>> frontli is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like yo with mor funding from the john d. and caerine t. macarthur foundation committed to buildg a more just, veant and peaceful world. and adtional funding for frontline d for "poisoned waters" from the park foundation. committed to rsing publ

major funding r "poisoned ters" was provided by the seattle foundation. yo gift, your community. thrussell family foundation. the wallace getic foundation. the morris and gwendol cafertz foundation. the key campbell foundatn for the environmen the merrill fami foundation. with additional nding from: the ell foundation the bullitt fodation the rauch foundati. and by theollowing: a completeist is available from pbs. >> narrator: puget sod. chesapeake bay. they are arica's great coastal estuarieand they are in pil.

>> i would put pugetound in the intensive care unit. the situation is crical. the chesapeake bay is like the canary in the co mine. its an indicator of what we arnow learning to expect in any body of ter across the planet. >> narrator: thredecades after the clean water act, ontline tas a hard look at why amica has failed for so long to clean uthe nation's waterways. agriculture is by far the laest source of pollution to the all of the waters in the cotry. >> we're not tking about little ma anpa on the farm anymore. we're talking abouindustrial producti. it is industrial waste. >> narrator: and how contaminated waters reaten not onlyildlife... >> you have frogs th six legs, male frogs with ovaries. >> nartor: ...but ultimately thaten our own health as ll. >> the same thin that are killg the animals will kill people, too.

>>arrator: in a two hour special report, fronine corresndent hedrick smith uncovers the danger tohe nati's waterways. tracking newhreats. >> if you are livingn washington, dc, wod you drink ter coming out of the potoma >> probably not. >> narrator: confnting new chlenges. >> this sick. >> this is sk. it's like a ncer. it's growing. >> narrator: d discovering the ultimate problem. >> it's out the way we all li, and unfortunately, we are all polluters. i am, you are, and a of us are. >> narrar: tonight, frontline inveigates what's poisoning america's ters.

>> hedri smith: chesapeake bay at dawn. one of thoseagical moments when you feel at pce and in harmony with nature. for methe chesapeake is a special place, an extraordary natural easure. over theast 30 years, i've spent a lot of time on t bay-- sailing, hiking, swimming, crabbing.

i love the wat-- its calm, its beautyits majesty, and i'm fascinated by s meandering shorelines. in the early mning light the y can look so pure and pristine, buthat's deceiving. i ow that like most of america's warways, chesapeake bay is in trouble despite ars of trying to save it, and at worries me. i waed a firsthand look, and so ieaded out on the water th larry simns, a waterman who's been commerciay fishing thbay for 60 years. >> in s peak time, if you drained the bay, the cbs and thfish and oysters and evything would probably be ten foot deep on theottom all over the whole bay. >> smith: over the past sevel decades,imns has watched the good times of bountil harvests slip ay. about like your home wats

he. >> yeah. ah. >> smith: and what is th chesapeake bay like day for a warmen? >> the only thing at we have in abundce that we had back thenas the striped bass, the rockfish. other than that, everything se diminished. two million bushel aear. now, we catch 10000 bushel. i ner, ever dreamed that i wouldn'te catching shad anymore, i wouldn'be catching yellow perch anymore, wouldn't be catching tarpon anymo. i never, ever dreamed thathat would come tan end. >> smith: simns tooke to the old fishing town of rock hal where watermen were brging in the day's crab catch crabs ve long been the trademarof chesapeake bay, but the catch nois down more than 50% om 25 years ago. so how was the catch tod? >> well, it dropped f a little bit today. >> smith: dropped off. so whaare you... coming in with a s, seven, eight bushels? >>ine altogether. >> smithne bushels?

ten years ag how many would you ve caught on an average day? >> be abt 30. >> smithabout 30 bushels, abt three times as many. >>eah. >> sth: how do you feel about the bay and what's hapned to it? >> think it's a tragedy. i think... a little upt that children can't enjoy this w of life that i cherish, u know? >> in rock hall rbor, all that used to be prossing houses for striped bass, fooysters, for clams, for everything was harvesting. >> sth: so a lot of people in the fish a crab and oyster business went out of busins? >> yeah. >> youe talking about billions dollars of economic impact withters, crabs, shad, striped bass. the define in the fisheriehas just been dramatic. i woul't have thought even ten or 15 years ago that we woul

lirally lose oysters as a commeral fishery. weave. it's... it's don >> smith: watermen are sing the symptoms of decline, b the deer problem, i learned, is th the very dynamics of the bay's ecosystem are bein fundamentally alred by human impact. the bais acutely vulnerable because s watershed is so large-- 11,000 milesf sheline, and it drains big rivers fm six states. >> in all north america, it's the rgest estuary. we'rtalking a sixth of the east coa from cooperstown, new york, t into west virginia, almost dn to north carolina. >> smith: it is the receptle of an enmous volume of water in a uniquely shallobasin. its avage depth is only 21 et, making the bay an ecological hhouse.

>> it's fabulouslyroductive, but also exquisitely vulrable to land usbecause it has a huge drainage sin. so youave, you know, the classic ace for trying to determine whether huma and nature can coexist >> smith: e problem for chesapke bay is that humans have drastally over-fished the resources, especially abs. but ientists have also tied the dramatic decline in fisheries here to manme poution and a growing phenomenon called de zones. >> dead zones happenhen too much fertilizer-- nitrogen, phosphorous-- comes in it grows lots ofxcess algae. the algadie, decompose, suck up the oxygen from the deepe waters, whicaquatic life needs to live. >> sth: this is what a healthy oxygen-rich bay bott looks like-- full of lush grses where fish and cbs can grow.

a dead zone is cpletely different-- barr and empty. >> the bottom ofhe bay, when there is an algae blooor when you have a dead ne, is as dead as the face of the mn. there is absolutely noxygen inyp these dead zones, and thing can live that requires oxyge for rvival. >> smith: crabs can'make it? fish can't make... >> crabs can't make it. oysters can't maket. fish thaget caught in the dead ne will literalldie if they can'get out of the dead zone. they'll float up to the rface, eir bellies will explode, an you'll seeish kills throughout the chesapeake bay. >> smith: in the heat of smer, dead zones n occupy as much as 40% of t main stem of the chesapeake bay. but 's not just a bay-wide problem,t's worldwide. all across the planet, dd zos have been doubling in frequency ansize every decade.

there's one in theulf of mexico the size of the statef massachusetts. pollutiois not just creating dead zones. 's playing havoc with human health and recreation. >> and ose health advisories sandy point are still in effect, and wi be... >> smith: everyear, more beaches have to close periodical because of pollution. >> people are ued to avoid direct contact with the water... >> the uortunate reality is that people get sickrom contact with water everyingle day, a we have information suggting that that problem is getting worse day than it was ten years ago. and this is a result of a mber of dferent contaminants being in the wat that ultimately can make people sick. >> today we're at a poinat which this systecalled the chesapeake bay m be on the vergof ceasing to function in its most basic capacits.

and what do i mean by at? providing a place for peopleo swim, recreation. providing a source of afood-- shellfh, finfish, oysters, crabs, underwater grass which support thcrab population. and being a system thais absolutely wonderfulo look at, 7'óeal pride to tto be a region. we are at the verge where l of those funcons of the chesapke bay that wew could be lost to the next generation, unless wet dratic and fundamentalwon toda >> smith: what leaves thbay's defenders diraught is not only its perilous cdition, but the public's edent loss of interest and theailure of federal and state govements to stick to their repeated omises ov the past 25 years to clean up the bay. >> there has beeso much investment in sciencand in modeling and in motoring.

