Looking at the skinny elm sapling reaching for the sky in his backyard, James Bryant said that he hopes he lives long enough to be able to sit under its canopy and read a book in summer.

Bryant’s neighborhood in Charlottesville, VA, has the dubious distinction of being the hottest in town. Walking the blocks around the intersection of 10th and Page streets, it’s easy to see why — trees that could offer some shady relief from the broiling summer sun are few and far between.

“We couldn’t sit out until late evening to have cookouts because it was so hot,” he said.

Like many communities across the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Charlottesville and its nonprofit partners are trying to change that. Bryant has a new crape myrtle in his tiny front yard and a pair of nascent shade trees out back, courtesy of volunteers with the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards. This fall, the city’s Tree Commission is going door to door in the neighborhood looking for at least 20 more homeowners willing to have trees planted in their yards.

Despite such efforts, the city is losing mature trees faster than it can plant new ones. Across town, pink and orange surveyor’s tape hangs from dozens of large trees in an 8-acre woods that a developer plans to clear to build 47 new homes. Another 12-acre woodland nearby was rezoned earlier this year, also for housing development.

“Rather than robust and flourishing, Charlottesville’s overall tree canopy continues to decline at an accelerating rate,” the Tree Commission warned last year. From 2014 to 2018, the city lost nearly 80 acres of leafy canopy, a 3% reduction, a new set of data show.

Charlottesville is far from alone. The new figures, compiled by scientists working as part of the state-federal Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort, show that communities in the Bay watershed cumulatively suffered a net loss of more than 29,000 acres in urban tree canopy during that time span.

Those losses come despite a pledge made in 2014 by all of the Bay watershed states — Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia — to increase their overall urban tree canopy by 2,400 acres by 2025.

Evidence that urban tree canopy is going in the wrong direction comes from aerial surveys conducted in 2013–14 and 2017–18, which were analyzed by the Chesapeake Bay Program and the nonprofit Chesapeake Conservancy. Two-thirds of the watershed’s communities — cities, towns and villages, but also unincorporated clusters of homes recognized as “places” in the U.S. Census — lost tree cover. The rest held steady or registered mostly small gains.

Those losses are part of a broader canopy decline that extends into rural areas, the survey data found. But urban tree cover declines are of particular concern, experts say, because trees in developed areas not only prevent polluted runoff but reduce extreme heat and fight air pollution. They also reduce flooding, lower energy bills, raise property values and dampen noise, among other benefits.

Development takes a toll

The reasons for the decline are manifold. Diseases and pests, such as the emerald ash borer, are killing many mature trees. Ice and wind from storms fell others. Property owners take down other trees because they’re seen as hazards to property or safety, or they’re just inconvenient.

“There are so many different forces that are whittling away at the canopy,” said Julie Mawhorter, Mid-Atlantic Urban and Community Forestry Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service.

Some losses have even occurred, ironically enough, in an effort to improve the Bay’s water quality. Stream restoration projects undertaken to reduce bank erosion and nutrient and sediment pollution often require sacrificing mature trees overhanging the water.

But the major cause of canopy declines is development, the aerial surveys showed. Woodland oases next to or surrounded by concrete and asphalt are cleared for new homes, warehouses and other buildings, while trees also come down for roads, power lines and pipelines.

When grouped by state, Maryland communities suffered the biggest declines in tree cover, losing a total of 14,592 acres for a 2.2% decrease in cumulative canopy, according to a Bay Journal analysis of Bay Program data. Virginia’s communities collectively lost 9,955 acres, for a 1.3% decrease. Pennsylvania lost 3,256 acres or 0.7%.

The community with the biggest loss was Virginia Beach, that state’s most populous city. It lost more than 1,700 acres — more than three times the next biggest decline, which occurred in Brandywine, a growing unincorporated area of Prince George’s County, MD.

“When you have older trees, they do fail during storms, and they do die,” said Brooke Costanza, Virginia Beach’s city arborist. “And we think private property owners are cutting trees on their property because they’re scared of storm damage.”

The biggest gain, with a 268-acre increase in canopy, was in tiny Mount Vernon, an unincorporated village in Somerset County, MD, whose census-drawn boundaries encompass broad swaths of timberland.

Overall, large cities lost 1.9% of their canopy in just four years, nearly three times the decline seen in small towns, though there were small gains in the watershed’s two largest municipalities, Baltimore and Washington, DC.

