A Conservative Environmentalist in Sussex County

A. Judson Bennett is a longtime conservative Republican from Lewes. His feature, Jud’s Rant, is a regular fixture at First State Politics. Yesterday in a special posting, Bennett writes of how he came to call himself an environmentalist:

Although, I am for the most part a conservative Republican and capitalist, I have become through a metamorphosis of sorts, a dedicated environmentalist and managed growth proponent. My research on the issues, my involvement in politics, and my natural history as a Sussex Countian have indeed convinced me that I am now on the right path.
Because of my past relationships and employment with a developer, being a former member of the Positive Growth Alliance (PGA), having substantial involvement with other related concerns, and indeed an earlier ambivalence in finding my way, my opponents from the PGA will tell you I am a fraud and insincere.

Sussex County's inland bays are deteriorating from the effects of what is call nutrient loading. Nitrogen and phosphorous from farming and lawn fertilizers running off into the bays is wreaking havoc on the sensitive ecosystem of southern Delaware, a problem exacerbated by rapid development.
Bennett describes how the State Senate intervened to keep DNREC from promulgating regulations requiring a 100 foot riparian buffer of unpaved, undeveloped land to filter out these nutrients before they reach the bays. The Senate voted to reduce the buffers to 50 feet. Bennett slams the Senate's action, citing research conducted by the Center for the Inland Bays that confirms the rationale for establishing a 100 foot buffer:

To be specific, a 3 week test was conducted at Hopkins Prong which runs into Herring Creek and at Dirickson Creek which runs into the Little Assawoman Bay. The results were very similar to that which has been proven in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed time and time again where they require 300 foot buffers! At Hopkins Prong, it was found that a 50 foot buffer would only filter annually 7.90 pounds of nitrogen and only a measly 0.6 pounds of phosphorous. However, the same study showed without a doubt that a 100 foot buffer would filter out annually 769 pounds of nitrogen and 47.5 pounds of phosphorous! Quite a difference huh???
At Dirickson Creek in the south where the land is more flat the results were even more startling: It was determined by the same test that a 50 foot buffer would annually only filter out 114.5 pounds of nitrogen and only 8.2 pounds of phosphorous. It was determined that a 100 foot buffer would remarkably filter out annually 5030 pounds of nitrogen and 310.4 pounds of phosphorus. This was all spelled out in the October 10th edition of the Cape Gazette newspaper on the front page. Is that enough scientific evidence for you folks we elected to represent us in Dover???

The entire piece is worth reading. And if you go to the research page of the Center for the Inland Bays, you can read about the study Bennett refers to.