we know toy precisely what is nessary to save the chesapeake, and now 's very clear it comesown to the question of politicawill. >> you knothere's a tendency to blame it on lacof political ll. wellhell, who elects the politicis and who re-elects them? last time i looked, was us. we ranut of excuses for delaying many, many yes ago around the chesaake. wean afford it.l]o we don't necessarily want pay for it, but we can afford . i have to say that collectily we don't care enough. >> smiththere was a time when we, as a natn, did care enough toemand action: four decades agwhen the country was rocked by a series of eironmental disasters. >> well, i remembewhat it was like before earth day. i member when the cuyahoga river burn with flames that were eight stories high.

i remember when. the santa barbara oil spill in969, that closed vtually all the beaches in southern calirnia. i remember when they declare lake erie dead. i remember thai couldn't swimóa# in t hudson or the charles or the potomac when i wasrowing up. >> smith: could see the poution, smell it, even touch it. the problem was in our fes and the puic demand for action exploded on earth day. ( angry chanting ) >> in 1970this accumulation of insus drove 20 million amerans out onto the street, 10% of our pulation, the largest public demonstrati in american hisry. >> the was anger at the state of the world, the state of your own backrd, whether it ouain range, whatever it wasr%%) you reted to as the environment. the was anger that we as a country had let it go.

and there was a very much of grassroots rebellion sing this has goto stop. >> it was a big issu itxploded on the country. it forced the... republican administration and a psident, which had nevsreally..he had never thought about is very much, esident nixon. it forced hito deal with it because public... the publ sa this is intolerable. 've got to do something aboub it. smith: responding to congreional pressure, nixon created the enronmental protectióvvcy. heicked bill ruckelshaus, a justice depament lawyer with a solid repuican pedigree, as s first administrator. and ruckleshauquickly took charge. >> we had toelect some big visible polluters,oth industri and municipal, go afr them, make sure the public understoode were being responsive to eir concerns, anthat would energize the agency and get uin a position

do things that needed to be done in order to addresshe proble >> smith: congress armed ruckelshauand the epa with a raft of neenvironmental laws, like the clean wat act, that imposestrict pollution limits and penalties for viators. the accalled for america'sóo>c6- wateays to be fishable and swimmable again by 13. it had strong bipartisan suprt in coness, but not, it turns 2x >> whewe finally passed the clean water t in the senate and the house, nixon vetd it. and for thfirst time in the nixon administrati, he had a veto overridden, substtially and signicantly. >> smith: and whatoes that say? nixon was out of step withhe conry? nixon didn't carabout the proble >> it was my ijysion-- and i'm a democrat so i'veot to be forgiven for that-but it was impression that nixon's interest in the environmenwas

strictly polical. >> he didn't know muchbout the environment, a frankly, hei3 wasn't very curious out it. he never aed me ñ2e whole time i was at epa, is the air reay dirty? is something wro with the water? what aree worried about here? he would warn me. he said, "yogot to be worried about that ehpa," called it pa. he was the one persoin the couny that called it ehpa. >> smith: ep >> epa. he'd call ithpa. and he said those ople over there, n don't get captured by that burucracy. >> sth: but with bipartisan backing in cgress, ruckelshaus to strong action anyway. he banned ddt, imposed a tig deadline for rucing auto emissions, sueseveral cities and big steel and emical companies for pollutg the air and war. his tough approach madenemies. >> mosof the peoe running big american mufacturing facilities in ose days beed this was all a fad. itas going to go away and...and all they had tdo was

rt of hunker down until the public opinion subside public concern subsided, anit would go away. >> sth: when you went after the big polluters, you sued them, you took them court. what was the reaction of.s. steel? >> oh, boy, ey didn't like it. i remeer going up to see ed cott who w the ceo of u.s. steel and told me, he said, "you knowe don't like you very much," and he said, "we dot... we certainly don't like you" agency." and i said, "well if thas your attitude, then we are probly going to getn a fight over it." >> smith: so y had xenforce the law. you had to be a tough relator. >> that's right. you had to reasse the public at this was a problem the governnt was taking seriously. we h to be tough. we had to issue standards d we had to enforce them. >> smith: one ofhe first big regulatory success stories ce right here on thpotomac river. >> the potomac riveroes up to e mountains of appalachia. it comes past ounation's capital, and then it ents the3 estuary of the chesapeake ba

and what wsaw in the potomac river in the l960s washat was seen in many rivs around the country, whe it smelled so bad yodidn't want to get anywhere near it, and tt large part created bpoorly tread sewage. aili in a small boat and capsized, youad i my hazardous to your health to me in contact with the ter. >> smith: restorinthe potomac met modernizing the sewage treatment plantslong the river, like this one cled blue plns, just south of washington. blue plas handles the waste ofr two million peopleand it embodies just thnd of pollution targ'njákid%)z water act-- pollution cong out of a pipe. was e biggest single source of pollution to the potomac >> blue plns was the key wastewater treatmentlant that had to be mofied if we were

really going to make a..a good effort at restorg the water quality in both the riveand in the bay. >> sth: the potomac had become overrun with acres of grn algae caused by exce nutrients7k from human waste, like phphorous and nitrogen. >> the regulors said, "okay, phphorus is the problem in the potomac, twore, yopeople running e wastewater treatment plants wl upgrade to remove phosphorus," andt happened in >>mith: but the river didn't improve all th much. turned out that they needed to remove nitrogen, too, a stly process. but cliff randalfound an answer: a w, more economical chnology called biological nutrient remal, or bnr. >> the way we treat sewages we take in thsewage and we feed it to a largmass of bacteria

and other mioorganisms. and basically ey eat the sewage. >>mith: they eat the sewage? >> that's correct. >> smithmunch, munch, munch. >> that'right. >> smith: it took a billion dollars inederal and state fus to modernize blue plains witheveral new technologies, including bnr, but theffort paid off, and more tn 100 sewagereatment plants around the bay adopted bnr techlogy. how much othese early gains were not only thresult of technology, but of a ptty tough regulatory stickrom the epa and the ste governments?- >> you know, that was a ied- and-true formula. i meanwith sewage treatment-- where we made the biggest gas earlon, and continue to make the biggest gain- you have very clear ls. you have palties, you have adlines, you have enforcemen you have ipection. i mean, we know what works

