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EPA Opposes Dredging for 4 Maryland Waterways

By Anita Huslin
Thursday, January 4, 2001

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have moved to block dredging projects that would improve access for recreational boaters along several Maryland waterways, saying the work would set a dangerous precedent by destroying ecologically valuable underwater grasses.

Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties are seeking permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dig deeper navigational channels in four creeks along the Middle and Magothy rivers, and surveys show that the dredging would remove about 3.5 acres of aquatic vegetation.

"These four permits, which are intended to improve access for a limited number of recreational boaters, would cause significant adverse impacts to submerged aquatic vegetation," said Assistant EPA Administrator J. Charles Fox, who asked the corps to halt the permitting process.

EPA officials said they focused on these four proposed projects because of their impact on areas where the grasses have begun reappearing in recent years. Throughout the bay, only 10 percent of the historic 600,000 acres of underwater grasses remains. Last summer, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District agreed to protect and restore 114,000 acres of aquatic grasses throughout the watershed. The grasses provide critical habitat for blue crabs and other species.

As restoration efforts begin to produce results, a consistent policy should be used by the corps and state and local agencies for considering dredging requests that would affect underwater grasses, EPA officials said. They urged the corps to develop such a policy, based on scientific studies.

"Right now, there are essentially no standards by which to judge these projects," said Bradley Campbell, EPA's Region III administrator. "Before we barrel forward with projects that are going to lead to significant losses of underwater grasses, we really need to think twice and have a common understanding about how to limit the losses."

Corps officials said their policy has generally been to prohibit dredging in areas where grasses would be destroyed, but the growth of new grasses in older boating channels is prompting them to make judgment calls on whether to allow maintenance dredging.

EPA officials urged the corps, before approving such projects, to study whether deepening channels would prevent underwater grasses from growing back. But corps officials said they would have to allow such work to occur before they could determine the effects.

"We recognize that it'd be helpful to have additional information on what long-term impacts of dredging would be, but there's no way to determine that unless you do a limited amount of dredging," said Janet Vine, chief of the Maryland section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Last year, 140 navigational dredging projects were done in Maryland waters, the bulk of them -- 97 -- in Anne Arundel County.

Officials at the Maryland Department of the Environment, which also issues permits for such work, said they have generally allowed dredging to maintain navigational channels in areas where waterfront communities, marinas and other businesses rely on access to the water.

County officials in Baltimore have argued that the dredging is needed to sustain those businesses and promote economic development.

Dale Plummer, president of the Sylvan View community association, said that in the 35 years he has lived on the Magothy, he has watched as silt has filled the boating channels and fewer large vessels have been able to navigate into Gray's Creek, one of the proposed dredging sites.

"In some of the areas, the ground is showing on low tide," Plummer said. "There'd be a lot of folks who'd be very disappointed if this [dredging] didn't happen."

Environmentalists, however, praised the EPA action and urged the corps to better evaluate the effect of dredging on the reseeding and regrowth of underwater grasses.

"If they're going to just go ahead and dredge and then look after the fact to see whether the grass grows back or not, this isn't a scientifically validated research endeavor," said Jenn Aiosa, staff scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "If they're then in turn going to use that approach to making broader decisions about dredging, then we're really nervous about it."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company