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Fowler Proposes Making Patuxent a National Treasure River
Senator Bernie Fowler, himself a national treasure, a WWII veteran and 3 term State Senator. ST. MARY’S TODAY photo

By Ahmar Khan
ST. MARY’S TODAY

WILDEWOOD — Two Maryland legends and two officials, one elected unopposed and another imposed on St. Mary’s citizens by executive fiat, were present at the board meeting of Potomac River Association Tuesday evening.
The two legends were former state legislator and environmental crusader, Bernie Fowler, and nationally acclaimed singer, song-writer and musician, Tom Wisner.
The officials were St. Mary’s Commissioner Dan Raley (D. Great Mills), re-elected unopposed, and Denis Canavan, director of the Land Use and Growth Management department and bosom buddy of outgoing county commissioner president Tommy McKay (R. Hollywood).
Jack Russell, newly elected county commissioner president, was planning to attend, but told ST. MARY’S TODAY he got stuck in a second meeting.
Fowler floated the idea of declaring the Patuxent River a National Treasure River, saying a golden opportunity has arisen after the elections. He warned time was running out fast.
“Time is something that really concerns me,” Fowler said. He said if the drift was allowed to continue, “Forty years from now there would be no marine life left.”
Fowler hailed the victory of Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown. O’Malley has nominated Fowler in his Steering Committee, aimed at taking Maryland out of the clutches of special interests and handing it to the people. Fowler called newly elected U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin a “great environmentalist.”
He sounded delighted at the election of Steny Hoyer as House majority leader and expressed optimism this would help make Patuxent River a National Treasure River.
For 18 years now, Fowler would go and wade in the Patuxent River in June and try to look at his sneakers, as a measure of water clarity and quality. Hoyer joined Fowler at his wade-in at the Patuxent River last year.
Interestingly, a hired gun of developer P.F. Summers recently told a Board of Appeals meeting the brownish sediment run-off at Millcove Creek because of Woods at Myrtle Point has no bearing on water quality. “It’s like coffee,” Jim Gotsch, a project engineer with Loiederman Soltesz Associates, Inc., told the Board of Appeals last month.
Fowler heaved a sigh of relief Governor Bob Ehrlich would soon become political history and called some of Ehrlich’s so-called environmental initiative mere “photo ops.”
He said, “I don’t eat fish. Sixty percent of fish in Maryland’s waters are unsafe.” He added, “The bacteria in some fishes, even scientists don’t know what they are.”
Calling for a check on the population growth in Southern Maryland, he said that whatever progress that was made in controlling the pollution in the Patuxent River were annulled because of the population explosion.
“Calvert County has grown like crazy,” Fowler, who was Calvert county president in 1970, said. He recalled that from 20,000 in 1970 the population has jumped to 90,000, adversely impacting on the health and vitality of the Patuxent River. The worst thing, he regretted, was that overwhelming majority of the new people had “no knowledge, no feeling, no understanding of the gravity of the situation.”
As Canavan listened with rapt attention, Fowler said Calvert County was almost built out and there’s no room for any new sub-divisions, unless the developers or their toadies try to play hanky-panky with new rules. But he said the developers know they can not do that in Calvert County.
At this point, P.R.A. board member Nancy Rogers said the developers have shifted their attention to St. Mary’s County and that a whole lot of illegal construction was going on at Ridge. Canavan kept mum.
Fowler said the there has been a massive failure to convince people about the importance of the Patuxent River. He regretted many do not seem to care when they are asked, “What does the Patuxent River mean to you.”
He said for many years now he has been hearing talk about cleaning up of the Chesapeake Bay, but since different states and federal actors are involved, the task has become extremely difficult with little agreement among the stakeholders.
Calling for one step at a time, he said clean up of the 110-mile long Patuxent River that belongs exclusively to the state of Maryland would become simpler to handle once the national Treasure River status is achieved..
Raley was present to rally support for Canavan’s legislative proposal aimed to save “time and costs” when owners want to upgrade their homes that stand on unrecorded lots.
P.R.A. president Eric Jansson said these lots were declared illegal because they were never recorded in the county land records.
The P.R.A. won a case against the county, big time, on these illegal lots. “At the court of special appeals, the judge asked ‘When is St. Mary’s County join the 20th Century’,” Jansson recalled. He said houses were built on 1150 illegal lots.
Canavan denied there were any environmental costs attached to his legislative proposal, but at least one P.R.A. member Robert Ellwood thanked Canavan but told him it was unlikely the P.R.A. board will endorse his idea. Canavan’s proposal lowers the environmental safeguards and his argument is that he is faced with enforcement issues.
Jansson said the P.R.A. would discuss legal implications of Canavan’s request with its lawyer, Doug Hollman.
Wisner is trained in both ecology and the arts and has worked as a naturalist, teacher, and graphic and performing artist. He seemed quizzed on Raley’s proposal on behalf of Canavan.
“Who are you?” Wisner asked Raley.
“I am the most good looking commissioner among five members of St. Mary’s board of county commissioners,” Raley replied. He later told Wisner he adores his songs, at which the singer replied it seems his songs do not make much of a difference as the environmental threats to the Chesapeake Bay continue unabated.
In 1977, Fowler filed Southern Maryland’s landmark suit against the state and federal governments and won. The EPA and Maryland government were ordered to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into the Patuxent River from sewage-treatment plants.
Since then, he has been in the “trenches” in his struggle to save the Patuxent River. “It was never an unlikable chore,” he said.
He said people ask him if he was tired, “My answer is: no I am not getting tired. That hungering for the beauty of the Patuxent River is still there and the Lord has been kind and given me good health.”
Jansson informed Fowler the local politics was now favorable like never before with the election of Jack Russell as county commissioner president. “He wiped out the opposition (Joe Bush),” he said. Lindsay said, “Bush was also a good man.”
Jansson was surprised at the presence of Canavan at the meeting. “It was unusual,” he said. Jansson said as far as he recalled Canavan never attended any P.R.A. meeting before.
Earlier, Fowler, 82, but still fit as fiddle, informed P.R.A. board member Dudley Lindsay, “I can’t make hair grow on my head, but everything else works good.”