"The Dead Zone Is Disappearing...Finally" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about some of my favorite vacation spots...locations along the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Maryland.  As a young boy my family would go on vacation every summer to locations along rivers that eventually fed into the Chesapeake Bay.  Crystal Beach was one of my favorite locations.  My family would spend a week every summer at the beach which allowed me to go swimming, build castles in the sand and visit the few rides that were available along the shoreline in the evening.  Right next door to Crystal Beach was White Crystal Beach Manor which was much the same as Crystal Beach.  As I grew older, more of the family would go along on our week-long vacations.  My cousins would enjoy swimming and making sand castles with my brother and me in the yellow sand and visiting the rides in the evening.  After I married, my wife Carol and I would take our children back to some of the same beaches, but also found a few other areas along a few of the rivers that led into the Bay where our children could enjoy themselves.  My Aunt Doris, brother of my dad, began to invite our family to spend time with her and her family along the Elk River which fed into the Chesapeake Bay.  She and her husband owned a cottage along the river which had a place to dock their boat and would allow my brother and myself the chance to go fishing off the dock as well as waterski along the river.  Over time the river began to fill with red and brown algae which made it harder to swim in as well as fish.  When I married, Carol and I also took our family to the same location along the Elk river.  We too noticed the increase of algae along the river which made it harder to get in and out of the water.  The Bay was said to be developing what was known as a "dead zone."  The oxygen-depleted zone stretched from the middle of the bay near Baltimore, Maryland to around Mobjack Bay near Gloucester County.  Well, the past couple of years have changed the Bay.  It is getting healthier for aquatic life and safer for humans.  Dead zones, which occur when too many algae bloom, can make people sick if they swim in the water.  The shrinking dead zone areas leave more room for fishing and outdoor recreation.  The dead zones occurred when pollution, such as fertilizers and animal waste, gets into the bay.  High levels of nitrogen and phosphorus can cause algae to bloom and when the algae dies, it sinks and decomposes, sucking oxygen from the water faster than plants can replenish it.  The vegetation dies and fish and other animals that rely on it will suffocate or have to migrate to an area with more oxygen.  Pennsylvania and other states along the bay are working under the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint to decrease the pollution.  The dead zones have been shrinking as cities that flank the bay improve how they filter wastewater into the bay.  But, there is still plenty of farmland that touches the Bay and that are also causing problems.  About 90% of the remaining  pollution reductions must come from agriculture.  Pollution efforts seem to be working, but not as fast as they should be.  What is being done isn't good enough to safe aquatic life.  Now farmers can get help in using conservation practices such as reducing fertilizers and using no-till or limited-till farming through organizations such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.  Agriculture needs to do a better job of nutrient reduction.  In order to continue to have the Chesapeake Bay continue to reduce algae, the farmers must continue to do their part and reduce the fertilizers they have been using.  Here's hoping that the Bay will one day soon regain the safe levels it once had when I was a child swimming in the waters of the Elk River.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.