♪ >> smith: but the 19s brought a new era, andhe political imate on the environment changed. the winds of deregulatn were blowing througwashington, especially during the reag years. >> it is time to che and reverse the grth of vernment which shows signs o having grown beyonthe consent the governed. it is my intention to rb the si and influence of the federal establishment. >> there's no questi that the reagan admistration, in fact, brought to washingn a.dq deregulatory anda. i remember back in t reagan days of seei memos that would me out from the white house the chber of commerce and otr big busisses asking them for a list of gulations from which they would want reli. >> smith: enviroental gulation was a prime target the agan white house for

ging relief to american business. the reagan administration essentially gutted t epa. they stopped it in i tracks for a period of six,even years. rean and his white house appointed people to run e environmental protecti agency who werelat out opposed to the mission of the ancy and were t to undo that mission. >> smith: e reagan administraon not only handcuffed epa on forcement, shifted to a new strategy o voluntary mpliance, a strategy typified by the agan epa's new program r chesapeake bay. >> what we created in e chesapeake bay waza grand experiment it was goingo be an alternative to t regulatory apoach that had swept the epa, th had swept the federal system. they were going to t to do this in a non-regulato, coerative manner. >> smith: the neapproach was long on prises and targets,

t short on hard deadlines an clear accountability >> it is a volunry program. you are never going effectively deal with a mult state pollution prw-h a voluntary ogram. >> sth: the result was the chesapeake bay program repeatedly mis.sargets, leaving unfulfilled the clea water act'promise to radically reduce water pollution. onsequences of how9" deregulation has played t here on t chesapeake bay's eastern shore, whe huge factory-scale farms now domina the landscape, and where half th pollutioflowing into the bay-- ch of it from agriculture-- remains essentially unreguted.

i had come here to mt rick dove, a ofessional photographernd environmental consultant who uer the authority ofhe clean water act has beenathering inrmation for a potential citizens lawsuit against agricultural polters. dove took me up on a sll plane and gave ma bird's eye view of hidetective work in the chesapeake bay watered. you can tually get a really clear piure up here. it's almost ke a diagram up here looking at it >> that's one of the interesng things about flying, and tt is that there are no o trespassing" signs. yocan look straight down and you can see everythi you need to seeyou can document it. >> smith: do is investigating the pollution from big ccken farms. ase fly, he points out rows of long flat sheds-- each a cple of hundred yards long,ach holding up to 40,000 chicks. >> no matter where you flyn

the eastern shore, it's load with these ccken farms. >> smi: the problem is where there are chickens, there' manure. it's everywhere. we know ere's bad stuff in pouaste. once igets in those ditches and once tse ditches begin to flow down to a these rivers on the eaern shore, it's on its way tohe bay. these rive are delivery systems. whatever nutrits are flowing inhat river are being delivered to the b. >> smith: chken manure is loaded with trients like nitrogen and phohorous. remember the dd zones in the bay? they were caed by algae, which is fedy nitrogen and phosphorous. >> we' shoot 400, 500, 600 pictures in anfternoon, and !tddetails because tt's hoyou really are able to poultry waste iseaving that farm and getting to the y. today some of the piures i took, we're going to go the

site and we're going tsee that on the gund. >>mith: the aerial photolead dove to a chicken rm he's been watcng for more than a year. that lessig up there? >> yes it is, at's lessig's farm right there thers four barns on the right are the origin barns, and in the lastear he's added these o on the end over here. >> smith: that's a pretty g place. e time. dove can check on fa runoff from plic roadways. and the photos give m a clear1 map of how polluted rainwar moves from t farm to the bay. >> this is the lessifarm. this is anim waste, poultry >> smith: big piles it. yeah, it is a big pile, but what's really alarming autr is is you can see what's happened when it's rained. all this water has collected around iand it has formed some leachate te is running do rns. >> smith: th all the stuff in it.

>> wh whatever it's collected om that poultry waste. it comes out of these pis here, comes in tre, comes over to here and en it goes under throad and right on down to the minocan rive and right on out to the bay. >> smith: wo and have youested this water right here? >> this is where we'veested. here, there, over ther nd& readings did you get? lonies. theirs was8,392. and nitrog and phosphorous all elevated, clearly indicating that animal waste is invold re. d even arsenic at nine times what the normal backound level would be. so it was lot happening here. smith: farm owner aaron lessig did not resnd to frontline's peated efforts to ask hiabout the water tests, which dove's team turn over to the ep look who he is growing for lessig is growing these ickens for rdue. >> t sign advertises says it's

rdue, lessig farm. >> eve perdue chicken has one these tags on it. it mns you're getting a fresh, teer, tasty young chicken. make sure of that because every one of the tags has my name on it. >> smi: over five decades, perdue farms grew fr a family business to e dominant poultry processor on the chesapee's eastershore. and aserdue grew, it transformed the chicke industry. there used to be 200 compans on the shore involved in the pltry industry, but they were all independent. so you had an independt hatchery, an independe processing plant the story of the poult industry and operdue is vertical integraon. >> smith: integration met a few big icken companies controlling alaspects of production perdue mushroomed into a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. small faly chicken farms beme chicken factories. well, i think capitalism in neral stimulates efficiency,

and efficiency oft is size. and , you know, i think things had become bigger in order to keep costs low so you could mainta, you know, your price structure. >> smi: factory-style poultry production dve down chicken prices, d americans responded. over theast 50 years, per capita consumption ochicken has tripd. but there's be another price toll those cheap chickens. >> poultry fming, like most animal farmi, has become much more intense, much more ncentrated. where you had ,000 chickens on a given plot of groundyou've got a half million or two million no whicproduces a huge problem of what to doith the manure. >> smith: in 28, delmarva peninsula poultrfarms raised more than 570 llion chickens,

d all those chickens produce massive mountains of manure- 1.5 llion pounds a year. that more manure than the annual hum waste from four big cities-- new yor washington, san francisco and atlaa-- all put together. beforeass production chicken farms, local crop rmers used to absorb e chicken manure. now there'way too much for them to absorb. >> agriculture is by far t laest source of pollution to thchesapeake bay and it is, arguably the single biest source of pollution all of the waters in the country. >> smith: so t problem isn't just manure, but is too much 's t much manure and, guably, too many animals und the currenstructure. now thers all... >> smithyou mean too many animals in o place? >> exactly >> smithit's a problem all over theountry. hog farms in the colinas and iowa, poultry farms in aansas

and texas,attle farms in wisconsin and along the susqhanna river in pennsylvania. >> in terms of just dama to destction of entire ecosystems-- of aquati commities, of fish going extinct-- there's nothing asad as the... as tse factory farm operatns. nothing. >> smith:[;ho save the b, the epa says it'essential to get contl over the animal manu. what's made that hard is for all that manure. to understand how thchicken siness is organized and how it run, i checked in with carole mison, a successful perduerower for many years. >> typally, the farmer has a contract with the mpany, whether it be perdue, tysons whoever,nd you contract to raise their chickens. they own the chiens.

they just drop 'iem off the fa for us to raise to a marketablege, and then they come and pk up the chickens, takehem for processing. >> smi: when perdue required at morison modernize her chicken houses at a cost o $150,000 or more, e decided to get out of theusiness. this is her last bat of perdue chickens. now what's t relationship here? do y bargain with one mv;éxy or another as a grower? >> there's no bargning in the contracts. contractare designed by the mpany, brought out to the farm, and you either sigit and get chickens, or sig.. not sign it and noget chickens and ultimatelyose the farm. >>mith: so you're saying that the processors dictatehe terms? they run the show? >> yes, the processors. dictatall of the terms, >> smith: the termare very specific. thbig chicken companies own the chickens, supply theeed, ctate the growing regimen, d

all the processing they own it all except the chicken waste. well, anybody else who owns annimal is resnsible for their waste. if the companywns the animal, why are theyot responsible for eir waste? i've never undstood that. i have horses. i have aog that's outside. i'm responble for their mess. now chickens are ownedy these companies, like perdue and tyson. how is it ey're not responsible for it? >> smith: help me undersnd oni thg. how you wind up by owning the chickens, owning t feed and ngó-v in the sense of gal responsibility, the manure? >> the mane is considered a resource, actually. the producers wan thlitter. they want the chicken litt. it's not a matteof who owns or doest own it. it's a mter of what use is it being madfron;it. ÷çith: afactory farming has

grown, the volume of exces manure h mushroomed, and thers been an increasing push to regulate rm pollution. but american agricture has fought offollution controls for three decades. >> the whole agriculral community has remained may the last big or e biggest unregulated, lgely unregulated area of wateq;[tion. and it'shy epa tells you across the country agriculre's responsible for 60%, or somethg, like that of our water quality oblems. >> we're tking the equivalent of medium-si cities in terms of the waste that is genated, that is virtually untre ing into the chesapeake bay and... >> sth: so cities have their waste treated, go through ter treatment ants. farming,griculture, these concentrat animal-raising opations, they're not treated the same way?

