Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990                   TAG: 9003122887
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STUDY SAYS DIRTY AIR, ACID RAIN KILLING BAY

The report's conclusions raise questions about whether the multimillion-dollar effort to clean up Chesapeake Bay is misdirected, with too little attention paid to controlling the air pollution that causes acid rain, scientists and bay experts say.

EPA scientists found that slightly more than a third of all the bay's nitrogen sources come from air pollution - more than sewage plant discharges or agriculture and urban runoff, said Norbert A. Jaworski, director of the EPA Environmental Research Laboratory in Narragansett, R.I., and one of the report's authors.

The report, co-authored by University of Rhode Island scientists, also suggests that other East Coast estuaries, such as Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island and Pamlico Sound in North Carolina, may be receiving large doses of nitrogen from acid rain.

Nitrogen can be lethal to life in the Chesapeake Bay and other estuaries. Too much nitrogen and phosphorus causes excessive amounts of algae growth, which robs the water of oxygen, leaving sections of the bay uninhabitable to marine life.

"It is conceivable we will have to look at air pollution controls around the watershed and perhaps outside, particularly as growth occurs," said Alvin R. Morris, director of EPA's regional water management division.

The EPA report confirms research done two years ago by the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-profit environmental group based in New York, which estimated nitrogen contributions to the bay from acid rain at 25 percent. At the time, scientists were skeptical that the percentage was that high.

But the EPA study is expected to show that the first study estimate was, in fact, low.

"Those [reports] have made us recognize that air is a big contributor to our problem [in the bay]," said Ann Powers, an attorney with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a non-profit environmental group based in Annapolis, Md.

Jaworski examined the upper Potomac River watershed, where he found that sources of nitrogen came equally from agriculture and urban runoff, sewage and the atmosphere.

Large amounts of nitrogen from the air are used up or removed from the watershed's natural systems before reaching the bay, Jaworski said.

Wetlands, particularly the fresh-water variety, and ponds are good at reducing the amount of nitrogen that reaches the bay, although not enough is known about what other natural processes use up nitrogen.

That information, Jaworski said, could be the key to helping control nitrogen running into the bay.

The bay agreement, a blueprint for the bay cleanup signed by Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia officials as well as the EPA chief in 1988, provides no specific goals or mandates to force either the states or the EPA to put tighter controls on cars or power plants.

But the states will re-evaluate that agreement in 1991.