>> frontne is made possible by contributions to your p station from viewers like u. withajor funding from the john d. and therine t. macarthur foundati. committed to buiing a more just, rdant and peaceful world. and ditional funding for frontline and for "poisoned waters" from the par foundation committed toaising public awareness.

major fundinfor "poisoned waters" was provided by the seattle foundation. ur gift, your community. e russell family foundation. the wallace netic foundation. the morris and gwendyn cafertz foundation. the key campbell foundion for the environmt. the merrill faly foundation. with additionafunding from: thabell foundation the bullitt undation the rauch foundaon. and by t following: a comple list is available from pbs. >> narrator: puget und. chesapeake bay. they aremerica's great coastal estuars and they are ineril.

>> i would put pug sound in the intensive care uni the situation is ctical. >> the chesapeake bay is lik the canary in the al mine. is an indicator of what we e now learning to expect in any body owater across the planet. >> narrator: the decades after the clean water act, frontline kes a hard look at why erica has failed for so long to cleanp the nation's waterways. >> aiculture is by far the rgest source of pollution to the all of the waters in t untry. >> we're notalking about little ma and pan the farm anymore. we're talking about instrial producon. it is industrial waste. >> narrator: and how contaminated waterthreaten not on wildlife... >> you have frogs withix legs, male frogs with ovarie >> nrator: ...but ultimately reaten our own health as well. >> the same thgs that are kiing the animals will kill people, too.

narrator: in a two hour special report, frtline correspondt hedrick smith uncovers the danger to the nation'saterways. tracking new thrts. >> if you are livi in washington, dc, uld you drink water coming out of the potoc? >> probably not. >> narrator: coronting new allenges. >> thiis sick. >> this isick. it's like cancer. it's growing. >> narrator: and discovering the ultimate problem. >> it'about the way we all live, d unfortunately, we are all polluters. i am, you are, andll of us are. >> nartor: tonight, frontlin instigates what's poisoning america'waters. c

>> hedck smith: chesapeake bay at dawn. one of tho magical moments when you feel ateace and in harmony with nature. for , the chesapeake is a special place, an extraoinary naturatreasure. over t past 30 years, i've spent a lot of time onhe bay-- sailing, hiking, swimmin crabbing.

i love the wer-- its calm, its beau, its majesty, and i'm fascinated bits meandering shorelines. in the earlyorning light the bay can look so pure and pristine, t that's deceiving. know that like most of america's terways, chesapeake bay is in trouble despityears of trying to save it, anthat worries me. i wanted firsthand look, and so i head out on the water witharry simns, a waterman who's been commercially shing the bafor 60 years. >> in its ak time, if you drained the bay, the crabsnd the fi and oysters and everytng would probably be ten foot deep on the botm all over the whole bay. >>mith: over the past several decades, sim has watched the good times of bounful harvests slipway.

about like your home wers re. >> yeah. yeah. >> smith: and what is e chesapeake bay liktoday for a termen? >> the only thinthat we have in abuance that we had back th was the striped bass, the rockfish. otr than that, everything else is dinished. two million bushel a yea now, we catch 0,000 bushel. i ver, ever dreamed that i wouldn be catching shad anymore, i wouldt be catching yellow perch anymorei wouldn't be catching tarpon anyre. i never, ever dreamed th that would comeo an end. >> smith: simns to me to the old fishing town of rock hl, where watermen were inging in the day's crab cat. crabhave long been the trademk of chesapeake bay, but the catch w is down more than 50from 25 years ago. so how was the catch today? >> well, it dropped off little bit today. >> smith: dropped off. so what aryou... coming in with a six, ven, eight bushels? >> ninaltogether.

>> smithnineushels? ten years ago, h many would you haveaught on an average da >> be about . >> smith: abt 30 bushels, about ree times as many. >> yea >> smithhow do you feel about the bay and what's happeneto it >> i tnk it's a tragedy. i think... a little upset at my cldren can't enjoy this way of life that i cherish, you know? >> in rock halharbor, all that used to be pcessing houses for striped bass, r oysters, for clams, for everythinwe was harvesting. >>mith: so a lot of people in the fishnd crab and oyster business went out of busess? >> yeah. >> y're talking about billions of dollars of economic impac withysters, crabs, shad, striped bass. the define in the fishers has just been dramatic. i wodn't have thought even ten or 15 years ago that we wod

terally lose oysters as a commcial fishery. have. it's... it's de. >> smith: watermen areeeing the symptoms of decline,ut the eper problem, i learned, is at the very dynamics of the bay's ecosystem are beg fundamentally tered by human impact. the y is acutely vulnerable becausits watershed is so large-- 11,000 mil of oreline, and it drains big riversrom six states. >> in alof north america, it's thlargest estuary. wee talking a sixth of the east cst from cooperstown, new yorkout into west virginia, almostown to north carolina. >> smith: it is the receacle of an ormous volume of water in a uniquely shalw basin. its erage depth is only 21 feet, making the bay an ecologicalothouse.

>> it's fabulous productive, but also exquisitely vnerable to land e because it has a huge drainagbasin. so y have, you know, the classiplace for trying to determine whether huns and nature can coexi. >> smithone problem for cheseake bay is that humans have draically over-fished the resources, especiallcrabs. buscientists have also tied the dramatic decline in fisheries here to maade llution and a growing phenomenon called ad zones. >> dead zones happ when too much fertilizer-- nitrogen phosphorous-- comes . it grows lots excess algae. the ale die, decompose, suck up the oxygen from the deer waters, whh aquatic life needs to live. >> smiththis is what a healthy oxygen-rich bay bottom lks like-- full of lush grasse

where fish and crabsan grow. a dead zone is complely different-- barren a empty. >> the bottom the bay, when there is an algae blm or when you have a deazone, is as dead as the face of theoon. there is absolutely no oxyn inyp these dead zones, and nothg calive that requires oxygen for surval. >> smith: crabs can't ma it? fish can't make... >> crabs can't make it. oysters can't ma it. fish tt get caught in the dead zone will literally diif they can't geout of the dead zone. they'll float up to the surfe, theibellies will explode, and you'll see fiskills throughout the chesapeake bay. >> smith: in the heat ofummer, dead zonesow occupy as much as 40% ofhe main stem of the chesapeake bay. buit's not just a bay-wide proble it's worldwide. all across the planet,ead nes have been doubling in frequency d size every decade.

there's one in t gulf of mexico the size of the sta of massachusett pollutn is not just creating dead zones. it's playing havoc with huma health and recreation. >> anthose health advisories at sandy point are still in effect, and ll be... >> smith: evy year, more beaches have to clos periodicly because of pollutio >> people arerged to avoid direct contact with the water... >> thenfortunate reality is that people get si from contact with water eve single day,nd we have information suesting that that problem is getting worse todathan it was ten years ago. d this is a result of a numb ofifferent contaminants being in the wer that ultimately can make people sick >> today we're at a point at which this system caed the chesapeake bay may bon the verge ofeasing to function in its most basic capacities.

and what do i mean bthat? providing a place for peop to swim, recreation. providing a source oseafood-- shelish, finfish, oysters, crabs, underwater grses which support e crab population. and being a system tt is absolutely wonderf to look at, 7'óeal pride toheto be a region. we are at the verge wherall of those futions of the cheseake bay that wew could be lost to the next generation, unless wet amatic and fundamentalwon toy. >> smith: what leaves e bay's defenders straught is not only its perilousondition, but the public'svident loss of interest and t failure of federal and state gornments to stick to their repeatepromises er the past 25 years to clea up the bay. >> there has been souch investment in science anin modeling and in monitong.

we know today ecisely what is necessy to save the chesapeake, and now it'sery clear it comes dowto the question of politil will. >> you kw there's a tendency to blame it on lk of political will. we, hell, who elects the politians and who re-elects them? last time i lookedit was us. we r out of excuses for delaying many, many ars ago around the chepeake. can afford it.l] we don't necessarily wanto pay for it, but we can afforit. so i have to say that collecvely we don't care enough. >> smi: there was a time when we, as a nion, did care enough demand action: four decades o when the country was rocke by a series ofnvironmental disasters. >> well, i rememr what it was ke before earth day. i remeer when the cuyahoga river burned wh flames that

re eight stories high. i remember when... t santa barbara oil spill in 196 that closed virtuly all the beaches in southern californ. i member when they declared la erie dead. i remember that i uldn't swimóa# inhe hudson or the charles or the potomac when i w growing up. >> smithwe could see the llution, smell it, even touc it. the problem was in ouraces and the blic demand for action exploded on earth day. ( angry chanting ) >> in 1970, th accumulation of insults ove 20 million amicans out onto the street, 10% of ouropulation, the largest public demonstraon in american htory. >> tre was anger at the state of the worldat the state of your own backrd, whether ibe ntain range, whatever it wasr%%) you lated to as the environment. there s anger that we as a untry had let it go.