>> that is absolutelcorrect. >> sth: the delmarva poultry indury on the bay's eastern ore doesn't see it that way. it contends that there's fundamental dierence between industrial pollution or urn sewageand agricultural waste. industry skesman bill satterfield. shouldn't the poultry farms subject to the same kindf limitions that sewage treatment plants or industal plants? a small industrial site tha s to have a permit knows the source of what goeinto that pipe with nonoint source pollution, ere are various ways that nutries can get into the grou water and maybe flow through at pipe. farm fields are...m3 >> smith: i'm not talkg about fields. i'm talking abougrowers and sheds where i can. i mean, i'veiterally stood in front of farms d i've literally looked at ccken houses. i'veeen pipes coming into the draina ditches coming from ditches between the chicken houses. the sour visibly is quite clr.

>> to know whe those nutrients came in wod require an investigation. d if the pipe passed under a chicken house and starteover he in a field, who's to say what entered into that pipe that end? who's to say whetherhe nutrient if there are any, came from chickens ofox or deer or birds or somethinglse? >> smith: russl long, famous senator from lisiana, used to say when people ve an answer likehat, "it'sot you, it's not me, it's thaguy behind the tree." it seemso me as though every time we get tohis, even though the eviden is pointing to the most higst concentrations right near agriculture poult operations, yore saying, "well,t could be the foxes or the geese." >> if there wereroof positive that those nutrits are from ickens, then we can accelera our programs and do a tter job. but we can't solve a the river's probms with all the peop, all the growth, all the

other animalon the bacof the chicken and the poultry rmers. i'll be the first one to sa i d it. i'veaid this before: we're all part of it. and, yes, i think agculture is a big contributor to the pollution, tthe run... the runo into the chesapeake bay. the industry kno it. buwhat i am tired of is eryone wasting all their tim and engy in saying, "i didn't do it." i did it why can'they admit it? i mean, you knowlet's all say, "oy, we're a part of it." now, let's find an answeú& >> all in favor of adopting e committereport signify by saying, "aye." aye. >> opposed, no. >>mith: but finding an answer has en politically impossible. >>..178 is on thirreading. >> smith: inhe late 1990s, a bill went bere the maryland legislature to requireandatory nutrient management by farrs

to curb runoff from chicke mare. big chken didn't like that idea at all. >> i think the survival pouly industry is at stake on the eastn shore. >> smith: thpoultry industry, among the most finanally poweul lobbies in maryland, pushed for a looser alternive. >> the alternativeas to have voluntary goals. was going to be cooperative it was going to have no regutory teeth, and it was ing to be overseen by the marynd department of agriculture, a nonegulatory agen, rather than the maryland departnt of environment.] >> the farming i!7x' live witmandatory nutrient regutions. we got to keep it voluntar ( applause ) >> smith: anthe industry bill won. and since thenthe industry has been successful inlocking or tying up subsequent forts to regulateheir waste. you sat in the myland legislature r 12 years. during that period, d you see

the bichicken companies steadily resist relation on manureunoff? >> absolutely. big chickecompanies were a presence jim perdue, the son of frank perdue, was a constant psence, whethehe was sitting in my chairman's offe or holding a reception in the ening or whater, the chicken lobby was well represented. they hired the top gs in the lobbying community in annapos, d they made every effort to prevent usrom enting tough regutions on agriculture. >> smith: some people have sd to us that you'd clean up th whole situation mu faster if the integrators, the pltry processors, we responsible. yogot to clean it up, and you all arresponsible. >> well, we n only do what we can do. the farmer certain is... you know, is hiswn businessman out there on the farm, and i thi

it works better if is a cooperative effort. >>mith: so perdue pioneered a process to recycle pt of the chicken growers' excess manu to sp across the country. anperdue launched a voluntary program toeach its growers beer manure management. and the progms that we're looking at are an alteative to more regulation, i guess more regulation and forcement, which nobody like i mean, nobody likes, you ow, somebody coming ontoour farm, u know, without any warning and those kinds things. >> tre's no quemrhat the influence ofhe agricultural farmobby in general has had a very successful role in liming the amount of pollution contl gulations that we see in the cheseake bay watershed or nationwide. >> you know, corporationare extealizing machines. th're constantly devising ways to get somebody else to y their costs ofroduction. and, younow, if you're in a polluting industry, e most

obvis way to do that is to shift your cleanup cts to the public. make yourself billionaire by isoning the rest of us. >> smith: are you saying the market's dtorted? >> you show me a pluter, i'll show you a subsidy. >> smithchicken farmers bristled when the obama ep started demanding pollution discharge perms this spring. the industrylaims it's already doing enou. the poultry industry is doi more every year. we'rseeing more best magement practices on fas. ouprogram to put trees on poultry farms to uptake th nutrients a very progressive thing. there are more and morprograms offered to help farmers t in manure storage buildingsand as the scnce says we can do more without putting r people out of busess, i'm sure we will do more. >> smith: but environmtalists like rick dove remain sktical. >> now this indury says they'rdoing better, and you ow, i can't say if that's tr or false. but i n tell you that what i'm

seei here on the ground right now is absolutely terrib. so if was worse before, then i can understand why the bays in such bad trble. >> smith: ile the bay is besieged by runoff from thbig chicken and catt farms along its rivers, i learned abt a whole new nd opollution as i traveled up the potomaas it winds its way st washington up toward theill country of west virginia. up he, near the headwaters of the potomac, i heardbout the big nepollution threat not ev known when the clean water act was pass. six years ago, marine biogists became armed at reports of massive fish kills on e rivers in this reon. every ar, small mouth bass we being decimated by some

mysterious problem. spring and fall,undreds of fish would be fod floating in e water belly-up. caught up with vicki blazer, sh pathologist wh the u.s. geologic survey, who was trying to figure out why t fish were dying. wh havyou got here? >> so here we ve this large discolored area in the ler, and then you s all these little whi spots. here's a totally discolore area. >> sth: and that's a signal of so bigger problem? >>es, when we see a really high prevalence in a pulation, at indicates there's some problem going on in that wat. >> smith: anwhen blazer dug deeper, she fod a surprise. >> one of the major d most intesting findings was inteex in the male bass. when we look at the maleonads,

or testes, what we find is immature eggs within the me stes. >> smith: so you got a sorof feminization omale fish. ishat a big, alarming finding in marine biology,quatic biology? >> yes, and that h certainly attrted a lot of concern and attention. >> smith: scientific studies ha linked abnormal mutations in marine creares, like intersex, toxposure to chemical compounds thamimic or imitate natural hormes in the body. theschemicals are called docrine disrupters. >> endrine disrupters are very, very potent emicals at infinitesimally smal quantificati. i mean, you're talkingbout parts per millioor parts per billion. ey interrupt the normal way which the body controls everything from growth and development to thyro function to reproductive function t

estrogenevels, testosterone levels. so they'reery, very important, and they aref deep concern because there are so my of them now. >> smith: there are thounds of these worrisome chemals that have gotten into the environmen and one reason is that they're pt of everything we do. >> the lt of things that bring these organic llutants into r bodies is a long list and it rangesrom home care products, soaps, tthpaste, cleaning agents in the usehold, to things we put on our lawns, e things that we use all t time-- the pstic industry, the rubber indusy, lubricants, fuels, the highways. >> smith: when youee scientists like vicky bler cutting open fish, finding intersex in the maleish, kills, seeing immune stems disrupte seeing other damage to the fish,s that a warning to you, potentially, about han heth? >> oh, absolely.