The new figures also seem to underscore longstanding racial inequities in urban landscapes. The percentage of tree cover in the 112 communities where Black residents make up 50% or more of the population declined on average 11 times more than other places. Baltimore as a whole was an exception, increasing its overall canopy by about 100 acres.

Such findings are significant because many predominantly Black neighborhoods already had a tree deficit, a legacy of historic housing segregation that often consigned them to cramped, relatively treeless environs.

Baltimore and Richmond, for example, were among more than 200 U.S. cities subjected for much of the 1900s to “redlining,” the federally promoted practice of withholding home loan approvals from racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods.

Tree-starved neighborhoods

Though outlawed in 1968, redlining’s legacy lives on in many places, including Richmond’s Southside area. The most glaring evidence of the decades of disinvestment can be seen in the predominately Black community’s lack of trees. Research led by the Science Museum of Virginia has found that the resulting “heat islands” can be up to 16 degrees hotter than leafier parts of the city, putting Southside residents at far greater risk of heat-related illnesses and death.

Sheri Shannon wants to change that. She is one of the founders of Southside ReLeaf, a nonprofit that seeks to promote environmental justice by adding and improving green spaces.

“Planting trees is not going to solve environmental racism,” Shannon said. “It’s not going to solve the climate crisis, but it is one part of mitigation of lowering the temperature in neighborhoods that are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat.”

The centerpiece of the effort is the Greening Southside Richmond Project, a partnership with other environmental groups to plant hundreds of trees while training local youths in green industries.

“We’re focused on making sure we’re improving the green infrastructure, which will eventually improve the social infrastructure of neighborhoods,” Shannon said of the initiative, which received a $230,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to support the work into early 2023.

But it’s an uphill battle, she admitted. Developers are bulldozing tracts of trees, and she contends that they are not required to adequately compensate for the losses.

“Essentially, what we’re seeing is a lot of multifamily housing going up, which is needed, but we’re not seeing trees being planted and mature trees being preserved — and in an area that is already experiencing extreme heat and floods because of poor infrastructure,” Shannon said.

Money for planting trees

Amid growing recognition of trees’ value in restoring the Bay and battling climate change, nonprofit groups and governments at all levels are stepping up efforts to get more roots in the ground. Many are also trying to address historic inequities in the distribution of trees throughout their communities.

In Maryland, lawmakers last year passed the Tree Solutions Now Act, which calls for 5 million trees to be planted statewide by 2031. The legislation specified that at least 500,000 of those trees go in “underserved areas.”

In June, the state’s Board of Public Works gave $10 million to the Chesapeake Bay Trust to fund the first year of plantings in relatively treeless communities. The trust promptly handed out $7.7 million of that to nearly three dozen state and local agencies, nonprofits and community groups. Grants ranged from $9,000 to $1.9 million. Those funds should pay for planting 40,000 trees by next spring, said trust director Jana Davis. They’ll have to pick up the pace in future years, though, to reach the state’s 2031 goal.

Federal money is also on the way to boost urban tree plantings in the watershed. The Inflation Reduction Act will provide $1.5 billion nationwide over the next 10 years for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s urban forestry program — a fivefold increase from its current funding level.

But the overall rate of tree losses has been so great that even doubling or tripling plantings won’t close the gap by itself, experts say.

“You can’t plant your way out of it,” said the Forest Service’s Mawhorter, who coordinates the Bay Program’s urban tree canopy effort. “If you want to use trees for climate resilience and these Bay goals, you also need to be paying attention to your existing canopy and how you maintain it.”

Money alone won’t fill in holes in urban tree cover, either. It’s no simple matter finding suitable spots for planting in some densely built neighborhoods. Houses around 10th and Page streets in Charlottesville hug the street on lots that are much smaller than average. Front yards aren’t big enough to accommodate big shade trees, so backyards often offer the only alternatives.

‘Fill in the gaps’

James Bryant’s neighborhood in Charlottesville is one of those urban “heat islands,” where the tree canopy is less than half the citywide average of 40%. The historically Black neighborhood has one of the city’s highest rates of heart attacks, heat stroke and asthma, according to Peggy Van Yahres, chair of the city’s Tree Commission. Most families there pay up to 20% of their income for heating and cooling.

The commission helped launch ReLeaf Cville, a project aimed at improving health and living conditions in neighborhoods with skimpy canopy, starting with 10th and Page. They have already planted about 30 trees there and helped train a group of teens to canvass the area for more homeowners.