anthere was a very much of a grassroots rebellion sayinthis has t to stop. >> it was a big ise. exploded on the country. it forced the. a republican administration and aresident, which had nevsreally. he had never thought abouthis very muchpresident nixon. it forced m to deal with it because public... the puic id this is intolerable. we've got to do something abtb it. >> smith: responding to congssional pressure, nixon created the vironmental protecc@óvvcy. picked bill ruckelshaus, a justice dertment lawyer with a solid reblican pedigree, as its first administrator. and ruckleshs quickly took charge >> we had select some big visible polluter both industal and municipal, go ter them, make sure the publ understo we were being responsive ttheir concerns, d that would energize the agency and gets in a position

to do things that needed to done in order to addre the probm. >> smith: congress arm ruckelshs and the epa with a raft of w environmental laws, like the clean wer act, that impod strict pollution limits and penalties for olators. the t called for america'sóo>c6 warways to be fishable and swimmable again by983. it had strong bipartisan sport in cgress, but not, it turns 2x >> wn we finally passed the clean wateact in the senate and the house, nixon voed it. and for e first time in the nixon administraon, he had a veto overridden, subantially and siificantly. >> smith: and wh does that say? nixon was out of step wi the conry? nixon didn't care abt the problem? it was my ijysion-- and i'm a democrat so i've goto be forgiven for that-- buit was my iression that nixon's terest in the environment wa

strictly politic. >> he didn't know much abo the environment, and fnkly, hei3 wasn't very curious abouit. he neversked me ñ2e whole time i was at epa, is the air rlly dirty? is something wng with the water? what a we worried about here? he would warn me. he said, "u got to be worried about that ehpa,he called it ehpa. he was the one pern in the country at called it ehpa. >> smith: epa. >> epa. he'd call it ehp and he said those peop over there, now d't get captured by that bureauccy. >> smithbut with bipartisan backing in congrs, ruckelshaus took song action anyway. heanned ddt, imposed a tight deadline for reducg auto emissions, sued seral cities and big steel and chemal companies for polluting e air and water. his tough approach made enies. >> most of the pple running big americananufacturing facilities ithose days eved this was all a fad. was going to go away

and...and all they hado do was sort of hunker down until th public opinion subsid, public concern subsided, d it would go away. >>mith: when you went after the big polluters, you sue them, you took theto court. what was theeaction u.s. steel? >> oh, boythey didn't like it. i rember going up to see ed cott whoas the ceo of u.s. steel anhe told me, he said, "you kw we don't like you very much," and he said, "we n't... we certainly don't like yo agency." and i said, "well if tt's your attitude, then we are prably going to g in a fight over it." >> smith: soou had xenforce the law. you had to be a tough gulator. >> that's right. you had to reaure the public that this was a problem the govement was taking seriously. wead to be tough. we had to issue standardand we had to enforce the >> smith: one the first big regulatory success storiesame right here on e potomac river. >> the potomac riv goes up to the mountains of appalachia. it comes past r nation's capital, and then it eers the3

estuary of the chesapeake y. and whate saw in the potomac river in the l960s w what was seen in many rers around the country, where ismelled so bad you di't want to get anywher ne it, and tt large part created by poly treated wage. ailing ia sml boat and capsized, you had i my hazardous to your health to come in contact with the wate >> smith: restoring thpotomac meant dernizing the sewage treatment plants alo the river, like this one calleblue plainsjust south of washington. blue plains ndles the waste ofr two million people, anit embodies just the ndf pollution targ'njákid%)z water act-- pollution comingut of a pipe. was the ggest single source of pollution to the potomac. >> blue plainsas the key wastewater treatment pla that had to be modifi if we were

really going to make a... a od effort at restoring e water quality in both the river anin the bay. >>mith: the potomac had become overrun with acres of een algae caused by exss nutrients7z from human waste, like osphorous and nitrogen. >> the regators said, "okay, osphorus is the problem in t potomac, twore, u people runninthe wastewater treatment plantsill upgrade to remove phosphorus," a it happened in smith: but the river didn't improve all at much. it turned out that they need to remove nitrogen, too, costly process. but cliff randl found an answer: new, more economical technology called biological nutrient roval, or bnr. the way we treat sewage is take in the sege and we ed it to a large mass of bacter

and other microorganisms. and basically theyat the sewage. >> smi: they eat the sewage? that's correct. >> smith: muh, munch, munch. >> that's rit. >>mith: it took a billion dollars in fedal and state funds modernize blue plains with seval new technologies, including bnr, but the efft paid off, and more than 0 sewage trement plants around the bay adopted bnr technolo. how muchf these early gains were not only e result of technology, but of aretty tough regulatory sti from the epa and the ate governments?- >> you know, that was tried- and-true formula. i me, with sewage treatment-- where we made the biggest ins eay on, and continue to make the biggest gas-- you have very clear laws. you have penales, you have deadnes, you have enforcement, you have inspeion. mean, we know what works.

♪ >> smith: but the 80s brought a new era, a the political climate on the environment changed. the winds of deregulion were blowing through waington, pecially during the reagan years. >> it is time to cck and reverse the owth of government which shows signsf having grown beyd the consent of the governed. it is my intention tcurb the ze and influence of the federal establishmen >> there's no queson that the reagan ainistration, in fact, brought to washiton a.dq deregulatory agend i remember back in the rgan days of seeing mos that would comeut from the white house to the chambeof commerce and other big business asking them for a list of regutions from ich they would want relief. >> smith: environmenl regution was a prime target of

the reag white house for givingelief to american business. >> t reagan administration essentially gutted the e. they stopped it in its tcks for a period of six, sev years. reagannd his white house appointed people to run the environmental protection ancy who were flaout opposed to the mission of the agencand were set to undthat mission. >> smith: the reagan administration not oy handcuffed epa on enforcemen it shiftedo a new strategy of voluntary compliancea strategy typified by the reagan epa new program for chesapke bay. >> what we created in the esapeake bay waza grand experiment. it was going to an alternative to the rulatory proach that had swept the ep at had swept the federal system. they were going tory to do this in a non-regulary, operative manner. >> smith: the w approach was long on omises and targets,

but short on hard deadlines d clear accountabili. >> it is a voltary program. you are never gointo effectively deal with a mui- state pollution obw-h a voluntarprogram. >>mith: the result was the chesapeake bay program repeatedly mis targets, leaving unfulfilled the cln water acs promise to radically reduce water pollution. onsequences of how9" deregulation has playeout here onhe chesapeake bay's eastern shore, wre huge factory-scale farms now domite the landscape, and where half e pollutn flowing into the bay-- much of it from agriculture- remains essentially unrelated.

i had come here toeet rick dove, professional photograph and environmental consultant whonder the authority the clean water act has beenathering formation for a potential citizens lawsuit against agricultural pluters. dove took me up on amall plane and gavee a bird's eye view of s detective work in the chesapeake bay watshed. you can actuly get a really clear picturup here. it's almost like diagram up here looking at it. >> that's one of the interting things about flying, andhat is that there are n"no trespassing" signs. u can look straight down and you can see everytng you need to s, you can document it. >> smith: ve is investigating the pollution from bighicken farms. we fly, he points out rows long flat sheds-- each aouple of hundred yards lon each holding up to 40,000 chiens. >> no matter where you f on

the eastern shore, it's loed with thesehicken farms. >> sth: the problem is where there are chickens, thers manure. >> it's everywhere. we knothere's bad stuff in pouaste. oncet gets in those ditches and oncehose ditches begin to flow down toll these rivers on the stern shore, it's on its way the bay. these rirs are delivery systems. whatever nutents are flowing that river are being delivered to theay. >> smith: icken manure is loaded witnutrients like nitrogen and psphorous. remember theead zones in the bay? they were used by algae, which is f by nitrogen and phosphorou >> wll shoot 400, 500, 600 pictures in afternoon, and !tddetails becausehat's w you really are able to poultry waste is leang that farm and getting to the bay. today some of the ctures i took, we're going to gto the

site and we're goingo see that on the groun >> smi: the aerial phos lead dove to a chickefarm he's been wahing for more than a year. th's lessig up there? >> yes it isthat's lessig's farm right the. the's four barns on the right are the origal barns, and in the la year he's added the two on the end over here. >> smith: that's a prettbig place. one me. dove can check on farm roff from publiroadways. and the photos give him clear1 p of how polluted rainwater moves from the fm to the bay. >> this is the lesg farm. this is anal waste, poultry >> smith: big pileof it. >> yeah, it is a big pile, b what's really alarmingbout this is you can see what's happened when it's raine alof this water has collected aroundt and it has formed some leacha. te is running wn barn >> smith: withll the stuff in

it >> with atever it's collected fromhat poultry waste. it comes out of these pipes here, comes in therecomes over to here anthen it goes under e road and right on down to the minocan rir, and right on out to the bay. >> smith: w. and have y tested this water right here? >> this is where we've tesd. here, there, over there. nd o& readings did you get? coloes. theirs w 48,392. and nitren and phosphorous all elevated, clearly indicati that animal waste is invved here. and en arsenic at nine times what the normal backgrou level would be. so it was a lohappening here. >> sth: farm owner aaron lessig did not respondo frontline's repeed efforts to ask him abt the water tests, which dove's team turned or to the epa. ok who he is growing for. lessig is growing these chicns for perd.