the waing, not just from the small mouth bass ithe potomac, but from amphibians all acro the country. you ve frogs with six legs, hermaphroditic frogs, malerogs with ovaries, fele frogs with male genitalia the are the canaries, the modern canary inhe mine that weaven't been paying enough attention to. >> smith: so many new chemics have emerged lely, that scientists and regulats are playing catch up to indust trng to spot which chemicals they think pose new ngers in our ter. >> epaoes not regulate any of these things yet, and inany cases the isn't even the methods to measure tm in the amounts that they tually have a biological eect. >> smith: so scien and the regulato are behind the curve dealing with what indury and society is producing or want >>orrect. thhead kidney and nd kidney? >> were loaded with.

>> smith: aying catch up in regulating these new cmicals may a problem for more than justhese fish. >> thendocrine system of fish is very similato the endocrine system of huma. fish have thyroid glds, they have the funional equivalent adrenal glands. they pretty muchave all the same hormoneystems as humans, which, again, ishy we use them as st of indicator scies. >> smith: so if fi are having inrsex, or lesions, that's nd of spooky. >>t is. you know, we can't help t make that jump to ask the queion, "how are these tngs influencing people >> smith: to get a handle on that qstion, i headed down river. ju above washington, i found other usgs team sampling wat from the potomacpart of a nationwideurvey checking for 300 emerging contaminants our inking water. they were lookg for well-known

pollutan like pesticides, and for newly detected conminants found in pharmacticals, body lotion soaps and deodorants. in all, they found 85 compous we're just n starting to be able to even analy for in wate but the treatment isn't inteed to remove thosproducts. >> smith: at makes this a matter of concern is that th ishe intake for the washington aqueduct, where one millio people in the dc area get thr drinking water. few of us may alize it, but peop downstream use waste water om people upstream. e potomac, like other rivers serves as both the placehere we dump our wastater and the place where we get o drinking ter. it's one big contious recyclg operation from the toil or the shower to the tap. >> the riverlows down, a

communittakes water out of the river, puts it back rough a wastewat plant a few miles down, out, back,ut, back. and with proper relation and proper processest the wastewater pnt and proper procses at the drinking water plant, it works ve well. so we sort of continuously cycle this. >> smi: the recycling process works well for known contaminants but what abouthe new chemicals for which the epa s not yet set safety standar? how ugh is the challenge just to keep up with all at new sources of pollunts? as new elements come in-- syntheticsherbicides, pesticides, pharmauticals-- as those thgs enter the water stream in concentrions because of more advanced devopment, more human activity, me animal activity, more comrcial activity, ose things, as they get in the river, make it rder fous to do our job. there's no questn about that. >> smith: not just harr but actually impossible to sp all the new contamints, according

tohe usgs findings, because the old filters weret designed to catch theew threats. >> we sampled the finied water at theashington aqueduct and found about two-thirds of t compounds we detected we still detected in the nished water. >> smith: so you're sayi that rohly two-thirds of these emergingontaminants that you found in the river water athe intakes for the washington aqueduct came all the y through the filtering stem and were in the drinking water, e tap war in the district? >> yeah,ight, and that's what we s at all the studies that re done. >> smith: denver findings rrored what usgs has found a across theountry. everywre they saw lots of new contaminants in america' drinking watereven if at low doses. were you surprised by th findings of thissgs study or did you... did that fit th what you thought was pbably going on? >> was surprised by the number

of different comunds that were detectable. i knew we we swimming in a sea chemical soup, but i didn't realize the soup w quite as concenated. smith: you talk about a sou some people ha used the term "toxic cocail." is tre a danger that if a level of aarticular compound were acceptable and another e were aeptable, that you start to put a bunch of them tether and th that's no longer a safe level? >> ah, you put your fingern one of the real concerns abo toxicology. itay be safe to have a little bit of compound a or little bit of compound b, but when e two of them are togeth, there's synergism and they become really deadly. >> smith: if y were living in washington, dc, would u drink water cong out of the pomac? >> u probably not. >> sth: because? >> ( chuckles ) because we really don'know wh... what all is in there. today, i drink the water wi great nfidence because our

water ets the regulations. but, of course, the qution is do the regulations match the threat? >> smith: we there endocrine disrupters, chemicalompounds in the whington aqueduct intake water that were o concern to you iterms of their tential impact on human health? >> are there chemica of concer yes. i thinat this point, the levels are very,ery low. so don't have a great deal of concern that something needso be done imminently, buit would certainly be nice to reduce at's getting into the water. we c show that people with higher levels of some of tse emicals may have a higher incidence of a certain kind effect than peop with lower levelsf these chemicals. >> smith: like wt kind of effect? >> there aressociations with what's called male testicur disgenesis syndrome. that's a big term but it mes... >> smith: wer sperm count? >> lower sperm count. >> smith: are we facing a ng- term, slow-motion sk that we don't recognize beuse it's not ready apparent?

>> we are. ere are five million people beg exposed to endocrine disruptersjust in the mid- atlantic region, and y we don't know precisely howany of them are going tdevelop emature breast cancer, going to have problems with reproduction, gog to have all kinds of cgenital anomalies of thmale genitalia, things that are happening. we know they're happening,ut ey're happening at a broad, lolevel so that they don't raise the arm in the general public. >> smith: doou know what the safe levels are? >> in most cases, we d't know what the safe levels are, an some of the new science is suggesting tt levels that we us to think were safe may, in fact, not be safe. >> smith: fohumans? >> for humans. so we're finding in certain cases that much lor levels than we eviously thought were a probm may, in fact, have the potential to harm least some seent of the population. >> smith: do we have an adeqte stem of regulation or should we be regulating oa different

standard? >> i not a regulator, i'm a research. but in my personal onion, i uld like to know that a emical is unlikely to cause harm before we exposourtipulait. poputiono it. smith: it's our failure to control toxic chemics before they cause trouble in the envinment that haunts our waters all across thnation-- placesike puget sound, which ve come to know well in rece years. the sod which lies off the ast of seattle is a place that ve come to cherish as a phenomal resource, a gorgeous natural playgrou, gateway to