“We’re going to fill in the gaps,” Van Yahres said.

In Baltimore, you first need to make some gaps. The only way to plug trees in some treeless neighborhoods is to carve holes in the concrete. Just 28% of the city is shaded by trees, with as little as 4% canopy in some blocks.

Wearing headphones to dampen the deafening noise, Malcolm Wilson, restoration crew leader for Blue Water Baltimore, guided a wheeled rotary saw nicknamed “Big Baby” as it carved through the concrete walk on North Smallwood Street in West Baltimore.

Crew member Corbin Sulton then climbed into a skid loader fitted with a big steel punch to break up the cut-out patch. His next step was to grab the slabs with an excavator and hoist them into a nearby dump truck.

Next spring, Blue Water Baltimore plans to plant cherry, redbud and other hardy saplings in the newly created sidewalk pits. With limited exposed ground to soak up rainfall, the young trees face challenges getting established, so the group plans to water and check on them for two years.

“If we could plant this block top to bottom and have only two or three trees die, then we’re winning,” said Wilson, who called blocks like this one “hidden gems.”

“In the long run,” he added, “it’s going to create shade [and] draw enough [pollution] out of the air. It’s going to draw some of these people out so they’re actually sitting on their steps.”

Reggie Parker, one of the few sitting out to watch the crew work, can hardly wait.

“We need some type of shade here,” he said as he perched with his cats on the sill of his open front door. He said he hoped the trees would also “bring some more birds into the area.”

Baltimore is one of the bright spots, along with Washington, DC, that has bucked the statistical trend of large and more diverse communities losing canopy. Baltimore’s tree cover grew by about 1%, or more than 100 acres, according to the Bay Program data.

The city and its nonprofit partners have planted about 13,000 trees since 2016, according to Sam Seo, director of Tree-Baltimore, a city-run umbrella group. It has also begun to perform proactive pruning of mature trees to improve their chances of surviving storms.

The nonprofit Baltimore Tree Trust has been planting about 3,000 trees a year and intends to double its pace in 2023, according to CEO Bryant Smith. Within a few years, he said he hopes to be planting 10,000 trees annually.

But Baltimore’s goal is to get 40% of the city shaded by trees by 2037, so there’s a long way to go.

“If we’re only doing 10,000 [a year], we’re not going to get there,” said Erik Dihle, who retired earlier this year after a decade as the city’s arborist. To reach the goal in time would require boosting that rate by 2.5 times, he estimated.

Besides pests and storms, some of the biggest threats to Baltimore’s tree canopy have come from infrastructure projects, including a new natural gas pipeline cutting through the forested wilderness of the city’s Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park. Several stream restorations and sewer rehabilitation work have mowed down swaths of trees as well.

Weak tree protections

In many, if not most, communities, the vast majority of trees are on private property. That, experts say, is the Achilles’ heel of the effort to expand the urban canopy.

“In general, the local policies to prevent loss are pretty weak across the watershed,” Mawhorter said. “Maryland has the strongest laws, but in Maryland we’ve also had a lot of losses.”

Maryland’s Forest Conservation Act, first passed in 1991, requires developers to spare large “specimen” trees and those bordering streams and wetlands. They’re also obligated to replace at least some of what they cut down.

But the law only applies when about an acre or more is to be cleared, and it allows developers to pay to preserve trees elsewhere rather than plant replacements. Several Maryland counties and Baltimore city have in recent years imposed stricter limits, but it’s too soon to gauge their effectiveness.

Virginia has a pair of laws that aim to conserve and replace trees, but until recently they only applied in the suburbs near DC. The tree replacement law, which has expanded statewide, actually limits how much localities may require developers to replant, according to Peggy Sanner, Virginia director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“We don’t have very strong private [tree] regulations, other than what’s given to us by the state,” said Matt Alfele, a Charlottesville city planner.

In Pennsylvania, municipalities can form shade tree commissions. They also can regulate tree removal along streets and even in some development situations. But relatively few have gone that far, said Harry Campbell, advocacy director in the Bay Foundation’s Harrisburg office.

The emphasis there, as in other states, is on appealing to private landowners to voluntarily keep trees and replace those that get taken down.

Takoma Park, a small Maryland city in the DC suburbs, has perhaps the strongest legal protections for trees on private property in the Bay watershed. A permit is required to cut down any tree with a trunk that measures more than 24 inches around, and only dead or hazardous trees can be taken down without being required to plant replacements or pay a hefty fee.

