Chesapeake Bay Program 

The Chesapeake Bay Program has experienced extensive changes since 2005.  Based on Pennsylvania developing a Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy, Clinton County was given the task of developing a County Implementation Plan and Tributary Strategy to address nutrient and sediment reduction. Best Management Practices (BMP’s) were assigned an efficiency value from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The County Implementation Plan focuses on five critical environmental issues to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution based on cost effective and efficient practices. Special Project cost share funds will be applied for through DEP for specific practices as detailed in our Tributary Strategy.

In the first round of funding the District was awarded two grants. One to implement a No-Till/Cover Crop program and one intended to increase awareness and educate farm operators about the value and importance of soil and manure analysis.  The other grant provides six free soil tests and one manure test to landowners; this will provide the landowner with information important to fertilizer and manure application decisions.   

The No-Till/Cover Crop program uses a no-till grain drill, which is available for use by local farmers. A no-till grain drill seeds directly into unprepared soil without tillage; a typical tillage situation involves primary tillage: a mold-board or chisel plow, secondary tillage: disk, and sometimes a pass with a harrow or culti-mulcher.  This destroys soil structure, kills soil organisms, and leads to compaction.  In a no-till situation, there is no need for primary or secondary tillage; no-till uses waved disks on the front of the machine that cut crop residues and loosen soil in a narrow strip, about one-inch in width where seed is placed.   By using no-till, the producer improves soil conditions by allowing soil organisms to aerate soil, break-down crop residue slowly, and lessens the chance for erosion to create gullies in the fields.  The goal of this program is to reduce sedimentation in waters of the Commonwealth and provide a vegetative cover on corn harvested for grain and silage and soybean stubble. These benefits of no-till will help to hold topsoil in place and reduce nutrient pollution.  Another benefit of no-till is reduced labor and fuel costs, since a producer would need to make fewer passes over a farm field to seed a crop. 

The soil and manure awareness and education program will enhance nutrient management within the county along with providing landowners six soil sample analyses and one manure analysis per year. Using soil and manure analysis to develop nutrient management plans will reduce the application of excess nutrients, resulting in less nutrient runoff and cost savings, in fertilizer use, by producers.

The county’s Tributary Strategy organizes and calculates the water quality benefits of multiple best management practices—from improved storm-water management, to forested streamside buffers and phosphate-reducing livestock feeds in our rural communities. The five critical natural resource issues that were identified in the Conservation District 2002 Strategic Plan are:  Sedimentation and Erosion Control for Water Quality; Environmental Education and Awareness; Nutrient Pollution; Acid Mine Drainage; and Stormwater Management.

The proposed practices encompass reductions from all sources including agriculture, urban, forestland, open land and wastewater treatment plants, as well as, septic systems and emissions from the air that are deposited in streams.

More than 88 percent of Pennsylvania’s nutrient loads originate from non-point sources such as agriculture, storm-water runoff, and dirt and gravel roads. Consequently, a major focus of Pennsylvania’s tributary strategy is on reductions in non-point source nutrient loads. The reverse is true in neighboring Maryland and Virginia, where a relatively small number of large sewage treatment plants are the point sources that drive their tributary strategies. Pennsylvania’s strategy will match effective nutrient reduction practices with the communities and landscape of each watershed.

Point source dischargers in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed also will be challenged with reducing nutrient loads delivered to the Bay by more than 3 million pounds. Annual load limits will be established based upon 2010 projected flows and a performance level of 8 mg/l for nitrogen and 1 mg/l for phosphorus.

Pennsylvania also is helping to bring new and innovative tools to this task.; the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is developing a nutrient trading program that will provide a market-based approach allowing Pennsylvania to address quicker and cheaper the challenges of the draft tributary strategy. The nearly 150 significant point source dischargers, representing about 98 percent of Pennsylvania’s point source load, may chose to meet their load caps through operational or technical upgrades or by acquiring nutrient reduction credits from other sources, such as agriculturalists, who install Best Management Practices (BMP’s) that further reduce non-point source discharges.

In addition, expanding facilities can install equipment to cost effectively reduce more nutrients than required, and sell the extra reduction credits to facilities where similar reductions would be expensive. Similarly, smaller facilities may choose to reduce nutrients in collaboration with a farm neighbor by installing agricultural improvements instead of treatment plant improvements.

Governor Edward G. Rendell’s plan to protect Agriculture, Communities and Rural Environment, or ACRE, which was announced August 10, 2005, will stimulate major nutrient reductions from the agricultural sector by expanding nutrient management activities and targeting agriculturally impaired streams. ACRE will nearly double the number of farms with comprehensive nutrient management plans covering both nitrogen and phosphorus, and will establish minimum setbacks or buffers from all streams where manure can be applied. Concentrated Animal Operations (CAO’s) and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) will be required to follow a 100-foot setback or a 35-foot vegetative buffer from water bodies when applying manure nutrients and farms that import manure must meet the same setback and buffer requirements as the farms that produce the manure.

Many of the 4,000 miles of streams in the Commonwealth designated as agriculturally impaired are located in the drainage of the Chesapeake Bay. A robust, collaborative agriculturally impaired watershed initiative between DEP and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture will provide outreach to farmers so that all can better understand the linkages between farm practices and water quality challenges and practical solutions. The initiative also will direct existing cost sharing and technical assistance programs to promote best management practices included in the tributary strategy.

Governor Rendell’s Growing Greener II proposal would provide about $20 million in cost-sharing incentives to encourage wastewater treatment facilities to voluntarily install nitrogen reduction technology. Other sources of funding such as the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program and the Pennsylvania Energy Harvest grant program provide financial support for agricultural practices targeted by the strategy.

Visitors since June 2003