Private contractors clean up Chesapeake?/MD. Sec. of Environment on Conowingo Dam dredging
What to look for on Smart Talk Monday, August 21, 2017:
If private contractors were to bid on and work on projects to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, would it reduce the amount of pollution going into Pennsylvania’s waterways and cost less? Republican State Sen. Richard Alloway of Franklin County thinks so.
Sen. Alloway has introduced legislation that would allow private contractors to work on the bay clean up.
On Monday’s Smart Talk, we hear from two guests who support the proposal — Dominic Bassani, who is a member of the Coalition for Affordable Bay Solutions and Steve Rowe, President and CEO of Newtrient, a business collective of U.S. dairy farm cooperatives.
Dominic Bassani and Steve Rowe
Lower Paxton Township in Dauphin County is a municipality that has developed a pollutant reduction plan to reduce sediment from stormwater discharges and stream water erosion. It’s just one of the steps the township has taken relating to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup
Lower Paxton Township Manager George Wolfe is on Smart Talk to explain what his municipality is doing.
The Conowingo Dam sits just a few miles south of the Pennsylvania border. It is the last dam on the Susquehanna River before the river runs into the Chesapeake Bay. For years, the Conowingo has been trapping sediment that made its way into the Susquehanna mostly from Pennsylvania.
It was thought that the dam could handle a few more years of sediment but now its full sooner than expected. The state of Maryland has taken on a project to dredge a portion of the sediment behind the dam to determine whether dredging is a permanent solution.
Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles joins us on Smart Talk.