the pacific, a historically, a treare house of fish and ldlife. but toda the sound is in peril. >> i would p puget sound in the intensive care unit. the situation is critica we've known for decades at puget sound d serious issues, t we're at a point now where the species that are aost tinct are telling us we've g so real bottom line problems here. >> smith: take these regiol icons-- e killer whales or orcas. they're a major touris attracti. but increasing, puget sound cas are being closely studie by scitists as a barometer of the health of e entire sound. to see what scientists a learni, i headed out with brad hanson, a teameader with noaa, the national oceanic and

atmospheric adminiration. >> over there! >> park it over here? >> yep. >> smith: hanson and his colleagues have be studying the orca populatiofor several year why studthese whal? >> they' the top predator in the food cha, so they're sentially accumulating all t contaminants. they're e last stop in the food chain. and so... >> smith: so ty're a laboratory, in aay. >> well, sure. >> smitha laboratory tt tells us what's going on ithe ole ecosystem. yes. >> smith: the ca story is troubling. in o year, seven local orcas died. their population is now wn to 86so low that, in 2005, noaa listed puget snd orcas as an endangered species. to figure t why the orca population is in decline, haon's team goes out after

biological sames. u get up pretty close to the whales in ordeto take samples, at some pot, right? >> we get to about four orive meters. >> smith: four or fi meters-- so, that's uo close. >> yep. >> smith: theyhoot darts into the orcas and extract all samples of blubber. that blubbers sent to the lab to be tested for alew of contamints, especially telltale toxins like pcb e lab results have been alming. >> our research er the last ten to 13 years has been ablto demonsate that these killer whalesre the most pcb- contamated marine mammals in the world. so we're very, vy concerned about what tt might me to their health. >> smith: pcbs are ccer- causing chemical so toxic that congre banned them three decades ago. but they keeshowing up >> pcbs are probablyhe number one persistent contamina of

concern ywhere in the northern hemisphere. they bio-cumate in food webs. >>mith: you mean they build up. they build up in food webs and in oanisms. we have troue getting rid of em. have a lot of trouble getti th out of our system. when i say "we," i mean mans, rats, killer whales, harbo seals-- doesn't ally matter. >> smith: increangly, scientt worry that pcbs are a problem not just forrca whales. >> these animalsre eating wild fish. wild fish is good fous, too. but if there's contanants in it, it's going to ha an adverse impactn us. that's the tng, that's why these animals arimportant sentinel speci, not just for the ecosystem in gener, but al for humans. >> smith: athe center for whale research, direor ken

balcomb has been kping records for three decades on the wles that make puget sod their regur home. >> fewer whales armaking it to matuty. the pulation is declining. we are seeing... probay the next 20 yes, we'll be witnessing the departu of this popution. >>mith: you think they're ne, they're going to die out >> i've aañóy told our vernment folks that we can g through th for about 20 more years if we n't provide a remedy, and we will sethe end of this pulation. >>mith: balcomb and his staff know these whaleso well by sight that they catracthem from birth to death. so what's this what are these crts? >> these a the family trees of all the whales we' been udying for the past 32 years >> smith: the tombstone marks, balcomb told me, underscora worrise trend among the youngest, most vulneble, orcas. these oldewhales up here, they ed-- that's kind of normal.

buto have so many down here, ese younger whales dyi. is that a bad si? >> that's the distressg part ishe mortality pattern we're seeing now is that younghales are ing way before they even ture. >>mith: he's alarmed at the high levels of pcbs that haon's team found in younger whales, which abrbed pcbs from their mother's milk. are there enougharallels between thway the human body rks, the chemistry and biolo of the human by, and the whales so that we can acally take lesso from them? >> y. we can take lesss from not only the whas, but the seals and e fish. and it's been demonstrated i the healthtatistics in escially arctic environments, cold environments ere there's high fat diet, and the children of theshigh arctic people are suffering tse same problems-- immune ficiencies, reproductive problem all of these a affecting humans, asell as the other

mammals. >> smith: at noatesting labs li this one, scientists have established that king salmonn puget sound are muchore heavily continated with pcbs than saln in other pacific coastal waters. >>verything we see points to puget und being a hot spot for pcbs and a persistent proble we've seen contamination of animals. we've seeno improvement in the levels of pcbs ithe last 20- odd years, despi regulations plemented in the 1970s. and thatto me, indicates there are contuous inputs from land- basesources, from the sediments, and deliverinthem right into that food web. >>mith: one big reason pcbs are a peistent problem is that it takes so long to cleaup places like e duwamish river,

seattle's industrialorridor. some of seattls heaviest industry settled here cades ago, and today, it's the region's largestot spot for pcbs. >> my name is b.j. cmings, i representhe duwamish river clnup coalition. >> smith: b. cummings leads tos of the river, but this isn't your typical touri outing. it's an vironmental wakeup call. >> the epa did an inveigation he on duwamish river about ten years ago, and conclud that industrial histo here had left behind such a legacy of toc pollution that theiver was declared a feral superfund site in 2001. >> smith: superfund isne of epa's bisticks. it was the regulaty program created in 1980 clean up america's worst pollution

proble. >> your typicasuperfund site used to be factory, pe, superfunsite right at the ttom of your pipe. that'sot what we have here. we have wh's called a mega- site. have a five, five and a hal le stretch of river, end to end, that'being investigated for cleaup. this is one the largest superfund sis in the country. the river was lied as a perfund site because of an accumulationa legacy of toxic llution that has built up in the mud at the botm of the rir. >> there's a direct linketween contaminatedediments in certain areas ancontamination of the food web above the sediments. in fact,ne might even think of the pcbs ring an elevator up from the sedimts, up into plankton, up into ttle fish, big fish, harbor sea, killer whales, gles, humans. >> smith: the xic buildup in the duwamish rer bottom is the product ofore than a half centurof industrial development along the river.

boeing, for example,he area's biggest corporation, h its main operations here durin world r ii. >> are the builders. we are theuilders of the b- 17. with our hands, a million stronge built and drilled and. >> smith: the success of bing mirrored the 20tcentury boom in the arican economy, an era when industrial progress bught precedented expansion. >> ours were the hands that built the queen, the b7. >> smi: but that progress also left behind an unpredented ount of pollution, or what's ed legacy pollutants. >> the term "legacy llutants" is when s historical pracces, what was acceptable inhe '40s and '50s is... we would find very obctionable today in the '90s... in e '80s d beyond. people d not know the damage that se of these materials caused at the time.

ey did not know the long-ter effects of them that we toy. >> smith: pcbs are a claic gacy pollutant found here at boeing, a toxic chemicalnce widely ud by industry, often as aigh-stress lubricant in power stions and also in building materia. equently, it takes a lot of detecte work to find hidden pcbs. so, steve, you found a contaminatn problem in the flight line t here? >> yh, it's this material that we see between the concrete pane. it's called int compound, material that was stalled in thlate '60s contained very highevels of pcbs and, you know, since wead made this discover you know, in the late '90s, we have now reved about 50 miles of this thrghout all. >> smith: 50 miles of this bck tar lookinstuff? >> yeah, this material througut all of the boeing

faciliti here in the northwt. >> smith: why was so hard to find? >> wel it wasn't obvious to us. itas... you know, normally wheneople talk about pcbs, you thinabout electrical equipment, you thi about hydraulics. that's wre it normally pcbs are used. the fact thathey were used in something that was right in front of us s difficult. it was really fficult that we... we overlked it. >> smith: making sure that boeing doesn'tverlook any of its legacyollution is the job ofean blocker, a former marine who has been epa's poi man on e cleanup at boeing. >>kay, what i want to talk about today basically some additional datthat we have that's on the diments outside the current boundari of the cleanufor the boeing plant-2. the significance of the bong facility is the number of contaminants that orinate from the facility. it h over 24 things in the grnd water, 40-some odd different things that e in the soil that e above clean-up levels.

so it's the biggest cumulation of contaminants in that ea. >> smith: fr the get-go, eing and epa have clashed ov how clean up those legacy pollutts, and the arguments have led to long delays. when weryou first ready to go th a clean-up plan? >> we submitted a plan to a in 1999, when, you know, edge... we call it an interi measure to te what is adjacent to boeing an.. and excavate that merial. >> smith: boeing ss that, over a decade a, it was ready to clean up and all that heldt up was bureaucratic red te from the epa. >> i would disree with that. from my review of wh they were going to d i didn't think they had fuy defined where all the bad stuff was. they didn't know the totaly of what theontamination was even in the groundwater osoil. >> smith: but you obviouy had a higher threshold for "t's geto the bottom of how b this pollution is" than bong did.

