The Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) has been engaging commercial and recreational fishing communities to get feedback on a very broad, general draft of a new Wind Lease Planning Area in virtual meetings January 5-6, 2022. The actual lease areas to be designated will have a smaller footprint than this initial planning area. Below is a map of the proposed areas:

At the final meeting, Jim Benning of BOEM stated that they are “focusing” on the wind leases first but that the lease areas and this public process is also designated for Oil, Gas, and Mineral Mining.

A concern from commercial and rec fisherman is that these locations are where the majority of the larval crab population in the Bay first develops.

There are four proposed/ongoing activities in and around the Virginia Wind Energy Area (WEA), which are listed below.

• Commercial Lease (OCS-A 0483) Offshore Virginia
• Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project (CVOW)

Environmental Studies

BOEM has funded or considered numerous studies to collect information about the marine environment to support decisions concerning offshore renewable energy development. For more information, please visit: http://www.boem.gov/VA-Environmental-Studies/.

Reader submitted article by Jeremy Cox, Bay Journal News Service

A sand and gravel mine on the Eastern Shore of Maryland spilled so much sediment-loaded wash water that waterways up to 11 miles away turned a milky green color for at least two days.

A Maryland Department of the Environment investigation found that a subsidiary of Chaney Enterprises was responsible for the Dec. 2–4 incident. During that period, water overflowed from the Caroline County plant’s settling pond into a ditch, which carried the pollution into a stream and eventually into Tuckahoe Creek.

Aerial photographs captured by the Choptank Riverkeeper show greenish water flowing down the freshwater portion of the Tuckahoe. The creek is a tributary of the Choptank River and is considered an important breeding habitat for several fish species, including white and yellow perch, hickory shad and river herring.

“Heavy discharges of sediment like the one seen here have a tendency to destroy fish habitat, cloud the water and otherwise alter the water quality conditions,” said Choptank Riverkeeper Matt Pluta, “which is concerning for the species of fish that depend on healthy water quality and overall good habitat conditions in order to spawn.”

The color of the water was so vivid that Pluta said he initially mistook it for a rare cold-weather algae bloom.

The MDE received a complaint about the discolored water Dec. 2 and sent inspectors to the Chaney Enterprises mine the following day. Officials ordered the plant’s managers to shut down the wash plant until the settling pond could be pumped down enough to receive wastewater again without spillage, said agency spokesman Jay Apperson. The company reported Dec. 4 that it had stopped the discharge.

The MDE will continue to monitor the site and plans to meet with the company to ensure pollution-control regulations are met, Apperson added. The MDE also has proposed a $20,000 fine against the company.

A Chaney Enterprises official blamed the episode on the mechanical failure of a pump used to maintain the water level of the settling pond.

“We really care about the communities we do business in,” said Jan Holt, chief customer officer for the company, based in Gambrills, MD. “We are very sorry for the incident. It’s unfortunate and we are at fault.”

The company has since installed a second pump at the pond in case the first one breaks down again, she added.

Maryland officials have closed a section of the Potomac River to shellfish harvesting, after a second sewage spill in the area in recent weeks. Earlier this month, 34 people were sickened after eating oysters apparently contaminated by sewage

Maryland state officials did close the fishery for more than two weeks after a sewage spill.

The current closure affects 180 acres of Potomac waters in St. Mary’s County, adjacent to St. George Island. The second sewage spill was reported to the Maryland Department of the Environment on Sunday, and the closure was announced late Monday evening.

According to MDE, a sewer line break caused 2,500 gallons of sewage to spill into the Potomac, and 11,000 gallons were vacuumed up from roadside ditches before it could flow into the river. However, the sewer authority responsible for the spill disputes the assertion the sewage made it into the river. “It was a small sewer line break that we were able to to stop as soon as it was reported to us,” says George Erichsen, executive director of the the sewer authority, the St. Mary’s County Metropolitan Commission, known as MetCom.

The spill likely began on Nov. 24, Erichsen says, though MetCom was only alerted by a resident on Nov. 28. Erichsen says MetCom immediately notified MDE.

The earlier spill occurred Oct. 28-30. Roughly 25,600 gallons spilled from the sewage treatment facility, though Erichsen says it was “primarily tidal water mixed with a small amount of residential sewage.”