>>he sign advertises says it's perdue, lessig farm. >> ery perdue chicken has one of these tags on it. iteans you're getting a fresh, nder, tasty young chicken. i make sure of that because every one of tse tags has my name on it. >> sth: over five decades, perdue farms grew om a family business tthe dominant poultry processor on the chesaake's eastn shore. and perdue grew, it transformed the chicn industry. >> there used to be 200 compies on the shore involved in theoultry industry, but they were all independent. so you had an indepeent hatchery, an indepennt processing pla. the story of the poury industry andf perdue is vertical integtion. >> smith: integration ant a few bichicken companies controlling l aspects of producti. perdue mushroomed into multibillion-dollar conglomerate. small familyhicken farms becamehicken factories. >> wl, i think capitalism in genel stimulates efficiency,

and efficiency often isize. and so, u know, i think things had to bome bigger in order to keep costs lower syou could maintain, u know, your price structure. >> sth: factory-style poultry productionrove down chicken pricesand americans responded. over t past 50 years, per capita consumptionf chicken has trled. but there's en another price all those cheap chickens. >> poultryarming, like most animal farng, has become much more intense, much more conctrated. where you had 50,0 chickens on a given plot of ground, yove got a half million or two million w. whh produces a huge problem of what to with the manure. >> smith: in 2008,elmarva peninsula pouly farms raised more than 57million chickens,

and all those chickens produd massive mountains of manur- 1.billion pounds a year. th's more manure than the annual human wte from four big cities-- new york, whington, san francisco and atlanta-all put together. befo mass production chicken farms, local crofarmers used to absorthe chicken manure. now thers way too much for them to absorb. >> agriculture is by farhe rgest source of pollution to e chesapeake bay and it is, arguably the single ggest source of pollutioto all of the waters in the country. >> smith: sohe problem isn't just manure, butt's too much 'soo much manure and, arguably, too many animals uwr the currt structure. now the's all... >> smi: you mean too many animals inne place? >> exact. >> smi: it's a problem all over t country. hog farms in the carolas and iowa, poultry farms in arkans

and texas, cate farms in wisconsin and along the susquehaa river in pennsylvania. >> in terms of just dage to deruction of entire ecosystems-- of aquac counities, of fish going extinct-- there's nothing bad as the... ashese factory farm operions. nothing. >> smith:[;ho save theay, the epa says is essential to get corol over the animal mare. what's made that hard for all that manure. to understand how e chicken business is organized and ho 's run, i checked in with caroleorison, a successful perd grower for many years. >> tically, the farmer has a contract with thcompany, whether it be perdue, tyso, whoeve and you contract to raise their chickens. they own the cckens.

they just drop 'iem ofon the rm for us to raise to a marketab age, and then they come andick up the chickens, ta them for processing. >> sth: when perdue required that morison modernize her chicken houses at a costf $150,000 or moreshe decided to get out of t business. this is her last bch of perdue chickens. now what's the rationship he? doou bargain with one mv;éxy or another as a grower? >> there's no baaining in the contracts. contras are designed by the company, brought out to the farm, and you either sn it and get chickens, or sn... not sign it and t get chickens and ultimate lose the farm. smith: so you're saying tha the processors dicta the terms? they run the show? >> yes, the processo... dicte all of the terms, >> smith: the tes are very specific. e big chicken companies own the chickens, supply t feed,

dictate the growing regimen,o all the processi. they own it all except the chicken waste. >> well, anybody else who ow an animal is rponsible for their waste. if the compa owns the animal, why are th not responsible for their waste? i've never uerstood that. i have horses. i have dog that's outside. i'm respsible for their mess. now chickens are own by these companies, like perdue and tyson. how is ithey're not responsible for it? >> smith: help me undetand oni ing. hodo you wind up by owning the chickens, owninghe feed and zwó-v in the sense of legal responsibility, the manure? >> the mure is considered a resource, actually. the producers wan e litter. they want the chicken lier. it's not a matr of who owns or don't own it. it's aatter of what use is it being me fron;it. ÷çith:s factory farming has

grown, the volume of excs manureas mushroomed, and the's been an increasing push to regulatfarm pollution. but american agrulture has fought off poltion controls for three decades. >> the whole agricultura mmunity has remained maybe t last big or the ggest unregulated, large unregulated area of wateq;[tion. and it's whypa tells you ross the country agricture's responsiblfor 60%, o someing, like that of our water qualitproblems. >> we'realking the equivalent of medium-ze cities in terms of the waste that is gerated, that is virtually untre going into the chesapeake ba and... >>mith: so cities have their waste treated, go througwater treatmenplants. farmin agriculture, these concentred animal-raising erations, they're not treate

the same way? >> that is absoluty correct. >>mith: the delmarva poultry instry on the bay's eastern shore doesn't see it that wa it contends that there a fundamental fference between industrial pollution or ban sewa, and agricultural waste. industrypokesman bill satterfield. shouldn't the poultry farmbe subject to the same ki of litations that sewage treatment plants or indurial plants? >> a small industrial site tt has to have a permit knows t source of what gs into that pi. with n-point source pollution, there are various ways that nutrnts can get into the grnd water and maybe flow througthat pipe. farm fields are.m3 >> smith: i'm not taing about fields i'm talking abt growers and sheds where i ca.. i mean, i' literally stood in front of farmand i've literally looked athicken houses. i' seen pipes coming into the draige ditches coming from ditches between the chicke houses. the soce visibly is quite

ear. >> to know wre those nutrients came in uld require an investigation. and if the pipe passed under chicken house and stard over re in a field, who's to say what entered into that pipon that end? who's to say wheth the nutries, if there are any, came from chickensr fox or deer or birds or somethi else? >> smith: russell ng, famous senator from louisna, used to say when people gaven answer like that, "it not you, it's not me, it's tt guy behind the tree." it see to me as though every time we get this, even though the evidce is pointing to the most hhest concentrations right near agriculture poury operations, u're saying, "wel it could be the foxes or the geese." >> if there we proof positive that those nutents are from chickens, then we can accelete our programs and do better job. but we can't solvell the river's prlems with all the pele, all the growth, all the

other anims on the bk of the chicken and the poultrfarmers. >> i'll be the first one to y did it. i' said this before: we're all part of it. and, yes, i think riculture is a big contributor to the pollution,o the run... the ruff into the chesapeake bay. the industry kws it. t what i am tired of is everyone wasting all their te and ergy in saying, "i didn't do it." i did . why cat they admit it? i mean, you kn, let's all say, kay, we're a part of it." no let's find an answeú& >>ll in favor of adopting the committee rert signify by saying, "aye >> aye. >> opposed, no. smith: but finding an answe habeen politically impossible. ...178 is on thd reading. >> smith: the late 1990s, a bill went fore the maryland legislature to requi mandatory

nutrient management by farmers curb runoff from chicken manure big icken didn't like that idea at all. >> i think the survival of poultry dustry is at staken the eaern shore. >> smith: e poultry industry, among the most fincially porful lobbies in maryland, pushed for a looser alteative. >> the alternati was to have voluntary goals. it was going to be cooperati, it was going to have no relatory teeth, and it was going to be overseen by the maland department of agriculture, a n-regulatory agency, ther than the maryland departmentf environment.] >> the farming i!7x't live with maatory nutrient regulatis. got to keep it voluntary. ( applause >> smith: and thindustry bill won. and since th, the industry has been successful blocking or tying up subsequenefforts to regula their waste. you sat in thearyland legislaturfor 12 years. during that perioddid you see

the g chicken companies steadily resist gulation on manure runf? >> absolutely. big chicken coanies were a presence. jiperdue, the son of frank perdue, was a constant presee, whether heas sitting in my chairman's office holding a reception in the eveni or whateverthe chicken lobby was well represented. they hired the top guns the loying community in annapolis, and ey made every effort to prevent us froenting tough regulatis on agriculture. >>mith: some people have said tos that you'd clean up the whole situation much fter if the integrators, the poult processors, re responsible. u got to clean it up, and yo all e responsible. >> well, wcan only do what we can do. the farmer certaly is... you know, is h own businessman out there on the farm, and i tnk

it works better ift's a cooperative effort. smith: so perdue pioneered process to recycleart of the chicken growers' excess mare tohip across the country. d perdue launched a voluntar program teach its grors tter manure management. and the programshat we're looking at are an alternate to more regulation, i gue. >> more regulation and enforcement, which nobody lis. i mean, nobody likes, yoknow, somebody coming on your farm, you know, without any warnin and those kindof things. >>here's no quemrhat the influence the agricultural fa lobby in general has had a very successful role in liting the amount of pollution corol regulations that we see in t chapeake bay watershed or nationwide. >> you know, corporatis are exrnalizing machines. ey're constantly devising wa to get somebody else tpay their costs production. and, y know, if you're in a

polluting industrythe most obous way to do that is to shift your cleanuposts to the public. make yoursela billionaire by poisoning the rest of us. >> smith: are you saying t market'sistorted? >> you show me aolluter, i'll show you a subsidy. >> smi: chicken farmers bristled when the obama a stted demanding pollution discharge permits is spring. the indust clas it's already doing enough. >> t poultry industry is doing more every year. we're seng more best managent practices on rms. r program to put trees on poultry farms to uptake e nutrientis a very progressive thing. there are more and me programs offered to help farmerput in manure storage buildin, and as the ience says we can do more without puttinour people out of biness, i'm sure we will do more >> smith: but enviroentalists like rick dove remain eptical. >> now this instry says theye doing better, and you know, i can't say if that's ue or false.

