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Associate Professor Douglas W. Lipton
Q. I keep reading in the newspaper that the health of the Chesapeake Bay is not getting any better; it’s literally getting C’s and D’s on its report card. Why has it been so difficult to see success in the restoration effort?
A. We’ve done a pretty good job in certain areas, such as reducing nutrient runoff from farms and increasing nitrogen removal at sewage treatment plants, but a very poor job in controlling the nutrient pollution from new development and land conversion. The net result is we’re continuing to see poor water quality, particularly in normal and above average rainfall years.
Q. Obviously, that land development and conversion is continuing because it’s profitable for developers and contributes to economic growth in the region. Why should we care about water quality?
A. Water quality creates economic benefits just like business growth and development; they just don’t show up in our accounting system. Some water quality benefits such as improved commercial fisheries for blue crabs, striped bass, and oysters are an important part of the measured economy. Many of the recreational benefits we get from the Bay—such as from recreational fishing, boating, and swimming—have some components that impact the regional economy, but the bulk of the benefits are felt by the individual.
Q. Can those kinds of benefits also be measured?
A. AREC faculty have been at the forefront of the research to develop techniques for what is known as non-market valuation. As an Extension member of the faculty, I’ve tried to take that research and apply it to Chesapeake Bay. We can use surveys or observe behavior and infer from that what the value of, say, a recreational fishing trip is. For example, if we observe recreational fishermen traveling farther and spending more time to go to a site where they can catch more fish, we can infer from that behavior the value of the increased catch.
Q. But I thought we were talking about water quality?
A. That’s right. If the reason fishermen have to travel farther to catch more fish is due to poor water quality in an area, we can determine what the benefit to fishermen would be if water quality were improved and they could thus catch more fish without having to travel so far. Rob Hicks [a former AREC student now at William & Mary] and I did such an analysis a number of years ago for the striped bass fishery in Chesapeake Bay. We found that there could be millions of dollars of benefits per year from water quality improvements just in the striped bass fishery alone. Of course, there would be other fisheries and other types of benefits that would also accompany that improvement in water quality.
Q. Are you working on other components of Chesapeake Bay restoration?
A. I’m involved in an interesting process right now having to do with the concept of intentionally introducing a non-native oyster species in the Chesapeake Bay. The hope is that this introduced organism will survive in the Bay and support an oyster fishery as well as provide important ecosystem services such as water filtration, and thus contribute to the overall restoration of the Bay. The native oyster species has been decimated by overfishing, increased sedimentation, and the presence of parasitic oyster diseases.
Q. So does it look like it will make economic sense to intentionally introduce this species? Aren’t we concerned about invasive species doing harm to the environment?
A. This is an example where we are trying to have a planned or controlled invasion that would hopefully do more good than harm in terms of having positive impacts on Chesapeake Bay water quality and supporting the fishing industry. There are so many unknowns about an introduction like this that the states of Maryland and Virginia, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, have been working on an Environmental Impact Statement to help with the decision. We’ll have to wait until that draft is released to the public later this year to find out what it says.
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Last updated: 01/12/2011