>> boeing doing what they're asketo do-- no more, no less. >> smith: so time and again, blker pressed boeing to do mo-- more work and more tests. by now, boeing h spent $80 million on testing andnterim clnups. >> there's over 500 sampling locationat this facility that haveeen drilled overime, you know. >> smith: ifou came here ten years ago, howany would there have been? >> 50. >> smith: so, hundds more have been drilled since bause of this back and forth withhe ep >> that's correct. >> sth: not only has boeing been feuding with the epa,ut it's beelocked in a fierce ttle with the city of seattl which ed to operate a steam plant next door tooeing field. typical ofuperfund sites, these two porful neighbors have been wrangling overho's responble for pcbs flowing

rough this ditch, or flume, when it rains. e flume runs from the now- defunct steam plant thugh bong's territory to the river. eing says it's the city's pcbs. so, was this just for e city lightsteam plant, or did eing and other people put orm drains into this and use it? >> prey much just for cooling water from the sam plant. >> smith: the citylat-out disagrs, and it has taken boeing to urt. >> pcbs are comingy connections of other peoe to our ditch. theyome through drainage lines. they come from oer properties, most specically boeing's property. >> smith: so boeinwas attaching its drainage pipeso yo flume, sending some of its dirty stuff down yr flume to the rir. >> there are over 20 les attached to ouditch that came fr the boeing property. smith: 20 lines? >> yeah. >> smith: so it's a protcted argument bween you and boeing over who actuallput the dirty coaminants in that flume.

>> it's a ntinuing argument. >> smith: and th argument is holding up the bigleanup on the duwamish river. jay manning, who heads washington's dartment of ecology, whi helps epa supervise the clean-up, shed me the cost of this contind delay touget sound. >> we're loong at four very large outfalls of drainageipes that carry storm water fromore than 30 square milesf this area. you can see the one ere to the right. >> smithso this is an instrial dumping ground, in effect. >> this storm water drains very large industrial area >> smithare you all still finding pcbs and other coaminants in thatater? >> unfortunatelythe storm water coming out of those drn pes, we're still detecng pc. >> this is goingo cost millions to ean up, maybe tens of millions, and oing 90% of at liability is not a place you want to be. so these folks, o are not stupid, are busy trying to pve that it's somedy other than

them that is the source. >> smith: pointing the fingeat everybody el. >> that'right. they're ying to prove-- probably not thathey have no liabily, because that's pretty rd to do-- but proving that they have ry little compared to their neighbor. that's what it's aut, and it's aboumoney. >> smith: ultimate, the issues of cleanup time and money-- are tied to a largeruestion for all of us. that is, how clean do we expt our waterways to be? here on the wamish, the state has postedarnings not to eat local fish andhellfish because of pollution. anso the fight now is over whetr the river can be cleaned up enoh to let the locals fish the river ce again without risk. >> what we determid was that the mo sensitive population we had out therwere our native americans that e the fish out of t duwamish. smith: and they eat a lot mo fish than most of us. >> they do. >> smithand so that was the standard you wanted to set ean it up so the tribes can

eat the sh safely without gettg poisoned from pcbs. >> yes. >> smith: and boeing oected to that >>asically, they don't feel thathat stretch of the river can evere returned to where you could harvest the kind of fishnd shellfish. we disree with that. >> i think people need to understand is th there are going to be certain usesf the duwash river that aren't going to bpossible in the future. i'll give you an example i don't think people are goi to be able to subsistee fish out of the... the spies that are in the duwamish. i think have to set reasonable expectationfor clean up iindustrial areas. >> smith: where do youome down on that? how ean is clean? do we ed to get rivers back to where people can fisand safely eat the fish without fear to their alth? >> tt's the goal. that is e goal. that h to be the goal, because every onof those rivers and streams argoing into puget sound, sit's not as though 's that river or that stream alon it about thehole ecosystem.

>>mith: just across the river from boeing, the threat legacy pollution, and the qution of how clean is clean, became persol. ght here, in south park, where, in 2004, the mmunity was roed by news that some of itstreetand people's yards were contaminatewith pcbs. >> people in south park, particularly people with falies, with small children, got incribly nervous. i mean, out d out scared about what this might mean. i pushed my kid's stller down at street every day. i down there and i fish. my d runs along that waterfro. what doethis mean for me? what does this meafor my heal? >> mean, you're trying to do thbest for your kids, and all of audden, something like this comes and then... >> it so scary what you're saying. >> she's taing about pcbs, cancer-causing microbes nned in the '70s, butaking an emotional tolln the residents

of sou park today. >> smith: e city of seattle realized it had a crisis and moved ickly to pave the contamated streets, clean up the polluted yards, d tell people how to take safety prections. suddenly, south pa, a largely immigrant, working css neighborod surrounded by industry, was galvanized int acti. resints demanded a long promised cleanup of an abanded industrialite called malarkey phalt. >> malarkey asalt, for years, operated directly acrosshe street from hos in south park and was a really, really dir business. r many years, there waopen dumping on t riverbank. there was waste oil that was sprad in the area to keep the dust in the unpaved stets wn, and that contaminated th roads and yards, right in people's gardens around e property. >> smith: years rlier, the old malarky site had been boughty

the port of setle, which did a pcb cleanuon part of malarky's proper. but people in south pa suspectethere were still many more undcovered pcb hotspots upla from the riverbank at malarky. >> so e neighborhood said, "go ta some tests there. tells what's there." epa and e port said, "oh, no, no, we did the upland. it's finished." we eventually were ae to succeed in getng just a few re tests. "just assures. show us it's oka" >> smith: doug hotkiss, the port's mager for the malarky site, ran tests and what h found surpriseeveryone. sowhat was the hottest spot you fod? how hi was it? the hottest spot for pcbs w righin this area here, and it was about 9,000 pas per miion. >> smith: 9,00 anthe federal limit is 25. i mean, this was a really hot spot! >> yeah, and luckily, it was unr asphalt, but it was still something thateven under asphalt, you couldn't justeave