but can tell you that what i'm seng here on the ground right now is absolutely terrle. so iit was worse before, then i can understand why the b is in such bad ouble. >> smithwhile the bay is besieged by runoff from e big chicken and cale farms along its rivers, i learned out a whole new ndf pollution as i traveled up the potoc as it winds its wapast washington up toward t hill country of west virginia. upere, near the headwaters of the potomac, i hea about the big w pollution threat not en known when the clean wate act was paed. six years ago, marine ologists becamelarmed at reports of massive fish kills othe rivers in this gion. everyear, small mouth bass

re being decimated by some mysterious problem. spring and fal hundreds of fish would be und floating in the water belly-up. i caht up with vicki blazer, a fishathologistith the u.s. geologal survey, who was trying to figure out whyhe fish were dying. what he you got here? >> so here whave this large discolored area in theiver, and then youee all these little wte spots. here's a totally discolod area. >>mith: and that's a signal of me bigger problem? yes, when we see a really high prevalence in aopulation, that indicates there's some problem going on in that wer. >> smith: d when blazer dug deeper, she und a surprise. >> one of the majoand most inresting findings was inrsex in the male bass. when we look at the ma gonads,

or testes, what we find is immature eggs within theale testes. smith: so you got a sort of feminization of ma fish. is thaa big, alarming finding in marine biology, aquic biology? >> yes, and that has ctainly attractea lot of concern and attention. >>mith: scientific studies ve linked abnormal mutations in marine crtures, like intersex, exposure to chemical compounds tt mimic or imitate natural hoones in the body. the chemicals are called endocrine disrupters. >> eocrine disrupters are very, very potenchemicals at infinitesimally sml quantificaon. i mean, you're talki about parts per million orarts per billion. theynterrupt the normal way in which the body controls erything from growth and development to thyroid fction reproductive function to

estrogen levs, testosterone levels. so they're ver very important, and they are of ep concern because there are soany of them now. >> smith: there are thsands of these worrisome chicals that have gotten into the environmt, and one reason is that they'reart of everything we do. >> theist of things that bring these organipollutants into our bodies is a long list and it ranges frohome care products, soaps, toothste, cleaning agents in thhousehold, to things we put on our lawnsthe things that we use allhe time-- thelastic industry, the rubber indtry, lubricants, fuels, the highway >> smith: when y see scientists like vicky azer cutting open fish, finding intersex in the ma fish, kills, seeing immuneystems disrupted, sing other damage to the fish, is at a warning to you, potentially, aboutuman alth? >> oh, absutely.

the rning, not just from the small mouth bassn the potomac, but from amphibians all acss the country. yohave frogs with six legs, hermaphroditic frogs, ma frogs with ovaries, male frogs with male genital. ese are the canaries, the modern canary the mine that haven't been paying enough attention to. >> smith: so many new chemals have emergedately, that scientists and regulors are playing catch up to indury ying to spot which chemicals they think pose nedangers in ouwater. >> e does not regulate any of these things yet, and in man cases there n't even the methods to measure them the amounts that they actuly have a biologicalffect. >> smith: so scice and the regulars are behind the curve dealing with what instry and society is producing or was. correct. e head kidney anhind kidney?

>> were loaded wit.. >> smithplaying catch up in regulating these newhemicals mabe a problem for more than ju these fish. >> the endrine system of fish is very similar tohe endocrine system of humans. fish have thyroid glandsthey have the functiol equivalent of aenal glands. they pretty much havall the same hormone sysms as humans, which, again, is whye use them as sort indicatorpecies. >> smith: so if sh are having tersex, or lesions, that's kind of spooky. >> it . you know, we can't help but ke th jump to ask the queion, "how are these thing influencing people?" >>mith: to get a handle on that questn, i headed down rir. st above washington, i found another usgs team sampling wer from the potom, part of a nationwi survey checking for 300 emerging contaminantin our drinking water

they were loing for well-known pollutts like pesticides, and for newly detected ctaminants found in pharmeuticals, body lotis, soaps and deodorants. inll, they found 85 compounds we're justow starting to be able to even anaze for in war. but the treatment isn't innded to remove the products. >> smithwhat makes this a matter of concern is that is the intake for the washingt aqueduct, where one milln people in the dc area get eir drking water. few of us may reale it, but people dnstream use waste water fromeople upstream. the tomac, like other rivers, serves as both the place whe we dump our waewater and the place where we getur drinking water. it's one big connuous recying operation from the toet or the shower to the tap.

>> the riv flows down, a communy takes water out of the river, puts it bacthrough a wastewer plant a few miles down, out, bac out, back. and with proper regulaon and proper processes at e wastewater plantnd proper processeat the drinking water plant, it works very wl. so we sort of continuously recycle this. >> sth: the recycling process works well for kno contaminan. but what abo the new chemicals for which the ephas not yet set safety standds? how tougis the challenge just to keep up with all thatew sources of pollutant >> anew elements come in-- synthetics, heicides, pesticides, pharmaceutals-- as those thingsnter the water stream in concentratio because of more advanced developnt, more human activity, more imal activity, more commercl activity, thosthings, as they t in the river, make it hard for uso do our job. there's no question out that. >> smith: not just harder t actually impossible to stop l the new contaminantsaccording

to thesgs findings, because the old filters wen't designed to catch t new threats. >> we sampled the fished water at t washington aqueduct and we found about two-thirds ofhe compounds we detected re still detected in thfinished water. >> smith: so you're sang that ughly two-thirds of these emergi contaminants that you found in the river watert the takes for the washington aqueduct came all the way through the filtering syst and we in the drinking water, the tap water the district? >> yeah, rig, and that's what weaw at all the studies that were done. >> smith: denv's findings mirrored what usgs has foundll across t country. everhere they saw lots of new contaminants in americs drinking wat, even if at low doses. were you surprised by the findings of this usgstudy or did you... did that fit with what you thought was probay going on? >> i w surprised by the number

of different compoun that were tectable. i knew we were smming in a sea of cmical soup, but i didn't realize the soup was qte as conctrated. >> smith: you talk about a sp, some people ve used the term "toxic cktail." ishere a danger that if a level of a parcular compound we acceptable and another one were accepble, that you start to put a bunch of themogether and en that's no longer a safe level? >> ah, you put your fing on one of the real concerns aut toxicology. may be safe to have a littl bit of compound a a little bit of compound b, but whethe two of them are togeer, there's synergism and th become really deadly. >> smith: if you we living in washington, dc, would you ink water comingut of the potoma >> uh, pbably not. >> smithbecause? >> chuckles ) because we really don't kn what..what all is in there. >> tay, i drink the water with great confence because our

water meetthe regulations. but, of course, the questi is do the regulations match the threat? >> smith: were tre endocrine disrupters, chemical comunds in the washiton aqueduct intake water that were of concern to you in tes of their poteial impact on human health? >> are there chemicals o concern? yes. i think athis point, the levels are very, verlow. so i d't have a great deal of coern that something needs to be done imminently, but itould ceainly be nice to reduce what getting into the water. we can sw that people with gher levels of some of these chemals may have a higher indence of a certain kind of effect than people wh lower levels of ese chemicals. >> smith: like what nd of fect? >> there are assiations with at's called male testicular disgenesis syndrome. th's a big term but it means. >> smith: lowesperm count? lower sperm count. smith: are we facing a long term, slow-motion riskhat we don't recognize becausit's not readily parent?

>> we are. therare five million people being posed to endocrine disrupters, ju in the mid- atlantic region, and yet w don't know precisely how manof them are going to delop premure breast cancer, going to have problems with reproduction, going have all kinds of congetal anomalies of the ma genitalia, things that are happening. we know they're happening, but theye happening at a broad, low lel so that they don't raise the alarin the general public. >> smith: you know what the safe levels are? >> in most cases, weon't know what the safe levels are, d some of the new science is suggestinghat levels that we ed to think were safe may, i fact, not be safe. >> smith: r humans? >> for humans. so we're finding in certai cases that much wer levels than wpreviously thought were a prlem may, in fact, have the potential to harat least some gment of the population. >> smith: do we have an aduate system of regulation or shou

we be regulatingn a different standard? >> i'm n a regulator, i'm a researcher. but in my personal opini, i woullike to know that a chemal is unlikely to cause harm before we expose outipulao. popution tla. >> smith: it's our failure t control toxic chemals before they cause trouble in th enronment that haunts our waters all across e nation-- plac like puget sound, which i've come to know well in rent years. the und which lies off the coast of seattle is a place that i've come to cherish as a phenenal resource, a gorgeous natural playgrnd, gateway to

the pacific,nd historically, a trsure house of fish and wildlife. but today, t sound is in peril. >> i would put pet sound in thintensive care unit. the situation is critil. we've known for decadethat puget sounhad serious issues, but we're at a point now whe the species that arelmost extinct are telling us we'veot me real bottom line problems here. >> smith: take these regnal icons-the killer whales or orcas. they're a major tourist attraction. but increasingly, get sound orcaare being closely studied by scientis as a barometer of the health of the tire sound. to see what scientists are learning, headed out with brad hanson, a team lear with noaa,

