The Environment: Getting Better Over Time

I have just finished reading Steven F. Hayward’s 2011 Almanac of Environmental Trends which is the latest adaption of the former Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. The book is a quick read because Dr. Hayward loves charts and data in this particular effort so that there are a limited number of words. This annual publication can be relied upon to reframe several environmental issues by simply looking at the data differently. Also, Dr. Hayward in examining the trends over the past several decades seems to mirror some of my own optimism when it comes to environment. I was working in the environmental field in the 1970’s so I always see the vast improvement in the environment everywhere I look despite the huge increase in population since that time.

The water quality section has been vastly expanded to examine the data relating to the adequacy of water supplies and the health of several estuaries including the Chesapeake Bay estuary. The good news about water is that “on average” the United States uses less than 8% of the water that falls as precipitation within our borders annually. The happy perspective of Dr. Hayward is that water like solar energy is a renewable resource and that is mostly true. Unfortunately, precipitation varies from the average significantly on a regional basis and thus, allocations and supply on a regional basis will remain a problem especially in locations where irrigations is the major water use (mostly the western states). In addition, it is unknown in most locations if we are using groundwater in a sustainable way. Comprehensive data on groundwater use for the nation is not available. There is no monitoring of groundwater basins.

For example, in California a significant portion of the water supply comes from groundwater. Typically, groundwater supplies about 30% of California’s urban and agricultural uses. In dry years, groundwater use increases to about 40% statewide and 60% or more in some agricultural regions. This rate of groundwater use is unsustainable; California is mining its groundwater, using it at a rate higher than can be recharged. When you withdraw the groundwater from fine-grained compressible confining beds of sediments and do not replace it, the land subsides. The incredibly fertile Central Valley has been identified as the location of maximum subsidence in the United States. Once the land subsides, it looses its water holding capacity and will never recover as an aquifer. The groundwater in California may be a relic of the last ice age and is not being replaced or likely to be replaced under the current climate conditions.

The three estuaries covered in this year’s edition of the Almanac of Environmental Trends are the Gulf Delta, the Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake Bay. Unfortunately, the environmental report card for the estuaries is mixed. The bottom line with the Gulf of Mexico is that hypoxia, oxygen depletion; detrimental to aquatic life has been increasing. Dr. Hayward attributes this in part to incentives in the “well-meaning but ill-designed subsidy and conservation programs…especially subsidies for ethanol related corn production.”
The data after the Gulf oil spill is not included in the series so that the hypoxia can not be attributed to that.

Long Island Sound has shown a steady progress in habitat restoration, increased wetlands and an early achievement of the 2011 fish passageway restoration goals. The combined efforts of state and local governments with conservation organizations have made much progress but are still short of the regional goal. As for the Chesapeake Bay, according to the indices created by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Chesapeake Bay Program and Chesapeake EcoCheck, there has been little if any progress in the past decade after making excellent progress during the previous 22 years. Dr. Hayward, always the optimist points out that while the population in the region exploded in the past decade, the health of the Bay got no worse, still, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation judges the Bay to be “dangerously out of balance.” Hopefully the various Watershed Implementation Plans from the six states and Washington DC will show great progress in the next decade. An interesting correlation in nitrogen and phosphorus contamination in the Bay is with rainfall as seen above. I had not appreciated how much nutrient contamination was correlated with runoff volume. Riparian buffer restoration and nutrient management improvements may be our most effective methods of meeting the Chesapeake Bay TMDLs.

Thoughts from the Environmental Movement

The environmental movement has reached middle age. The widespread acceptance of the validity of the environmental movement was marked in 1970 by the first Earth Day in April and by the founding of the US EPA in December of that year. Yet, 1970 was not the beginning of the environmental movement that happened in the 1950’s and 1960’s in the height of the post war industrial era. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The fires are believed to have been caused by vast oil slicks on the river. The 1952 fire caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage, but today we recall only the small and short lived fire of 1969. The time was right, the environmental movement had had been embraced by the country. On August 1, 1969, Time magazine reported on the fire and on the condition of the Cuyahoga River. The magazine stated:

“Some River! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. "Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown," Cleveland's citizens joke grimly. "He decays". . . The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: "The lower Cuyahoga has no visible signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes." It is also -- literally -- a fire hazard.”

When we see today’s environmental issues and concerns we are alarmed and forget the dreadful state of the environment 40 years ago. Not only was the Cuyahoga in terrible shape, countless rivers and streams were virtually dead zones. We have come so far that even with the US population increasing from 200 to 300 million people our air is cleaner, our water is cleaner and our soils less contaminated. We have much to celebrate and much work yet to do.

A family of wild turkeys has parked themselves in our yard and the back meadow is filled with black birds. While trying to figure out if the black birds are crows, ravens or black birds I am reminded of the bird watcher and author Rachel Carson. Her book, Silent Spring, is widely credited as beginning the environmental movement. From the US EPA history:

“(M)any environmental ideas first crystallized in 1962. That year saw the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, first in serial form in the New Yorker and then as a … best seller. This exhaustively researched, carefully reasoned, and beautifully written attack on the indiscriminate use of pesticides was not exactly light reading. Yet it attracted immediate attention and wound up causing a revolution in public opinion. Skeptics then and now have accused Carson of shallow science, but her literary genius carried all before it. Followers flocked to Carson's cause--rendered all the more sacred by her premature death in 1964. Suddenly, everywhere people looked, they saw evidence of nature's spoilation. Concern over air and water pollution spread in widening eddies from the often-forgotten core of the movement: a highly detailed and intellectually challenging book about commercial pesticides.”

It is difficult for someone of my age and inclinations (having worked for the US EPA in the 1970’s) to think of DDT without thinking of Silent Spring. Though it is often thought that Carson was calling for the elimination of all pesticides, Carson had made it clear she was not advocating the banning or complete withdrawal of helpful pesticides, but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use, with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on the entire ecosystem. As Eric Hoffer points out in his book, “True Believer” mass movements can never be moderate and rational they attract followers by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change. We are a nation of over sprayers. We figuratively and literally take the Raid can and spray a stream of bug spray at the offending specimen until we kill it by poisoning or drowning. Moderate, responsible action seems impossible for us, but that is the skill we must learn as responsible stewards of this earth and as humane and concerned citizens of the planet. We must balance concern for the earth as measured by whatever index suites your world view with the needs of the lesser developed world to escape poverty and disease. What is the point of saving the earth if not for mankind? For an upbeat look at progress made in the fight for a cleaner planet see “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, Fourteenth Edition” by Steven E. Hayward. It is worth reading in these challenging times.