Summer ended much as it began across the Chesapeake Bay watershed, drenched in rain that swelled rivers and streams. The abnormal run of chronically wet weather that continued into late September posed further challenges for maintaining recent gains in the Bay’s health.
Freshwater flows into the Bay in August were the highest recorded for that month by a wide margin, the U.S....
Timothy B. Wheeler
October 04, 2018
Climate Change,Pollution 
0 Comments
An environmental group is warning that more than 1,000 communities nationwide, including many in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, have nitrates in their drinking water at levels that recent research suggests could raise consumers’ risks of getting cancer.
Drawing on federal data, the Environmental Working Group contended in a report issued Tuesday that worrisome levels of nitrates,...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- October 03, 2018
- Pollution
- 1 Comment
And now, a kind word about one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most hated invasive plants: phragmites.
The tall, feathery-plumed marsh reed is the bane of waterfowl lovers around the Chesapeake Bay region, as it crowds out native wetland plants, depriving ducks, geese and swans of nourishment. Landowners and resources managers alike spend a lot of time and money trying to control its...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- October 01, 2018
- Climate Change
- 2 Comments
The demolition of Bloede Dam finally got under way Tuesday, as explosives blew a hole in the long-dormant hydroelectric facility blocking the Patapsco River west of Baltimore.
Kiewit, the Nebraska-based contractor handling the removal of the state-owned dam, had been waiting for the river’s rain-swollen flow to subside before triggering the blast to make it easier for heavy...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- September 12, 2018
- Fisheries
- 0 Comments
A controversial proposal to temporarily restrict the expansion of some types of oyster farming in St. Mary’s County, MD, has been tabled for now, as county officials lobby the state to give more weight to local wishes in the permitting of aquaculture.
The St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners decided on Tuesday, Sept. 11, to extend the public comment period until Dec. 4 on a...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- September 12, 2018
- Fisheries
- 0 Comments
If it ever stops raining, one of the biggest remaining barriers to fish migration in the Chesapeake Bay watershed will finally come down.
Bloede Dam, a long-dormant hydroelectric facility near Baltimore, is supposed to be breached with explosives any day now, the first major step toward opening up Maryland’s Patapsco River to river herring, shad and eels.
Preparatory work has...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- September 07, 2018
- Fisheries
- 0 Comments
Maryland is switching the focus of its oyster restoration efforts to a river on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore known for its relative abundance of bivalves from a Western Shore waterway where they’re said to be lacking.
The state Department of Natural Resources announced the Manokin River Wednesday as its new candidate for large-scale restoration, saying recent surveys of...
- Jeremy Coxand Timothy B. Wheeler
- September 05, 2018
- Fisheries,Politics + Policy
- 2 Comments
Waterfront homeowners and oyster farmers squared off in St. Mary’s County, MD, this week over a proposed ordinance to restrict expansion of aquaculture there. But the two-and-a-half hour public hearing ended Tuesday night with two of the five county commissioners suggesting the dispute could be worked out at the state level instead.
The Southern Maryland county’s board of...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- August 31, 2018
- Fisheries
- 1 Comment
The massive — and massively expensive — oyster restoration project in Maryland’s Harris Creek is yielding some pretty big pollution reductions, according to a new report.
Using a computer model to calculate the project’s water-quality impacts, researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science estimate that...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- August 30, 2018
- Fisheries,Pollution
- 5 Comments
There’s a price to be paid, sometimes, for being at the head of the pack. In the case of Montgomery County MD, the price is $300,000. That’s the penalty the Washington, DC, suburb agreed earlier this year to pay for its failure to curb pollution sufficiently from its streets, sidewalks, parking lots and buildings.
Under a municipal stormwater permit issued by the state in 2010,...
- Timothy B. Wheeler
- August 29, 2018
- Pollution
- 0 Comments
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Timothy B. Wheeler is associate editor and senior writer for the Bay Journal. He has more than two decades of experience covering the environment for The Baltimore Sun and other media outlets. 