Marty Frye, Takoma Park’s urban forester, said five permit applications were denied last year. Even so, because of widespread die-off from extreme weather and pests, he said he has approved 500–600 removals each of the last two years. And with small young trees replacing big old ones, the city’s leafy canopy continues to shrink.

With the tree canopy declining faster than new trees can take their place, the Forest Service’s Mawhorter said she doubts Bay watershed states can dig themselves out of the hole they’re in and increase total tree cover by 2,400 acres by 2025.

“We’re going to have to reassess,” she said. “Is this the right goal? And if it is, what’s it going to take to get there?”

by Timothy B. Wheeler & Jeremy Cox

One of the few bits of good news that the town of Easton experienced during the rough days of COVID was the explosion of the use of the current Rails-to-Trails pathway. While popular well before the national pandemic hit, the increase in use during the last few years can only be seen as reassuring to local government officials and the general public that this kind of investment indeed pays off.

It also must make town stakeholders overjoyed as they note that the new east-to-west expansion of the trails is taking shape quickly, and will be available for use in a matter of months. But what many in the community might not realize is that there is still much more to come.

The Spy asked Kody Cario, the project manager for the Town of Easton, to come over to the studio last week to talk about the current status of the Rails-to-Trails and what is planned over the next few years.

This video is approximately minutes in length. For more information about the Rails-to-Trails project please inquire here. 

On Monday night, Federalsburg’s Mayor and Town Council approved and signed a letter to the Maryland Department of the Environment asking the agency to deny a discharge permit for AquaCon’s proposed fish factory in the Eastern Shore town. 

The town officials noted in their letter that numerous questions and concerns related to the permit have been unanswered by AquaCon and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), which tentatively approved the permit for the facility earlier this year. The local officials fear the proposed facility could put Federalsburg citizens “at risk” if those issues aren’t addressed. If MDE doesn’t deny the permit, the town officials requested the state to at the very least extend its review until the questions are “sufficiently addressed.” 

You can read the full letter here.

Industrial facilities dumped at least 94,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including PFAS, into Maryland’s waterways in 2020, according to a report released Wednesday by the Maryland PIRG Foundation.

The startling and sobering report, “Wasting Our Waterways,” takes statistics from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory for 2020 and puts the health of Maryland’s waterways in the context of broader national environmental trends.

“Our children deserve a safe and healthy future,” said Maryland PIRG State Director Emily Scarr. “Yet polluters too often recklessly dispose of chemicals linked to cancer, developmental and reproductive damage. It’s time to stop this toxic dumping, and hold polluters accountable for the harm they cause to public health and the environment.”

Major findings in the report include:

• Polluters dumped 6.2 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the Brandywine-Christina Watershed, the third-highest volume dumped into any watershed in the country, in neighboring Delaware and Pennsylvania, which runs into Cecil County in Maryland.

• The facility releasing the most toxic chemicals in Maryland was Grace Davison-Curtis Bay Works  in Southwest Baltimore, a chemical plant which emitted 79,000 pounds of chemicals into the Gunpowder-Patapsco rivers watershed. The plant has been the object of multiple government regulatory actions over the last several years.

• Using the EPA’s tool to measure relative toxicity (because some chemicals pose more risk to human health than others) showed that United States Gypsum Co. in Baltimore released more toxicity than any single facility in Maryland. That company, which manufactures construction products, released 240,000 pounds into the Gunpowder-Patapsco watershed.

The environmentalists and scientists warn that the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory data captures only a portion of the toxic pollution released to waterways by industrial facilities, meaning that the amount of toxic substances that industrial facilities released to waterways is likely more than reported.

The report comes on the heels of the Maryland Department of Environment determining that there are traces of toxic PFAS in drinking water. According to the EPA, there is no safe level of these so-called “forever chemicals” in drinking water and exposure to PFAS, even in small amounts over time, has been linked to serious health effects including cancer, thyroid disruption and reduced vaccine response.

Companies were exempt from reporting many PFAS chemicals until 2020. In early 2022, three national advocacy organizations sued to force the EPA to investigate possible non-compliance with PFAS reporting requirements based on unexpectedly low numbers of facilities reporting PFAS use, unexpectedly low reported numbers of total PFAS chemicals used, and unexpectedly low reported amounts of PFAS released to the environment.

