Muckraker: Riverkeeper's Crusade to Save Chesapeake Bay from Sediment

Here's an interesting article from the York Daily Record, about the amount of sediment upstream of the Conowingo Dam, and the threat it poses to the lower Chesapeake Bay...

http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_13324749?source=most_emailed

The basins behind the dams north of Conowingo have long-since filled with
muck. Whatever sediment comes down the river now simply washes through those dams. Much of it gets stopped at Conowingo. It drifts into the pool of slackwater and settles to the bottom.

Eventually, say scientists, the Conowingo basin will fill. At that point, the sediment, and the pollutants nitrogen and phosphorus, some of which the dam now traps, will wash into the bay -- perhaps killing a unique natural resource that's already badly stressed by sediment and pollutants.

By SCOTT FISHER Daily Record/Sunday News
Updated: 09/13/2009 01:20:44 PM EDT