thnational oceanic and atmospheric administration. >> over there! >>ark it over here? >> yep. >> smith: hanson and his colleagues have en studying the orca populatn for several yes. why sty these whes? >> there the top predator in the food cin, so they're essentially accumulating allhe contaminants. they'rthe last stop in the food chain. and so.. >> smith: sohey're a laboratory, in way. >> well, sure. >> smith: a laboratoryhat tells us what's going onn the whole ecosystem. >> yes. >> smith: the orcatory is troubling. in one yr, seven local orcas died. their population is now downo 86, soow that, in 2005, noaa listed puget soundrcas as an enngered species. to figure out y the orca polation is in decline, hanson team goes out after

biological samples you t up pretty close to these whales in order toake samples, at some point,ight? we get to about four or five meters. >> smith: four or five mers-- so, that's uo close. >> yep. >> smith: they sho darts into the orcas and extract smal mples of blubber. that blubb is sent to the lab to be tested for slew of contaminantsespecially telltale toxins like pcbs. the b results have been alarmi. >> our research overhe last teto 13 years has been able to demonstratthat these killer whales arehe most pcb- contaminat marine mammals in e world. so we're very, very ncerned about what that might an to their health >> smith: pcbs areancer- causing chemics, so toxic that congss banned them three decades ago. but they kp showing up. >> pcbs are probab the number one persistent contamint of

conceranywhere in the northern hemisphere. they bio-culate in food webs. smith: you mean they build up. >> they build up in food web and inrganisms. we have trble getting rid of them. we have a lot of trouble getng em out of our system. when i say "we," i meahumans, rats, killer whales, harr seals-- doesn'really matter. >> smith: incrsingly, scieist worry that pcbs are a problem not just f orca whales. >> these anima are eating wild fish. wild fish is good r us, too. but if there's conminants in it, it's going to ve an adverse impa on us. that's thehing, that's why these animals e important sentinel spees, not just for the ecosystem in genal, but so for humans. >> smith: the center for whale research, dictor ken

balcomb has beeneeping records for three decades on thehales that make puget und their relar home. >> fewer whales e making it to marity. thpopulation is declining. we are seeing... probly the next 20 ars, we'll be witnessing the deparre of this polation. smith: you think they're gone, they're going to die o. >> i've aav,y told our government folks that we cano through is for about 20 more years if wdon't provide a remedy, and we will e the end of thipopulation. smith: balcomb and his staf know these whas so well by sight that they n track them from birth to death. so what's th? what are theseharts? >> thesere the family trees of all the whales wve been studng for the past 32 years. >>mith: the tombstone markers, lcomb told me, underscore a worrisome end among the youngest, most vulnerabl orcas. these older whes up here, they died that's kind of normal.

but toave so many down here, thesyounger whales dng. is that a bad gn? >> that's the distreing part is theortality pattern we're seeing now is that young whas are dyinway before they even matu. >> smi: he's alarmed at the high levels of pcbs that hanson team found in younger whales, which absorb pcbs from their mother's milk. are there enough parlels between the wathe human body work the chemistry and biology of the human body,nd the whales so that we can actual take lessons fm them? >> yes. we can take lessons om not only the whales,ut the seals and the sh. anit's been demonstrated in the health stastics in especily arctic environments, cold environments wherthere's a hi fat diet, and the children of these hi arctic people are suffering theseame problems-- immune defiencies, reproductive problems. all of these are aecting

humans, well as the other mammal >> smith: at na testing labs ke this one, scientists have established that king salm in puget sound are much mor heavily contamined with pcbs than salmon other pacific coastal waters. everything we see points to pugesound being a hot spot for pcbs and a persistent probm. wee seen contamination of animals. we've seen no provement in the levels of pcbs in thlast 20- odd years, despite rulations implented in the 1970s. and th, to me, indicates there are coinuous inputs from land- bad sources, from the sediments, and deliverg them right into that food web smith: one big reason pcbs are a rsistent problem is that it takes so long to cln up places likthe duwamish river,

seattle's industri corridor. some of seate's heaviest industry settled herdecades ago, and today, it's the region's large hot spot for pcbs. >> my name is b.j.ummings, i represt the duwamish river eanup coalition. >> smith: j. cummings leads urs of the river, but this isn't your typical toust outing. it's an envinmental wakeup call. >> the epa did an investigion here oduwamish river about ten years ago, and concled that industrial hisry here had left hind such a legacy of toxic pollution that the riv was declared a feder superfund site in 2001. >> smith: superfund is onef epa's big stks. it was the regulatory ogram created in 1980 to can up erica's worst pollution

problems. >> your typical surfund site used to be factory, pipe superfund si right at the bott of your pipe. that's nothat we have here. we have at's called a mega- site we have a five, five and a hf mile stretch of river, end t end, thas being investigated for cln-up. this is onof the largest superfund tes in the country. the river was sted as a superfund site because of an accumulati, a legacy of toxic pollution that has built up the mud at the btom of the ver. >> there's a direct li between contaminat sediments in certain areas d contamination of the food web above ose sediments. in fac one might even think of the pcbsiding an elevator up from the sedents, up into plankton, up intlittle fish, big fish, harbor sls, killer whaleseagles, humans. >> smith: thtoxic buildup in the duwamishiver bottom is the product more than a half centy of industrial development along the rive

boeing, for exampl the area's biggest corporation,ad its main operations here durg worlwar ii. >> we are the builders. we are the buiers of the b- 17. wi our hands, a million strong we ilt and drilled and... >> smith: the success ofoeing mirrored the 2h century boom in themerican economy, an era when industrial progressrought unprecedented expansion. ours were the hands that built the queen, the-17. >> smith: t that progress also left behind an unprecedeed amount of pollution, or what lled legacy pollutants. >> the term "legacpollutants" is wheits historical prtices, what was acceptable the '40s and '50s is... we would find very jectionable today in the '90s... ithe '80s and beyond. peopleid not know the damage thatome of these materials caused at the time.

they did not know the long-tm effects of them that wdo today. >> smith: pcbs are a classic lega pollutant found here at boeing, a toxic chemical onc widely used industry, often as high-stress lubricant in power ations and also in building materls. freqntly, it takes a lot of detective rk to find hidden pcbs. sosteve, you found a contamination oblem in the flight line out re? >> yeah,t's this material that weee between the concrete panels. it's callejoint compound, material that wainstalled in e late '60s contained very hi levels of pcbs and, you know, since had made this discovy, you know, in the late '90s, we have now moved about 50 miles of this toughout all. >> smith: 50 miles of thislack tar lookg stuff? >> yeah, this material throhout all of the boeing

facilies here in the nortest. >> smith: why wait so hard to find? >> wl, it wasn't obvious to us. was... you know, normally wh people talk about pcbs, you thk about electrical equipment, you tnk about hydraulics. that'shere it normally pcbs are used. the fact tt they were used in sothing that was right in front of us was fficult. it was really diffult that we... we overlookeit. >>mith: making sure that boeing doesn't oveook any of its legacy poltion is the job of seablocker, a former marine who has been epa's point m on the eanup at boeing. >> oka what i want to talk about today is bically some additional data th we have that's on the sedints outside the current boundaries othe cleanup fothe boeing plant-2. e significance of the boeing fality is the number of contaminants that origine from the facility. it has or 24 things in the groundater, 40-some odd different things that are the soil that are ove clean-up levels.

so it's the biggest acculation of contaminants in that area >> smith: from t get-go, boei and epa have clashed over how to can up those legacy pollants, and the arguments have led to long delay when we you first ready to go with clean-up plan? we submitted a plan to epa 1999, when, you know, to dred... we call it an interim measure to take at is adjacent to boeing and...nd excavate that materl. >> smith: boeing says at, over a decade ago, was ready to ean up and all that held it was bureaucratic red tape om the epa. >> i would disagrewith that. from my review of what ty were going to do, iidn't think they had fully fined where all the bad stuff was. ey didn't know the totality what the conmination was even in the groundwater or so. >> smith: but you obviously d a higher threshold for "let' get tohe bottom of how b is pollution is" than boeing did.

>> boeing is dng what they're asked too-- no more, no less. >> smith: so time and agai ocker pressed boeing to do re-- more work and more test by now, boeingas spent $80 million on testing a interim eanups. >> there's over 500 sampli locatis at this facility that ha been drilled ov time, you know. >> smith: you came here ten years ago, h many would there have been? >> 50. >> smith: so, hureds more have been drilled sinceecause of this back and forth with the epa. that's correct. >> smithnot only has boeing en feuding with the epa, but it's been loed in a fierce batt with the city of seattle, which usedo operate a steam plant next door to boeg field. typical of supfund sites, these two powerf neighbors have been wrangling over who responsiblfor pcbs flowing

through this ditch, or flume when it rain the flume runs from the now- defunct steam plant rough eing's territory to the rive boeing says it's the city's pcbs. so, was this just fothe city ligh steam plant, or did boeing and other people put storm drains into this and u it? >> ptty much just for cooling water from theteam plant. >> smith: the ci flat-out disaees, and it has taken boeing tcourt. >> pcbs are comi by connections of other pple to our ditch. th come through drainage lines. they come fromther properties, most spefically boeing's property. >> smith: so boeg was attaching its drainage pip to ur flume, sending some of it dirty stuff downour flume to the ver. >> there are over 20ines attached to r ditch that came om the boeing property. >> smith: 20 lines? >> yeah. >> smith: so it's a prracted argumentetween you and boeing over who actuay put the dirty ntaminants in that flume.