“Marylanders have a right to know about releases of toxic chemicals, like PFAS, in our waterways,” said Upper Potomac Riverkeeper Brent Walls. “When these chemicals pollute our waters, they pollute oysters, fish and crabs, and ultimately, our bodies.”

The report recommends several steps to stem this tide of toxic pollution into protected waterways – including requiring industry to switch from toxic chemicals to safer alternatives.

But with the Clean Water Act about to turn 50, the report notes that “the job of cleaning up America’s waterways remains half full.” And environmental advocates worry that the Supreme Court could drastically limit the number of waterways protected by the Clean Water Act.

The court is scheduled to hear arguments next Monday in Sackett v. EPA, the case of an Idaho couple who have been prohibited from building a home on land they own near a lake because their lot contained wetlands that qualify as “navigable waters” regulated by the Clean Water Act.

“Polluters shouldn’t be able to use Maryland’s waters as a dumping ground,” said Scarr. “As the Clean Water Act turns 50, we should be setting stronger protections for our rivers and streams and responding aggressively to new risks such as the toxic PFAS increasingly contaminating our state’s waterways.

By Josh Kurtz

Today, Maryland Dept. Of the Environment filed a judicial Consent Decree signed by the department, Valley Proteins, Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth (DCPG), and ShoreRivers that requires Valley Proteins to upgrade equipment, pay significant fines, and investigate groundwater at the site.  

Once entered by the Dorchester County Circuit Court, the Consent Decree will settle a lawsuit brought by CBF, ShoreRivers, DCPG, and the state of Maryland–the Plaintiffs– after Valley Proteins violated its permitted wastewater pollution limits for years. The facility’s more than 40 violations over the previous decade have resulted in excess amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, fecal coliform bacteria, and ammonia entering the Transquaking River and the Chesapeake Bay.  

The Consent Decree also aims to address community complaints related to the Linkwood rendering plant ranging from excessive algal blooms in local waterways to foul smells emanating from the facility. Valley Proteins primarily renders chicken carcasses and feathers into pet food and other products at the plant.  

Environmental organizations for years had been urging Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) to enforce permit limits at the facility, which has been operating with a wastewater discharge permit that expired in 2006. Formal lawsuits were filed by MDE, CBF, DCPG, and ShoreRivers in Feb. 2022 after drone footage and other photos captured by ShoreRivers in late 2021 documented sludge flows and inadequately treated wastewater entering a stream leading to the Transquaking River. The new evidence led MDE to briefly shut the plant down in late 2021.  

Valley Proteins was sold to Darling Ingredients while negotiations over the Consent Decree took place. Valley Proteins and Darling will be responsible for meeting the terms of the settlement.  

“Valley Proteins’ previous ownership failed to operate and maintain this rendering plant to the standards expected in the state of Maryland, so we took action,” said Alan Girard, CBF’s Eastern Shore Director. “The Consent Decree imposes strict measures coupled with enhanced MDE and citizen oversight to ensure the new owners end the facility’s long record of pollution violations. We hope other business owners take notice: If you pollute Maryland’s waterways, you will be held accountable.”  

The following terms are included in the Consent Decree:  

• Valley Proteins is ordered to pay $540,000 in civil penalties to the state of Maryland and provide $135,000 to nonprofit plaintiffs for new Transquaking River monitoring and restoration work.  
• Valley Proteins must conduct a groundwater study, reviewed and approved by the plaintiffs, to evaluate whether the above ground wastewater treatment system, wastewater lagoons, and the facility’s septic system are contributing pollutants to groundwater at the site. If leaks are found, corrective actions must be taken.  
• Valley Proteins must complete a plan to reduce odors emanating from the facility.  
• Structural and procedural stormwater improvements must be made at the facility.  
• Valley Proteins must share documents with CBF, ShoreRivers, and DCPG related to any plans to expand or upgrade the plant as well as details related to meeting the requirements of a renewed discharge permit.  
• If violations of the Consent Decree occur, Valley Proteins is ordered to pay penalties of $250 per day up to the first seven days of noncompliance, $500 per day for 8 to 120 days of noncompliance, and $1,000 per day for every day after 120 days.  

The terms are designed to address past violations and deter Valley Proteins from violating its wastewater permit in the future. The state-issued permit is intended to prevent excess pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and bacteria from being discharged by the plant and overwhelming the Transquaking River ecosystem. Too many pollutants in the river can cause fish kills, harm human health, and seriously damage water quality.   

The company is seeking a renewal of its permit and plans to expand the facility.