farming methods while still using chemical fertilizers, but a surer method is to farm organically using biochar, compost, and organic fertilizer, as necessary. The goal should be to eliminate fertilizers altogether in favor of creating humus which is self-regenerating as long as crops are grown successively and rotated from year to year. Our farmers, large and small, need to learn to do this if for no other reason than that chemical fertilizers are a nonrenewable resource. A better option, still, is to grow perennial food crops. While we're at it, let's take advantage of soil carbon restoration for its role in cooling the planet.

Mitigating Sprawl

Photo by Matt McGuire (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The information session on the rewrite of Calvert County's Comprehensive Plan offered many insights on the process, current viewpoints, and the situations we face. Attendees were given an opportunity to submit views on paper regarding the top challenges, changes witnessed, and delights of living in Calvert County. Mine were soil tilth, invasive species, and nature, respectively. The presentation that covered some of the trends since the last major plan rewrite in 2004 brought a related problem to light - land use.

According to the statistics presented, the amount of both farmland and forest lost in our county over a ten year period is approximately 5%. As of 2007, about 60% of the county was forest or farmland. A 5% loss would have brought that figure down to about 55% as of 2014. The National Forest Service projections for forest land in Maryland under various scenarios are for additional losses ranging from 20 to 30% by 2060. If farmland losses remain in step with forest losses, we are then looking at a combined loss rate in Calvert County that continues at more than 5% per decade and at least 23 square miles (15,000 more acres) sacrificed to the god of growth.

In a talk given to the county's Master Gardeners last year, the crisis of ongoing suburban sprawl was also highlighted, with the point made that this results in a loss of connectivity in our ecosystems, reducing biodiversity. The reason Master Gardeners need to understand this is because increasing biodiverse gardens are one small way to mitigate the effects of sprawl on wildlife corridors. By ubiquitously gardening in islands within the developed landscape, the hope is that many of the threatened wee beasties will be able to find sufficient food and shelter.

I wrote down my three responses to the planning questionnaire (soil tilth, invasive species, and nature) before seeing the statistics on land use. In retrospect, it is easy to see a relationship of these three key indicators to the issue of real estate development. The soil that we grow on must be improved, especially if there is going to be less area under cultivation. Invasive species must be curbed in an effort to mitigate the loss of biodiversity caused, in part, by sprawl. Nature, in general, must be given more consideration and care as we continue to spread out across the land. These are action areas that I would like to see promoted in the next Comprehensive Plan update.

Rip Tide on the Chesapeake Bay

Here in Calvert County, the inverted middle finger of Maryland, we have a Comprehensive Plan by which we pretend to shape our own destiny. The wife and I have been ongoing participants in a group called Calvert Eats Local that meets monthly at the county library to feast and keep up-to-date on agricultural topics. Calvert Eats Local is providing input, through the umbrella organization, Sustainable Calvert Network, to the County Planning Commission in order to update the Comprehensive Plan - something that has not been done since 2004.

The impetus for this update to the plan is a wide open gap in the middle of the county seat, Prince Frederick, which appeared when an old middle school and armory were demolished. The Comprehensive Plan has a chapter on Economy which may bear most immediately on the new purpose for this piece of real estate, though I would hope that the People chapter, under the topic of Community Interaction, would play a larger role. Either way, focusing at this stage on the development of this parcel would compromise the integrity of the Comprehensive Plan, as in the tail wagging the dog.

A lot has happened in the world since 2004. I wonder if our planning commissioners have a good perspective on the economic, financial, ecological, demographic, technological, and natural resource developments that are driving our world, nation, and communities into a new era. Keeping in mind the precept that plans are nothing, but planning is everything, we should be able to improve our future through this thought exercise, as long as we don't swim against the rip-tide or exhaust ourselves trying to swim out of it.

An aerial view of the rip currents shows a financial crash in the offing followed by many years of economic adaptation. After the crash, eddy currents of energy and other natural resource peaks will drown much of what we have come to expect from commerce. The dilemma of the drill-baby-drill (or frack harder and deeper, baby) solution is that this has gotten to the point where earth, sea, and sky are revolting against further violations of whatever remains of our planet's purity. In fact, just backing off isn't going to prevent earth, sea, and sky from taking out their grievances on future inhabitants. Our future economies will be shaped by climate adaptation and, if the Paris climate agreement and the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act mean anything, genuine consideration.

I doubt if our county planners will take this view unless the tide of the public's perception is swept in this foreboding direction and we cry out. Otherwise, our planners (even against their own misgivings) will rationalize and temporize these matters and pretend we can sustain the unsustainable.

Our focus in the Calvert Eats Local group is on the economy, with the outdated plan putting forth a vision that,

We are building a strong local economy based on renewable resources, high technology, retirement, recreation, and tourism.

Last night, among many other changes proposed by our group, I suggested that the word "strong" here be replaced by "resilient." Strong materials can also be brittle. Resilient materials, though somewhat strong, can handle a beating without shattering. We should try to make Calvert County shatterproof.

If you want to help shape the new Comprehensive Plan, there is a public forum on Thursday, 21 April at the Prince Frederick Library at 1 pm that will include the County Planning office. I may have more to say about our economic future at this meeting.