>> it's continuing argument. >> smith: and at argument is holding up the b cleanup on the duwamish river. jay manning, who heads washington'separtment of ecology, wch helps epa supervise the clean-up, owed me the cost of this contued delay puget sound. >> we're lking at four very large outfalls of draina pipes that carry storm water fm more than 30 square mil of this area. you can see the onthere to the right. >> smi: so this is an dustrial dumping ground, in effect. >> this storm water drai a very large industrial ar. >> smi: are you all still finding pcbs and other ntaminants in thatater? >> unfortunate, the storm water coming out of those ain pipes, we're still detting bs. >> this is goi to cost millions to cleaup, maybe tens of millions, and ownin90% of thatiability is not a place you want to be. so these folkswho are not stupid, are busy trying torove

that it's sobody other than them that is the source. >>mith: pointing the finger at everybody else. >> that's rit. they're tryi to prove-- probably not that th have no liability,ecause that's pretty hardo do-- but proving that they have veryittle compared toheir neighbor. that's what it's aboutand it's about moy. >> smith: ultimately, e issues of cleanup-- te and money-- are tied to a larger queion foall of us. th is, how clean do we expect our waterways to be? here on thduwamish, the state has post warnings not to eat local fish and shefish because of pollution. and sohe fight now is over whether e river can be cleaned up enough let the locals fish the river oncegain without sk. >>hat we determid was that the most ssitive population we had out there we our native americans that eat t fish out of the damish. >> sth: and they eat a lot more fh than most of us. >> they do. >> smith: anso that was the andard you wanted to set--

cleait up so the tribes can eat the fishafely without getting isoned from pcbs. >> yes. >> smith: and boeing objecd to that? >> basally, they don't feel that thastretch of the river can ever be turned to where you could harvest these nd of fish andhellfish. we disagrewith that. >> think people need to understand is that tre are going to be certain uses of e duwamishiver that aren't going to be poible in the future. i'll give you an example. i n't think people are going to be able to subsistence sh t of the... the speciethat are in the duwamish. i think we he to set reasonable expectations fo clean up in instrial areas. >> smith: where do you comdown on that? how cleais clean? do we needo get rivers back to where people can fish ansafely eathe fish without fear to their heal? >> that'the goal. that is the al. that has tbe the goal, because every one ofhose rivers and streams are gog into puget sound, so it not as though it'shat river or that stream alone. it's about t whole ecosystem.

smith: just across the rive from boeing, the threaof legacy pollution, and the estion of how clean is clean became personal. righhere, in south park, where, in 2004, the commity was rockedy news that some of itstreets anpeople's yards were contaminated wi pcbs. >> people in south park, rticularly people with famili, with small children, got incredib nervous. i mean, out and t scared about what this might mean. i pushed my kid's stroll down thattreet every day. go down there and i fish. myog runs along that waterfnt. what does th mean for me? what does this mn for my heth? i mean, you're trying to do e best for your kids, and al of sudden, something like this comes and then... >> iis so scary what you're saying. >> she's lking about pcbs, cancer-causing microbebanned in the '70s, b taking an emotional to on the resident

of sth park today. >> smiththe city of seattle realized it had a crisis a movequickly to pave the continated streets, clean up the polluted yardsand tell people how to take safet prautions. suddenly, south rk, a largely immigrant, workinglass neighbhood surrounded by industry, was galvanized io acon. redents demanded a long promised cleanup of an abaoned industri site called malarkey asphalt. >> malarkey phalt, for years, operated directly acro the street from homes south park anwas a really, really dirty business. for ny years, there s open dumping onhe riverbank. there was waste oil that w spye ainhe trea to keep the dust in the unpaved reets down, and that contaminated e roads and yards, right in people's gardens arounthe property. >> smith: yearearlier, the old malarky site had been boug by

the port of attle, which did a pcb cleap on part of malarky's propty. but people in south rk suspecd there were still many more uiscovered pcb hotspots upnd from the riverbank at malarky. >> so the ighborhood said, "go take se tests there. tell us at's there." epa and the rt said, "oh, no, nowe did the upland. 's finished." we eventuallwere able to succeein getting just a few more tests. "jusassure us. show us 's okay." >> smith: ug hotchkiss, the port's manag for the malarky te, ran tests and what he found surprised evyone. so, wh was the hottest spot you found? how high w it? >> t hottest spot for pcbs was right inhis area here, and it was about 9,000 parts r millio >> smith: 9,000? and thfederal limit is 25. i mean, so ts was a really hot spot! >>eah, and luckily, it was under phalt, but it was still something that, ev under asphalt, you couldn't ju leave

there. >> sth: so hotchkiss drafted a plan to clean up malky. but it backfired. >> wwould be cleaning up to 25 parts r million, which was the cleanup level that..that epa had accepted bore. >> smith: and how dithe community takehat? how'd they react? >> they were... ey were not happy with it. th didn't find it acceptable. >> smithin fact, south park was up in arms, insiing on cleanup to the residential standard of one rt per million. >> ah, duwish river clean-up coition, residents from south park, startecalling up port commissioners d explaining the problem to them. anthey got in vans and buses and went down where the rt commission was meeting, and e after another got up andold the port commissiothat they were worri about their health, and that the port commison had the responsibity to the community to make sure that at eanup would be safe for the entire community to use. >> well, it was a very

emotionay charged meeting. i wouldn't necessaly say it was confrontatnal. t it was a lot of emotn in the room. and i remember aarticular episode where a young ther came up to the standnd said, "you know, if it's only a question of money, how c you rsake the children of south park?" and thatas something that rely hit home to me. >> smithso the elected port mmissioners, sensitive to public opinion, backed dow they adopt the more protective residential standard atwice the cost >> i think that this efforhas been successful, because thi communy has been uncompromising in speakingp for itself and in insting that peopleisten. we eentially have a community re that has been on the fringes of a kind of economic or politicalower in thcity of sttle for many decades. so it's a community at has onlyecently re-found its voice. >> smith: by fding its voice,

south park redefin the meaning of "ean." and the community isow at work, developing riveront habitat zones at malarky a elsewhere along the wamish. >> in e absence of a b.j. cummings osomebody like her who is out there on the war, knowledgble, aware of what is happening, and poking and prodding a asking us the hard questions, we would not be making the progress that wre making. >> sth: the greatest threats to our watways are often invisible to the nak eye. evidence crops up innlikely ples, like alki beach, across liott bay from downtown seattle. it's favorite spot for scuba vers. but taking to thwater here

isn'for the faint of heart. temperatures in e puget can be in the 40s. but for the adnturous, underwat exploration offers a uniq perspective on the mane environment. toy, we saw a giant pacific octopus underneath t "honeybear," whicha little boat that sunk out here. it lives underneath the bow the boat >> smi: it also provides a close-up vieof the hidden that to pugesound, like this drnage pipe, one of the main outfls for seattle's rainwater runoff. >> we swam by the end the storm war drain; it's pretty dratic. the d of the pipe creates a own noxious soup of nastines that is unbeliable, kind of dramatic, and a little bit scary.

>> smith: "unbelievable" bec the water los so good from up here so wre looking at something we think is clean, and undernth, you can see diving tre... it's not clean. >>mith: it's dirty. >>t's not clean. whene... when we see that ing running in full flow, we tu around and we swim the other way ickly. there is just this unbelievable... >> smith: gunk. >> gunk cong out of the end of this pipe. this is our front ya. would you low your front yard to be sick? >> smith: this is sick? this is sick. doest look sick, but it is sick. >> smith: what's ming this water so sick is what scieists haveow labeled the number one menaceo our waterways, storm water runoff. in seattle, peak time fostorm water runoff iduring fall and winter, when the rain cos down in torrents.

>> everywhere that rain fall and ts the ground, is going to pick up sething. it might bnothing more hazardous than dir or it might becbs. it mht be some toxic pesticide, and it will tral along with the waternto the nearest ainage ditch, in the nearest swale, io a creek, into a rer, and ultimately into pet sound. and whateverollutants that water picks up on its urney to puget und, it's going to deposit in puget sound >> we put in abo 150,000 pounds a day ountreated toxics into puget sound. we thought all theay along at it was like a toilet to b hone with you. whatou put in, you flush out, and it goes out to the oan and it gets dilute know that's not true. 's like a bathtub, so what y put in, stays ther >> smith: the pollutioin storm water runoff in major cities like sttle, or in suburban and

urban areas across the cntry massive. yet untirecently, it was littleontrolled. the original clean waterct didn't regule storm water at all, though some limits ha en adopted since. but the problem mains poorly understood, becausso much of the pollution is invisible. >> peoplgo nuts over a 50- gallon o spill because you can seit, and it's really nasty looking. when youee it on the water, it is impressive w horrible it looks, and oil spills aren invisible. they are highly visible d they galvanize ople like nothing else. >> sth: what about the invisible? what about the auto affic? what kind of "l spill" is there fromur ordinary living? >> based on actual samplinin the puget sound basin, we ve estited that the volume of oil th is carried into puget sound by srm water run off is equal to theil spill in prince

william sound that the "xon vald" spilled. evertwo years, the storm water in puget snd carrieshat volume ooil into puget sound. >> smith: the hearof the problem is concret asphalt, street sidewalks, buildings, shoppingenters, suburban housing, rooftops-- rd surfaceswhat scientis call imrvious surfaces, that block the downpour of rain fro naturallsinking into the ground. >> how the land is develop, how intensely, wilhave a direct impacon the quality of storm water. you takeown a forested area and replace itith pavement or a rooftop. and instead almost all of t water slowlyoving through the forest canopand down to the ground a infiltrating down into groundwater where it wi move slowly. that wer, the day it lands within minutes of ititting the groundit's going to be gone. >> smith: and so, scientis,

environmentalis and regulators all y that combating pollution is n just a matter of gulating industry. t the key to storm water runoff is nd use, how we develop and usour land. king county, i learned, s become a labatory for testing the politics of land use. it's an area bigger thanhe statof rhode island, home not just to seate and 1.8 million people, but two-thds of it is still forest so it's an area where enronmentalists want to strictly contr the pace of development. d the man who has been leadi the charge is long-time ng coun chief executive ron sims. >> youave to protect our forests. you haveo and our agricultural areas. you must. because if we don't protect them, our water qualy will be siificantly diminished. anwhy sacrifice clean water for grow?