Days after the October spill, health officials on the other side of the Potomac, in Loudoun County, Va., started receiving reports of gastrointestinal illness from people who had dined at pop-up raw oyster bars by the company Nomini Bay Oyster Ranch, held at two Loudoun breweries and a winery in Fauquier County. Health officials traced the source of the oysters to an oyster farm in St. Mary’s River, a tributary of the Potomac, near where the sewage spill occurred.

MetCom put up “No Water Contact” signs in the affected area, and posted about the spill on Facebook. Erichsen says they also notified MDE on Oct. 28.

However, there was a breakdown in communication within the department, and no closure was implemented.

“The information was not conveyed at that time within MDE to our shellfish program who would have then temporarily closed the nearby harvesting area,” said MDE spokesperson Jay Apperson, in an email to DCist. “To our knowledge, this is the first time something of this nature has happened. We are now working on improving our coordination within programs, through retraining and building redundancies into our process as a safeguard to prevent this from happening in the future.”

The spills resulted from different causes: the October spill was caused by high tides that overwhelmed pumps in the sewer system, filling the system with river water and causing an overflow. The November spill resulted from a broken sewer pipe, which has since been repaired.

RICHMOND—The Department of Conservation and Recreation today announced $7.5 million in Virginia Land Conservation Foundation (VLCF) grants, which will fund 30 conservation projects and protect 8,000 acres of land across the commonwealth.

Private land trusts, local governments and state agencies will use the VLCF grants to acquire and protect significant lands in the following categories: farmland, forestry, historic resources, natural areas, and parks and open space. The grant selection process incorporates ConserveVirginia, the commonwealth’s innovative land conservation strategy that is based on “smart map” technology.

“The Virginia Land Conservation Foundation grants program helps protect our most important natural resources and provide more access to the great outdoors for everyone to enjoy,” said Governor Northam. “Through ConserveVirginia, we’re making sure we prioritize protecting lands that bring the most benefit, addressing historic inequalities, and widening our public land program into new areas. Each one of these grants is an opportunity to protect public space in our local communities.”

“From working farms to forests, historic cultural treasures, natural area preserves and other open spaces, the latest round of Virginia Land Conservation Foundation grants will protect a wide variety of lands throughout the Commonwealth,” said Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources Ann Jennings, who serves as chair of the 19-member VLCF board that votes on the grants. “These funded projects meet high standards to help provide clean water to the citizens of the Commonwealth and to restore the Chesapeake Bay.”

An interagency workgroup reviewed and scored grant applications and made recommendations for funding to the board, which approved the awards on Oct. 27. The Department of Conservation and Recreation provides administrative support to the VLCF through the state Office of Land Conservation.

“These awarded projects demonstrate significant progress toward achieving the Commonwealth’s land conservation goals,” said Department of Conservation and Recreation Director Clyde E. Cristman. “As the statewide clearinghouse for land conservation, the Department of Conservation and Recreation and our partner agencies work to ensure the competitive grant process provides the greatest positive impact across the Commonwealth.”

This was the third round of awards approved by the VLCF board in 2021. A total of $3.4 million in grants was approved Feb. 5 and another $4.8 million was approved on June 10.

The following table gives the VLCF funding amount (not the total project cost) for the projects in the five categories.

Farmlands Preservation

Forest Preservation

Historic Preservation

Natural Areas Protection

Open Space and Parks

 -30-

Submitted and written by George Mapp for CBES Shoreline

Growing up on the Eastern Shore, one of my most vivid memories of early spring is gulls laughing and swarming around tractors plowing a field. On a recent kayak trip out of Oyster, it was good to see and hear them once again.

According to a 2019 article in the Daily Press, they haven’t been doing so well. Virginia bird counts taken every 5 years to reveal a marked decline: 45,000 nesting pairs of laughing gulls in 1993; 17,000 in 2018 (as reported in March 2020 ShoreLine). Herring gulls have fared worse: from 9,000 to 2,000. Scientists attribute this to reduced marsh habitat from sea level rise.

Virginia Institute of Marine Science researcher Matt Kirwan says that the state has lost about 20% of its seaside marshes on the Eastern Shore since 1870, eroded by waves or buried as the barrier islands migrate. Gulls prefer to nest in high-elevation marshes – the most vulnerable areas.

