Maryland’s Leading Waterman Praises Farmers, Hits Sewage Plants
Submitted by Editor on Fri, 09/18/2009 - 1:30pm.
Dick Wanner
Lancaster Farming Staff
LANCASTER, Pa. — Captain Larry Simns has been a Chesapeake Bay waterman for almost all his 72 years, and has seen tremendous changes to the bay ecology and to the fish harvest.
As president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, Simns is a visible and outspoken advocate for watermen, and an equally outspoken critic for bay polluters. Simns is a commercial fisherman who also runs a fishing charter boat out of Rock Hall, Md.
He’d like to see some changes, he told guests at the Ag Issues Forum last week at the Lancaster Farm and Home Center. The forum is a monthly breakfast meeting sponsored by the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Lancaster County farmland has been recognized as a major contributor of sediment, manure and pesticide runoff to the bay. But Simns didn’t come to Lancaster to scold farmers. He said he recognized that farmers in Pennsylvania and Maryland have done outstanding work in reducing their role in the bay’s problems. He believes they should keep doing what they’re doing.
But he said sewage treatment plants are a huge problem. Simns believes sewage treatment plants and septic systems are responsible for half the pollutants that enter the bay, but they’re not being dealt with because of the expense.
Regulators and environmentalists have been looking to farmers and watermen to clean up the bay, Simns told his listeners. The people who work the land and who work the water are easy targets, he said. He didn’t protest daily and seasonal limits on catches for commercial or recreational fisherman, and he didn’t dispute the need to control agricultural runoff.
“But you can’t just attack one group because they’re easy,” Simns said. “If you don’t deal with sewage plants, then all the work and effort that the farmers and watermen have put into saving the bay is going to go for nothing.”
Population is growing so fast in the bay watershed, and the sewage issues are so huge and complex that the job seems undoable. “But I’m optimistic about mankind,” Simns said. “I believe in mankind and our technology, and I think we can turn this thing around.”
The bay’s ecology is so complicated that issues may take decades to resolve. An example is the sediment washed into the bay by Hurricane Agnes in June of 1972. One of Simns’ listeners at the forum was Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding. Subject to confirmation by the Pennsylvania Senate, Redding will replace Dennis Wolff, who stepped down from the post as of Sept. 12. Simns’ comments about farmer efforts and the silt from Agnes prompted Redding to ask Simns if he had noticed any changes to the upper reaches of the Chesapeake in recent years.
“Yes I have,” he said. “The water has cleared up in some areas, the grasses are growing and the more grasses you have the clearer the water gets. But we still have problems in other areas.”
Much of the silt carried into the bay by the ravages of Agnes was stirred up from silt that’s been settling behind the Conowingo Dam since it was built across the lower Susquehanna in 1926. Another four decades worth of silt has now settled behind the dam since Agnes, and Simns voiced fear about what could happen to the bay if a storm of Agnes’ magnitude reappears.
“Can’t you just dredge it out?” one of his listeners asked.
“We’ve thought of that,” Simns said, “and we’ve asked them to do it, but it’s expensive. And where would you go with it?”
In response to other questions, Simns said oysters are almost gone from the bay and clams are gone, because they can’t escape dead water as it moves around the bay. Striped bass, however, are plentiful, and so are crabs.
Dick Wanner can be reached at rwanner.eph@lnpnews.com, or by phone at (717) 419-4703.
Dick Wanner
Lancaster Farming Staff
LANCASTER, Pa. — Captain Larry Simns has been a Chesapeake Bay waterman for almost all his 72 years, and has seen tremendous changes to the bay ecology and to the fish harvest.
As president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, Simns is a visible and outspoken advocate for watermen, and an equally outspoken critic for bay polluters. Simns is a commercial fisherman who also runs a fishing charter boat out of Rock Hall, Md.
He’d like to see some changes, he told guests at the Ag Issues Forum last week at the Lancaster Farm and Home Center. The forum is a monthly breakfast meeting sponsored by the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Lancaster County farmland has been recognized as a major contributor of sediment, manure and pesticide runoff to the bay. But Simns didn’t come to Lancaster to scold farmers. He said he recognized that farmers in Pennsylvania and Maryland have done outstanding work in reducing their role in the bay’s problems. He believes they should keep doing what they’re doing.
But he said sewage treatment plants are a huge problem. Simns believes sewage treatment plants and septic systems are responsible for half the pollutants that enter the bay, but they’re not being dealt with because of the expense.
Regulators and environmentalists have been looking to farmers and watermen to clean up the bay, Simns told his listeners. The people who work the land and who work the water are easy targets, he said. He didn’t protest daily and seasonal limits on catches for commercial or recreational fisherman, and he didn’t dispute the need to control agricultural runoff.
“But you can’t just attack one group because they’re easy,” Simns said. “If you don’t deal with sewage plants, then all the work and effort that the farmers and watermen have put into saving the bay is going to go for nothing.”
Population is growing so fast in the bay watershed, and the sewage issues are so huge and complex that the job seems undoable. “But I’m optimistic about mankind,” Simns said. “I believe in mankind and our technology, and I think we can turn this thing around.”
The bay’s ecology is so complicated that issues may take decades to resolve. An example is the sediment washed into the bay by Hurricane Agnes in June of 1972. One of Simns’ listeners at the forum was Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding. Subject to confirmation by the Pennsylvania Senate, Redding will replace Dennis Wolff, who stepped down from the post as of Sept. 12. Simns’ comments about farmer efforts and the silt from Agnes prompted Redding to ask Simns if he had noticed any changes to the upper reaches of the Chesapeake in recent years.
“Yes I have,” he said. “The water has cleared up in some areas, the grasses are growing and the more grasses you have the clearer the water gets. But we still have problems in other areas.”
Much of the silt carried into the bay by the ravages of Agnes was stirred up from silt that’s been settling behind the Conowingo Dam since it was built across the lower Susquehanna in 1926. Another four decades worth of silt has now settled behind the dam since Agnes, and Simns voiced fear about what could happen to the bay if a storm of Agnes’ magnitude reappears.
“Can’t you just dredge it out?” one of his listeners asked.
“We’ve thought of that,” Simns said, “and we’ve asked them to do it, but it’s expensive. And where would you go with it?”
In response to other questions, Simns said oysters are almost gone from the bay and clams are gone, because they can’t escape dead water as it moves around the bay. Striped bass, however, are plentiful, and so are crabs.
Dick Wanner can be reached at rwanner.eph@lnpnews.com, or by phone at (717) 419-4703.