>> sth: sims says his mission has been to save puget snd by protecng critical areas like forests. way up here, 45 mis east of seattle, he paid $ million in tax money to buy developme rights on 9000 acres of forest, meaning thato developer coulbuild on that land. >> people re going to build their homes re. they were going have their supermarkets here,heir gas stations here. stopped it. we stopped it forever. >> smith: what doesaving this timberland have to do withuget sound? >>he waters that come off this 9000 acres flow into the snoqualmie river, whicflows in lake washington, which flows into puget sound. we need pristine waters cong from this timbland into the puget und, and so this property is absolutelyritical to it. >>mith: washington state's grow management act directs

local government lears like sims to coentrate new growth in cities and to preve sprawl in light populated rural areas. for king county, sims pieered a critical aas ordinance that limits just w much forest and woodland property owne can cut down. ms targets places like this, ve-acre, one-family plot of land that belongs to howd and pattvan laeken. >> back in 2004, king unty ssed this critical areas ornance that takes away the usage of 65%f your property if you don't have it cleareoff. d we didn't have ours cleare off the time, so we're... we cannot touch 65% of our propty. >> smith: so why do you wa to clear more than 35% of ts wondful forest? >> well,hat we originally planned when we re in l980 when wbought it was that we uld subdivide and maybe give our kids a parceof land to

build house on or... and/or sell off part of the prorty for the proceeds, to be ab to keep ourouse and retire. >> smith: how do y feel about that >> rather angry. >> very angry. very angry. 's our property. have been paying taxes on this property nce l980, and we can't even plant gra? >> smith: gry at whom? angry at what? >> i'm angryt the king county governnt, because they more or less took away our property rights without any cpensation foour property. >> we' getting the shaft. th're putting the burden on the all landowner, not on everyby. smith: the van laeken's oblem actually stems from a zoning ordance passed in the earl1980s that barred subdision of properties under five acres but to many rural landners, ms' new ordinance was the la straw,nd they formed the citizens alliance for prerty rights.

i met witheveral of them one evening over a beer in iequaw. >> wre in the same position that the blackwere in the l950s. absolutely. are calling, we are crying, we areoing everything we can to talk tohose who have their hands the levers, and they aren't ltening. >> smith: onthrobbing refrain was sentment against political dominaon by the urban majority ich outnumbers rural voters nearly five one. >> we lk about critical areas ordinance like it's a nice little o-page thing? we'rtalking about over 400 pages of amendments to esting law. 40 over 400 pages. >> smith: w much of the frustration out heres a matter not justf a single ordinance, but of a series of regulatio that feel onerous? how muchf this has built up over time? >> much of it has ilt up. it staed in '88 with the sensitive areaordinance.

in 2000, we had a gigant down- zoning fight. and then, the coup de gras was the 2004 critical ars ordinance. >> smith: so it's accumulation. it's very much an accumulaon of regulations. >> smith: theyold me people were so steameup that ron sims rarely dared to come to thei part of the county. people on his staff say 's tten threats. do you believe that? >> if it wn't for us, i bet somebody wld've have gone for 30-ought-six. >> smithyou're talking about they wou go for 30-ought- sixes? guns? >>'m not saying they would. i'm saying they' terrified. i'm saying there are people o are so angry, ife didn't have a way to direct at to get some results, inow there are people on this county that probly uld have shot a few key people, they are so angr >> smith: did you geany threat >> i alws get threats. >>mith: i mean serious threats? i always get serious threat >>mith: do you take them seriously? >> i cannot restct my life and

what i do based upon pple who are angry d people who wish to threen me. >> smith: yosay it wasn't plsant. >> it wasn't pleasant. ople were yelling at me. we got a lot of nasty phe calls and emails, and itasn't fun beinon television. and, quite franklyi was abandoned by a lot opeople. even thenvironmental community athe time were saying "ron, you might be too heavy-hded." >> smith: but si has not backed down. he assertshat the county ordinance was prompted by scntific analysis of runoff water flows, and he ge solid political backing from an overelming majority in king coun. what do you say to critics w say, othe people who say, "look, they've taken mland, in effect. i n only use a third of my la. two-irds of my land i've got leave in forest and bushes. >>o one has lost the value or e of their land. there's not one case in king county where anybo's been able to show that. >> smith: you me nobody's come forward and said "i wa to do

this on my prorty" and you've turnedhem down? >> what people have found at we're not ing to allow them to develop their land in terms builng a lot of homes on it, but the use of tir land they still enjoy it, to this y. >> smith: the ral people are saying "this burn all falls on us. the city people dot have any burden on them." how do you respond? >> oh, the city peopleave far re burdens and restrictions their land than anyo in the ral area has. far more. and they have far more regulation on their la. >> fks, stay tuned. this thing with the. another round on the lawsuit a the enforcemen.. >> smith: some angry rural property owners filed suit, and a state appeals court has stck down part of ss' critical areas ordince. that issue inow before the state supreme court. >> if the supreme court holds the court ofppeals' decision, it'll be t abandonment of everythi that this state has voted on consisttly, which is they want enronmental protecti here.

>> sth: while the legal drama plays out, the lesson r ron sims is unmistakable. >> we will never recover pet sound ife don't get a hold of the storm water. i never imagined thathat body of water would just fundamentallbe unhealthy for whales and for saln and all the ings that make it a rich, wonderful vironment. we may, in theext couple of decades, when i'80 years old, if we don't do athing, people willay, "you... your generation, you lo it. you weren't willing to steup and savet." he

>> smith: back othe east coas near chesapeake bay, the problems odevelopment sprawl at king county is fighting ve played out in the suburbs of washingto dc. already million people live in the chesaake bay watershed. in recent yes, 10,000 more moved in eve month. and evy month, 3,000 acres of forest were lost to develoent. virginia, the outer loop heing toward tyson's corner, reporting very heavy tffic westbound... smith: the sprawl took off decades o out here in northern virginia, about five miles sth the potomac river in a subu washington caed tyson's corner. today, tyson's is a ca study inhe harmful impact of unchecked growth. but 60 yrs ago, tyson's was just a rural croroads with a

country store. >> as world war ended, it was a land of dairy fas and truck farms d abandoned farms, and relatively ltle development. and it was wide open. thgovernment then, the political leaders then, th business leaders were all in favor of doing what was necessary to accommodatehe owth that was coming. >> smith: and r growth to happen, what developers eded was infrastructure--ewers and roadand, especially, a highway ound washington, dc, called the beltway. >> when you t the beltway at exactly the locaon it was, which created about 800 acres in the cenr of those... in the convergence of thoseoads, you had a fabulous developmentite. >> smith: wi taxpayers footing the bill for irastructure, tyson's beme a transportation hub, a commercial centernd a multibillion-dollar bonanza r

developers. >> theasic approach of most land speculators who are. who are the siteevelopers is to buy a pie of land that's farmlandand that is zoned as farmland and taxed as faland. >> smith: so, it's cap. >> yeah, it'cheap. and then get it relanned and rezoned as a subdivisi with so retail and commercial coonents, and the land value will go up dramatically. >> smithso, the formula is buy land che from farmers; get the county and the state tput in the ads, the sewers, the schools-- all the stf that makes it attctive... >> yep. smith: ...and then turn around and sell it for mmercial or resintial at 30, 40 times the ct. that's correct. >> smith: thformula worked like magic for tyson's. over the nex45 years, it became one of americs largest commercial developments d most ccessful retail centers. now, 12000 people work at tyson's every y. >> tyson's is the size of

downtown boston or phoen. there is nothing in th country of the scale and size an complexity oa tyson's. >> tyson'sorner is one of the most successfuoffice centers in the country; e of the most successful retail centers the country and e combination of those two factors maket the economic engine for fafax coty and really northern virginia. >> smith: an economiengine dren by america's lo affair th the automobile. >> in tyson's corns, you drive in for breakfast and youet into your car anyou drive to your first meeting. th you drive to the next meing and then, you know, if i haveo take some checks to the bank, even though it's for good gfer barely a long nine iron, u got to get back in yourar and drive back. there's no w in tyson's corners that anybo gets around without a car. >> smith: the car builtyson's. it also builgridlock that is now rangling tyson's. >> we're about half wayhrough

the afrnoon rush hour. maybe. >> smith: almost none lives here, practically evyone commutes. >> extrely heavy traffic that extends way beyond the btway. >>he highway system is choked. and we can't sustain the mod of sprawl in support of e economic engine thatas happened over the la 20 years. >> smith: can't suain the model. you mean tyson's corner has rt of reached the limit? >> tyson's corr is about as built out as it n be if dendent on the automobile, because it exacerbates wt's already a colicated but troublg environmental future. >> smith: enronmentalists call tysos a nightmare for the potomariver and chesapeake ba it's a ftress of impervious surfaces >> you look at tyson'snd there is now today..ase are sitting here today, there's about 46 milon square feet of development in tyson's. in addition to tt, there is 40 million square feet parking.

