The public will get two chances next week to publicly comment on a groundbreaking, but incomplete, plan to clean up Sussex County’s inland bays. Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources will host meetings at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at the Millsboro Senior Center and the same time Thursday at the Georgetown CHEER Community Center.
The agency’s strategy — which would eliminate direct sources of pollution and regulate septic systems, stormwater systems and buffers along the inland watershed to help reduce the amount of nutrients entering the bays daily by up to 85 percent — will be missing a controversial buffer regulation this time around.
Buffers to shield the bays from sources of runoff, including on developed and agricultural lands, will likely be discussed as a standalone issue this fall, when officials hope to publish a regulation and hold another set of public hearings. Environmental leaders, who did not spare criticism last year about a then-controversial and reduced buffer proposal, employed diplomacy earlier this year after learning that a buffer plan had been entirely left out of the latest version.
“We would have preferred to see a buffer strategy included as a component of the regulations that have gone to publication,” Ed Lewandowski, executive director of the Center for the Inland Bays, said earlier. “But, given the complexity of the buffer issue and the conflict that surfaced after the revisions were made, I think that it’s a reasonable response to delay publication until which time they’ve had an opportunity to reconsider.”
State reports recognize the Inland Bays as an “important ecological, economic and recreational resource” deserving of special protection but note, though, that the bays “are becoming increasingly urbanized and degraded by encroaching development” and deemed intervention critical.
Development is only topped by agriculture as the principal polluter of the bays.
Enhanced buffer regulations are widely seen as an integral part of any plan to clean up the sullied bays.
Buffer widths and sizes in the 2006 version were the target of scrutiny and a scolding scientific study last year. The proposed buffer regulation in the previous, spring 2005, version of the PCS would have protected perennial and intermittent streams and ditches, tidal and non-tidal wetlands and ponds on developed lands with a 100-foot buffer.
After meeting with The Coalition, a group of property-rights advocates in the area, officials reduced the buffer’s application and its width to 50 feet in the 2006 version of the proposed regulation, citing potentially serious economic impacts on area property owners.
Under the version released last August, the buffer would only protect perennial streams and ditches, tidal wetlands and ponds. Requirements for building the buffer are also less stringent with the current proposal.
A study authored by Center for the Inland Bays’ Science and Technical Coordinator Chris Bason and released last fall by the center blasted the effectiveness of the proposed buffer protection in the 2006 version.
Bason compared the buffers’ effectiveness in his analysis on Hopkins Prong and Dirickson Creek — two waterways picked arbitrarily, according to the report. The proposed buffer regulation in the 2006 version would eliminate 99 percent less nitrogen annually than the 2005 version in Hopkins Prong and 97.7 percent less nitrogen in Dirickson Creek, Bason reported. The numbers for phosphorous load reductions are almost identical.
Both nutrients — which are used in to stimulate growth on agricultural and residential properties and enter the waters partially through runoff — cause excess growth underwater, which leads to low oxygen levels.
Bason’s report roused public concern regarding the buffer policy within the regulation.
Another significant change includes relaxing the requirement to update septic systems with advanced nutrient treatment technology, until at least late 2013 — a move that could save area property owners some money, at least temporarily.
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To go
The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control will hold two public hearings this week on its groundbreaking Pollution Control Strategy, designed to help clean up the sullied inland bays. Here are the specifics:
Wednesday, June 13, 6 p.m., at Millsboro Senior Center
Thursday, June 14, 6 p.m., at Georgetown CHEER Community Center
This week’s public hearings are part of a public-input gathering campaign, which officially ends at 4:30 p.m. on June 29. Visit www.dnrec.delaware.gov on the Internet to learn more and learn how to submit comments online or through regular mail. The full Pollution Control Strategy is available there.