Bay and River News

Bay Journal: The Chesapeake Bay Newspaper

1. Editor's Note: See you in March! Here's plenty to read in the meantime
   It's time to welcome the New Year, which also means it's time for our winter break. This is a combined January-February issue to accommodate our 10-times-a-year printing schedule. We have some exciting projects planned for 2012, and we'll be starting to work on them.
2. Editor's Note: Bay restoration on the right path, but not out of the woods yet
   For almost three decades, there has been a very concerted focus on cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
3. Sea level along Chesapeake rising faster than efforts to mitigate it
   Imagine living in a neighborhood where people check the tide gauges to figure out where they should park their cars. A place where front yards sprout wetland plants and smell like marsh grass, where city leaders debate spending millions of dollars to raise yet another street, and where prospective homeowners consult computerized flood maps to determine if it's safe to buy a house.
4. Chesapeake Challenge: Babes in theWatershed
   Northern CopperheadPelicanRed FoxRed Spotted Newt
5. Large-scale SAV restoration discouraged until water quality improves
   A scientific review has offered advice about trying to plant large-scale underwater grass beds in the Chesapeake: Don't bother. At least not until the Bay's often-murky water gets clearer.
6. New policies contribute to VA's surge in land conservation easements
   In 1958, Andrew Packett's parents bought a farm on the Northern Neck of Virginia. The decision defined the rest of their lives, and their son's life, too.
7. EPA report links groundwater contamination to natural gas drilling
   The EPA has issued a draft report confirming what many environmental groups have long suspected: Natural gas drilling is causing groundwater contamination.
8. Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network: Flakes and Flocks: Bay's winter landscape awash with geese, swans
   Seasons in the Chesapeake Bay region are marked not just by colors in the landscape, but by movements in the sky.
9. Economist asks: We are growing, but are we more prosperous?
   Imagine a thrillingly powerful sports car whose speedometer dominates the dash, obscuring gauges that warn of fuel guzzling, overheating, needed maintenance and pollution. Not to worry! If you run into any problems, just keep pushing on the accelerator, the car's designer says.
10. On the Wing: Memory of canvasbacks haunts the snows of yesteryear
    The snow showers were racing us to the river.
11. Support for offshore wind power picks up speed in Bay states
    Travelers across the 20-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel that connects Virginia's rural Eastern Shore with the urban center of Norfolk and Virginia Beach have an expansive view of the Chesapeake Bay - a view often heralded for its breadth and beauty.
12. Cover Story: States submit draft strategies to clean water
    A year after the EPA put the Bay on a "pollution diet," states are providing new details about how they - and local governments - will curb the nutrient binge that transformed the Bay's once-clear water into a murky soup over the last 50 years.
13. Dam demolition now the preferred method for creating fish passages
    Bay states removed 11 dams in the Chesapeake watershed during the past year, opening 148 miles of river habitat to migratory fish, according to figures compiled by the Bay Program.
14. Plan to make Baltimore Harbor swimmable, fishable by 2020 unveiled
    Business leaders, neighborhood activists and schoolchildren recently joined Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in unveiling a plan to clean up Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
15. Embry Dam's removal proves to be boon for smaller eels
    Over the last few years, biologists monitoring small streams in Shenandoah National Park have observed something that is happening almost nowhere else - the number of eels is steadily growing.
16. Message from the Executive Director: Another New Year full of promise for the Chesapeake Bay
    Standing on the edge of the Magothy River, I listened to a honking wedge of geese making their way toward the Eastern Shore. The crisp blue sky was empty except for the wisps of high clouds that confirmed the cold front that had come in overnight. There are more gulls than people out this time of morning. With wind gusts that are surprisingly cold, I think I know why.
17. VA's South River runs free for first time in more than a century
    While a pair of heavy-duty earth movers lumbered back and forth across the rocky stream bed of the South River like busy, destructive beavers, a hydraulic hammer chipped away at the old Rife-Loth Dam's moss-covered limestone walls. It was a symphony of metal scraping stone, only occasionally interrupted when the giant hammer stopped pulsing and the sound of rushing waters spilling over the old dam rose above the din.
18. Past is Prologue: Arrows point to technically skilled native cultures
    The December Past is Prologue focused on the bow, but where would the bow be without the arrow?
19. American eels are mostly gone in Great Lakes
    The American eel had been good to John Rorabeck. For decades, he guided his workboat along the rivers and lakes of Ontario, catching more than 400 eels a day with little difficulty. He sold everything he caught - and for good prices.
20. Bay Buddies: Grownups
    Think that the Bay Buddies quiz is too easy? Try matching these youngsters with their adults.