>> smith: 40 milon? >>0 million square feet of parking. so t amount of development and the amount oparking is about equal, and that translatesnto close to 170,000 parkingpaces. and when wtalk about impervious surfaces, i mea that's jt unbelievable. >> when you put downn endless amountf concrete parking lots and roofps, rain hits it-- it washes really quicklinto the stres. it's gng to cut ay at those stream banks. it's going to pi up sediment. it's goi to be carrying all kinds of pollutants it. it's goingo go flying down into t potomac, and the potomac feeds to the chesapea bay, and everything star in these little streams. so every time you lose a lite stre, you lose one more healthy piecof the chesapeake baecosystem. >> smith: wh many see as the ecologal disaster of tyson's epitomizes the collision of development and clean water nationwide.

more than ree quarters of amera's population lives on or near our waterways the plague of tyson's-ste sprawl has recentlthreatened neighboring looun county. but here in looun, environmtal leaders fashioned a new ctic to counter aggressive development ando protect chesapeake bay. >>etting up in front of a crowd and saying, "the bay in ugh shape, and the pollution getting worse, ande've got to change our lifestys to save it," really doesn't t you anywhere but yocan get people to do the ings that we need to do to save the bay, if we n train them in ways that... tha correspond to what they ally care about. >> smith: in loudo what people care most about is traffic a taxes. two ises the environmentalists leveraged to launch a litical campaign agast developers in 2006. >> how do big developers plano al with our traffic problems

they want touild more homes in our area-- 33,0 more. that would mean thousands of more cars and more traffic >>mith: tapping into local concerns, citizen activist organizeto carry the fight. >> it resoted a lot with residentwhen we spoke about transportion issues. we spoke aut tax increases thatould occur and when we spoke about schools, h our children would constantlhave to change boundari. >> i think aot of us got volved just for the whole quality ofife issue and when it wt from the 33,000 homes meant an additnal 300,000 car trips on t local roads. it meant higher tas. the schoolthat had to be built. the roads that needed be built. it was suburbanizing an ea that was never meant tbe suburbanized. >> sth: did all this public tpouring of outrage stop or slow down this aggressive growth? >> the public respon was so overwhelming, that even th

board of supervisorshat was elected th the support of the development counity ended up turning down the prosals that ey, the board, had submitted in the first place. >> smith: so, they bacd off totally. they backed off totally, an then in thelection that immediately follow that decion to back off, they all lost. every one of tse candidates was voted out of office. >> smith: th got wiped out? >> they got wipeout. >> smith: that victo in loudn underscored that land use is a key to protectinghe enronment. people talk out saving chapeake bay, and you've got organizatis that are talking about, "let's have a campaig bay-wide." but stening to you, the nuts anbolts of this thing sounds as though they have to be ught out on local basis, county by county. >> ihink the conservation movement has to move away fr wholesale ideas to... to tailing what we're talking about. things that people deal th every day: traffic, schools,he lack of acss to the... the kinds of parks and open spac

that people want on a y-to-day basis,ising taxes to pay for the cos the developers weren't paying for. >> smith: and e bay is going to benefit, buit's not the openinargument. it's all about making the protection of the bay a tail issue. what we need to market ithe soluons, and market in a way that pple will embrace them, not market the pblem. >> smi: to help savel vulnerable waterways like th pomac river and chesapeake bay, environmentalists arelso toutina new eco-friendly development mol known as" one of the nation's showcas for smart growth is right he arlington, virginia. a sht subway ride across the potomac om washington, and just a few miles from tyn's corner.

smart growth is mang suburban living look a lot more like ty living with a humatouch.bk>x3piu what's fascinating is wherare we? look up here, for cryingut loud. >> you're in aowntown, a new downtown iarlington county. >>mith: i got a tour from smart growth advocate ewart schwartz >> it's a subu that's grown up into a city, aextension of dc'sowntown. arlington d no choice but to build up to coete with the outer suburbs. anfrom an environmental perspeive, we love this sort of place because we'reuilding here oold parking lots instead of building out in fests and farms. >> smith: arlington's rategy is tfocus development not around the car, buaround washington'sass transit stem, known as metro. >> around each of the stions, we call it a network of lible counities and increasingly the world's cities are bei built

this way. using transit the spine for >> smith: wh's been the track record in arlingn county in rms of jobs, development, congestion on the reets? >> they've had an explosion development in the cridor in the last 30 year they've had tripng and quadruing of the number of resident the numbeof jobs in the corridor, and 's all been achievedithout an increase in traffic. >> smith: the keto smart growth ihigh-d%óy living combined with mid-use develoent. commercial, retail andyf residential l mixed together. >> smithyou know, looking at this, there arhigh-rise buildings here i mean, to a cerin extent this kind of looks ke tyson's. it's our ige of it, lots of concrete or brick whatever. but very different. great blic spaces here like this park. you have shopping you n walk to right tre. a grt bus stop here. outdoor cafe probably two to thretimes the number of peop living here as do live in tyson's corner. and in fact, the fute of tyson's is going to be in hang more people li in tyson's

corner and to make ton's rner look a lot more like arlington. >> smith: in fact, at tysos, there's en a tectonic shift in the mindset of business aders. with the commercl luster of tyn's fading, they are now banking on thelanned arrival of metro's rap rail to spur a new kind of redevelopmen >> we can't continue to accoodate cars and the number accoodate cars and the number mean, the choice moving forwd is you do more of the same and gethat you got. or you change what youid and build to a new... a new goalif you wi, a new culture. and that culre will be focused on mass transi it's, in essence, desiing a place that is much more at a human sce pedestrian friendly that'll be the key to the success of ton's for the next 20 years. >> smith: it's welcome change to advoces of chesapeake bay. remang tyson's corner gives local government chance to fix the storm water syst, create parks and store green zones

and local streams feing into the potomac and e bay. >>o, growth is hapning, and we have to accommodatet. t we can do it better. we can plan it better. we can put it in betr locations. we can put it in places whe we cadeal with the impacts in the most effecti way. >> smi: are you saying we have a choice? >> always. weave a stark choice. we have a very dramatic choi. if we dot right, the effects on the environment are reduc by half or more. if we do it wrong, the. the possibity of actually losing the chesapeake bay goeup amatically. >> smith: we do have choes to make. and fr what i saw and heard on

journey, time is much more gent and the skes are much high than i had once realized. >> we are t going to make it the way were going now. itoesn't mean we can't double our effort, you know. wean re-enroll, try again. but yeah, it's a failure. conditioof the chesapeake bay is likthe canary in the al mine. it is a symbol. it is an indicator owhat we e now learning to expect in any body of water natiwide, and acss the planet. >> smith: the daer signs are everywhere: dead zes; dying young whes; intersex in male fish

health problemfor humans. >> the '70s were a lot aut, "we're the good guys, we're e environmtalists. we're going to go after the polluts." and it's not really abt that anymore. it's about the waye all live. and unfortunately, we are al polluters. i am. you are. all of us are. >> smith: success isossible. but the sson driven home to me, again and again,s that the key is public engagement. >> if the publ is not engaged, in pet sound for example, we will fail. we will il. i have no nfidence, whatsoever, we can gethe job3i done, unless, and until, everybody steps up, cepts responsibity and becomes part the solution.

>> you can expect the clean ter act alone to do the job for puget sound orhesapeake bay or anyther water body. you have to piece togeer clean war, clean air, and taking care of the la. and this point in our history, we have trestore what wee screwed up. >> smith: watepollution has slipped off our radar screennb>k thface of other, seemingly more urgent crises.xwo# but pollution is aking time bomb. it's a chronic cancethat is slowly eating away naturalñ resources th are vital to our survival. >> the estuaries and the wetlands are worthastly more money thane have acknowledged. i meanif we could calculate and persuade the public out

how valuable the wetlas are in terms of t web of life, we would be grding themike the fami jewels instead of using them as ougreat sewage dump. >>e have a window of time. wherea if we do not succeed in taking actioin the next ten to 20 years on a whole nge of issu, we are in fact putting our planet on trajectory that it will be very, verhard to undo. and i sathat because the decions we make are going to have profound effect as to our planet's fute over the next 100 yes.

>> there's more to exploron our website, where y can watch the fu program again online. explore what safe to eat and drin find out whyt's taking so long to clean up the waterys. what t quality of your water is, and what you can dto he. you're talking about billio of dollarsf economic impact with oters, crabs, shabs... >> plus read e interviews with experts. >> absolutely noxygen in these dead zones. >>hese are the modern canary in the mine. >> humans, rats, killewhales, harbor seals, really doesn't matter. >> and join the dcussion of is program at pbs.org.

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