DNREC buffers, PCS plan under spotlight

By Jonathan Starkey
Staff Reporter

In a proposal of DNREC’s pollution control strategy released last spring, 100-foot buffers protected tidal wetlands, non-tidal wetlands, and perennial and intermittent streams and ditches along Delaware’s inland bay watershed.

Those buffers and the strategy were meant to protect the waterways from nitrogen and phosphorous, which lead to large algae blooms, reduced dissolved oxygen levels and fish kills.

After much resistance from property-rights advocates downstate, though, DNREC reduced the buffer to 50 feet in its August 2006 proposal — much to the displeasure of local environmentalists, as well as local residents who attended a Tuesday public workshop.

“We’ve done an analysis between the two strategies, of the efficiency between the first and second strategies,” said Chris Bason, science and technical coordinator, and wetlands project leader at the Center for the Inland Bays. Bason said that CIB should have a formal response to the new draft by early October. “The strategy that is currently being proposed is far, far less efficient at reducing nitrogen and phosphorous,” he added. “We’re very concerned about that.”

Buffers are used to catch much of the nutrient runoff from homes, developments and agricultural lands, absorbing it before it reaches the waterways. Bason said that while the 100-foot buffer would have exceeded the need in some places, it better protected the waterways from the unwanted nutrients in others.

In its “Conservation Threshold for Land Use Planners,” The Environmental Law Institute in 2003 suggested that “land use planners should provide for buffer strips that are a minimum of 25 meters [about 82 feet] in width to provide nutrient and pollutant removal.”

Sussex County already enforces a 50-foot buffer it implemented with its 2002 Land Use Plan and is currently working on an updated land-use plan, which is due to the state by the end of 2007. DNREC’s buffer does protect perennial streams and ditches, which the county regulation does not.

Also unlike last year’s draft, the mandatory buffer in the current proposal would not protect non-tidal wetlands or intermittent waterways — ones that don’t flow all year long.

Kevin Donnelly, director of DNREC’s Water Resources division, said it was necessary to reduce the width and application of the buffers, which only apply to larger developments, to reduce economic impact on property owners along the watershed.

“The 100-foot proposal before had serious and widespread financial impacts for the property owning community of Sussex County,” Donnelly said.

Rich Collins, executive director of the Positive Growth Alliance, one of the groups involved with The Coalition — which is a conglomerate of farming and development interests that lobbied DNREC to reduce the buffer — said the new proposed regulation is more realistic.

Collins said that the 100-foot plan would have rendered much of the land in Southeastern Sussex monetarily worthless because of the amount of waterways in the area.

“The 50-foot (buffer) is a reasonable compromise that will, combined with many things, lead to a positive conclusion,” Collins said. “All this theoretical stuff is fine when it’s not costing anything. When they find out (their land is) gone with the stroke of a pen, they feel differently.”



The cost



The pollution control strategy, which DNREC officials hope to implement by early 2007, will cost developers, farmers, the state and homeowners an estimated $38 million annually. The strategy calls for the removal of three point sources — where a pipe discharges nutrients directly into the waterways — in Lewes, Rehoboth and Millsboro, as well as some on-site septic systems, which are considered non-point sources.

In the next five to 10 years, Sussex County plans to place about 2,500 homes currently served by on-site septic systems on central sewer. DNREC’s proposed strategy would require that homeowners retaining the on-site systems have them inspected every three years and eventually replaced by “advanced treatment” systems.

Replacing the older systems with modern, more environmentally-sensitive, more-expensive ones would cost homeowners more than $1,500 annually over a 20-year financing period. Joining central sewer systems would cost homeowners $860 over the same 20-year plan.

A healthier system

Removing point sources, updating and removing septic systems and establishing buffers to absorb runoff will make provide for healthier inland bays, which have been plagued by low dissolved oxygen levels caused by unwanted nutrients.

DNREC’s strategy will attempt to reduce the amount of nutrients entering the waters enforcing the total maximum daily load (TMDL) requirements established in 1998 for the Indian River, the Indian River Bay and the Rehoboth Bay, and later for the Little Assawoman Bay. The strategy plans to reduce up to 85 percent of nitrogen and phosphorous entering the Indian River, the Indian River and Rehoboth bays, and up to 40 percent of the same nutrients entering the Little Assawoman Bay.

“The nutrients overwhelm the system,” said Joe Farrell, a marine advisory specialist with the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies’ Sea Grant program. And, “All of us are contributing to this load. I don’t think anyone is pointing the finger at one group,” Farrell added.

The large algae blooms and subsequent low dissolved oxygen levels — caused by nitrogen and phosphorous to primary growing nutrients — create an unhealthy and less diverse system, Farrell said.

Mike Jandzen, the owner of Aquatic Marine — who first toured the inland bays as a 10-year-old in 1970 — provides environmental tours of the area he has seen strained by booming development.

“The health of the bays goes back in forth. Is it dead? No. Does it need improvement? Definitely,” said Jandzen, adding that he tries to educate young kids so they will grow up with a “vested interest” in their surrounding environment. “We may not have this resource for long if it gets polluted.”