“It’s been catastrophic,” notes William and Mary scientist Bryan Watts. “Everybody thinks of sea-level rise as something off in the distance. It’s not. It’s been happening here. For 25 years, we’ve seen this huge decline. Clapper rails, seaside sparrows, salt marsh sparrows, marsh wrens, willets – there’s a larger list of species that are experiencing the same drowning due to sea-level rise than the laughing gulls are.”

Laughing gulls breed in Virginia and winter in Central America. Gulls were some of the pesky birds in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror movie The Birds, and some people regard their swarms with disdain. However, we should be grateful for them – according to Watts, laughing gulls are “the ones going into the agricultural fields eating pest insects. They’re the ones you see flying above the crops feeding on insects. They’re the ones above the forest canopy feeding on insects.”

Source: Dietrich T. 2019. The Morning Call – Gone gull: Laughing gulls in Virginia are ravaged by sea-level rise. https://www.dailypress.com/ news/dp-nws-laughing-gulls-gone-20190709-story.html

Reader submitted, original story by By Ryan Swatek and Nikki Krause. Ryan Swatek is a District Conservationist and Nikki Krause is a Soil Conservationist with USDA National Resource Conservation Service in Black River Falls, Wisconsin.

Wildlife and pollinators now have a safe refuge to feed, rest, and nest on 35 acres in Jackson County, Wisconsin. In 2008, Dale and Barbara Bigler purchased a country property with the dream of restoring it to its original purpose as a prairie, creating habitat to help wildlife and pollinators thrive.

The Biglers connected with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Black River Falls with an interest in converting steep cropland acres that had been in row crops for many years into native prairie. Ryan Swatek, NRCS District Conservationist, and JD Armstrong, NRCS and Pheasants Forever Farm Bill Biologist, met with the Biglers to walk the property, discuss resource concerns, potential solutions, and goals for their land. Upon inspection, the areas of steep sloping crops were highly erodible, and gullies were present. Through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), USDA helped support the Bigler’s dream of revitalizing the land with conservation and converting it to native prairie.

NRCS partners with the Farm Service Agency (FSA) to implement CRP. A CRP initiative, called State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE), focuses on restoring critical habitat for different species, including the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly. The species resides in Jackson and Eau Claire counties, so this was the perfect opportunity to cultivate conservation by building critical habitat for the species in its prime location.

The Biglers applied for the SAFE program and were selected to enroll 5.4 acres of cropland, planting and establishing a Karner Blue Butterfly multi-species prairie mix. Dale is particularly proud of his blooming Wild Lupine flourishing on the property—the only plant species Karner Blue larvae eat, which is critical to their annual life cycle.

Once prairie habitat was established, the Biglers partnered with NRCS to focus on the cropland gullies. Dale and Barbara qualified for beginning farmer special incentives  through EQIP. NRCS defines a beginning farmer as someone who has not operated a farm for more than 10 consecutive years. In 2013, through EQIP, two grade stabilization structures, earthen or concrete structures built across a drainageway to prevent gully erosion, were installed on the property to stabilize the cropland gullies.

In 2018, Dale and Barbara were ready for the final piece of their land transformation, which was converting the rest of the remaining highly erodible cropland into wildlife and pollinator prairie habitat. The Biglers applied for and were awarded a producer contract under RCPP – a partner-driven program that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land. Partners receive funding to address resource concerns within a given project area and then private landowners can apply to participate in the awarded RCPP project. Producers can apply through their local service center or directly with awarded partners.

The Biglers planted 5.5 more acres of a native multi-species prairie mix designed to establish critical habitat for Monarch Butterflies.

“Dale’s and Barbara’s passion for protecting their land and providing native habitat for wildlife and pollinators is inspiring. They have been a pleasure to work with over the years,” explained Swatek.

Dale and Barbara want to continue making improvements for wildlife and pollinators on their property. Dale recently installed wildlife shrubs and a wildlife food plot to compliment the prairie habitat plantings. The Biglers look forward to watching wildlife and pollinators establish on the property, thriving in an environment made for them.

USDA offers a variety of conservation programs that can help you plan and implement conservation practices on your farm, ranch, or forest. Learn more about putting conservation to work on your operation directly from farmers, ranchers, and forestland owners applying them through our Conservation at Work video series.