there. >> smi: so hotchkiss drafted a plan to clean up malar. but it backfired. >> we uld be cleaning up to 25 parts pemillion, which was the cleanup level that... at epa had accepted befe. >> smith: and how did e community take tt? how'd they react? >> they were... th were not ppy with it. they didn't find it acceptab. >>th: in fact, south park was up in arms, sisting on cleanup to the residenti standard of e part per million. >> ah, duwamh river clean-up coalion, residents from south park, started lling up port commissioners anexplaininghe problem to tm. and they got in vans and bus and went down where e port commission was meeting, d one after another got upnd told the port commiion that they were wried about their health, and that the port coission had the responbility to the community to make sure tt that cleanup would be safe for e entire community to use. >> well, it was a very

emotnally charged meeting. i wouldn't necsarily say it was confroational. but it was a lot of otion in the room and i rememb a particular episode where a yog mother came up to the snd and said, "you know, if it's onla question of money, h can you forsake the children of soh park?" and that w something that real hit home to me. >> smith: the elected port coissioners, sensitive to public opinion, backed down. they adoptedhe more protective residential standard at ice the cost. >> i think that this effort s en successful, because this communithas been uncompromising in speaking u for itself and in insiing that pele listen. essentially have a communit he that has been on the fringes of anyind of economic or political per in the ty of seale for many decades. so it's a community th has only rently re-found its voice. >> smith: by finng its voice, south park redefinedhe meaning

of "cln." and the community is n at work, developing riverfrt habitat zones at malarky and elsewhere along the dumish. >> in thabsence of a b.j. cummings or mebody like her who is out there on thwater, knowdgeable, aware of what is happening, and poking an proddi and asking us the hard questions, we would not be making the progress that we' making. smith: the greatest threats to ouraterways are often invisible to theaked eye. evidence crops uin unlikely places, like alki beach, acrs elliott bay from downtown seattle. 's a favorite spot for scuba divers. but taking tthe water here

n't for the faint of heart. temperatures in thpuget can be in the 40s. but for the adveurous, underwaterxploration offers a uniqueerspective on thmarine environment. today, we saw a giant pacifi octopus undernea the "honeybear," wch ia little boat that sunk out here. lives underneath the bow of the boat. >> smithit also provides a close-up view the hidden threat to puget und, like this draige pipe, one of the main outfal for seattle's rainwater runoff. >> we swam by the end ofhe storm watedrain; it's pretty dramic. the enof the pipe creates a brn noxious soup of nastiness that is unbelievle, kind of amatic, and a little bit scary.

smith: "unbelievable" becau the water lookso good from up here. so we' looking at something we think is clean, and undernea, you can see diving the... >>t's not clean. >> sth: it's dirty. >> is not clean. when w.. when we see that thg running in full flow, we turnround and we swim the other way qukly. there is just this unbelievable... >> smith: gunk. >> gunk comi out of the end of this pipe. this is our front yard would you alw your front yard to be sick? >> smith: this is sick? >>his is sick. esn't look sick, but it is sick. >> smith: what making this water so sick is what ientists ve now labeled the number on mece to our waterways, storm water runoff. in seattle, peak timfor storm water runoff is ring fall and winter, when the rain comedown in torrents.

everywhere that rain falls and hi the ground, it'going to pick up somhing. it might be thing more hazardous than dirt,r it might be ps. it mig be some toxic pesticide, and it will trave along with the water io the nearest drnage ditch, intohe nearest swale, inta creek, into a riv, and ultimately into pug sound. and whatever plutants that water picks up on its joney to puget sod, it's going to deposit in puget sound. >> we put in about50,000 pounds a day of treated toxics into puget sound. we thought all the w along th it was like a toilet to be honestith you. what y put in, you flush out, and it goes out to the oce and it gets diluted. wenow that's not true. it like a bathtub, so what you put in, stays there. >> smith: the pollution storm ter runoff in major cities like seale, or in suburban and

urban areas across the coury isassive. yet until cently, it was little ctrolled. the original clean water a didn't regulatstorm water at all, though some limits have be adopted since. but the problem reins poorly understood, because much of e pollution is invisible. >> people nuts over a 50- gallon oilpill because you can see , and it's really nasty looking. when you s it on the water, it is impressive hohorrible it looks, and oil spills aren't invisible. they are highly visible anthey galvanize pele like nothing else. >> smi: what about the invisible? what about the auto trfic? what kind of "oispill" is there from o ordinary living? >> based on actual sampling the puget sound basin, we ha timated that the volume of o that is carried into puget snd storm water run off is equa tohe oil spill in prince

william sound that t "exxon ldez" spilled. ery two years, the storm wat in pug sound carries tt volume of l into puget sound. >> smith: the heart the problem is concrete,sphalt, streets,idewalks, buildings, shopping cters, suburban housing, rooftops-- ha surfaces, at scientis call impeious surfaces, that block the downpour orain from naturally sinking into the ground. >> how the land developed, how inteely, will have a dict impact on the quality of storm ter. you take down a forested are and place it with pavement or a rooftop. aninstead of almost all of the water slowly ming through the forest canopy d down to the ground andnfiltrating down to groundwater where it will move slowly. th water, the day it lands within minutes oit hitting the ground, 's going to be gone. >> smith: and so, scientists

environmentalistand regulators all sathat combating pollution is notust a matter of relating industry. buthe key to storm water runoff is la use, how we develop and use r land. king county, i learned, ha become a laborory for testing the politics of land use. it's an area bigger than t state rhode island, home not just to seattland 1.8 million people, but two-thir of it is still fost. so it's an area where environmentalists want to strictly controlhe pace of development. anthe man who has been leading the charge is long-time ki countyhief executive ron sims. >> you he to protect our forests. you have tand our agricultural areas. you must. because if we don't prott them, our water ality will be significantly diminished. and why sacrifice clean wate for owth?

smith: sims says his missio has been to save pug sound by precting critical areas like forests. way up here, 4miles east of seattle, he pa $22 million in tax money to buy develment rits on 90,0 acres of forest, meaning that n developer could ild on that land. >> people we going to build their homes he. they were going toave their supermarkets here, tir gas stations here. wetopped it. we stopped it forever. >> smith: what does ving this timberland have to do with pet und? >> t waters that come off this 90,0 acres flow into the snoqualmie river, which ows intoake washington, which flows into puget sound. we need pristine waters comi from this timbernd into the puget sod, and so this property is absolutely ctical to it. >> sth: washington state's growthanagement act directs local government leade like

sims to conctrate new growth in cities and to preventprawl in lightlyopulated rural areas. for king county, sims pionred a critic areas ordinance that limits jt how much forest and woodland property ners can cut down. sims targets places like ts, a five-acre, one-family plotf land that belongs tooward and tti van laeken. >> back in 2004, king coty paed this critical areas ordince that takes away the usage of 65% oyour property if you don't have it cleared f. anwe didn't have ours cleared off athe time, so we're... we nnot touch 65% of our proper. >> smith: so why do you wanto clear more than 35% of thi wonderl forest? >> well, wt we originally planned whene were in l980 wh we bought it was that we could subdivide and maybe ve our kids a pcel of land to

bud a house on or... and/or sell off part of theroperty for the proceeds, to bable to keepur house and retire. >> smith: how you feel about at? >> rather angry. >> very angry. very angry. it's our property. we have been paying taxes this propey since l980, and we can't even plantrass? >> smi: angry at whom? angry at what? >> i'm ary at the king county gornment, because they more or less took away our propey rights without a compensation for our property. >>e're getting the shaft. they're putting the burden o e small landowner, not on evybody. >> smith: the van laeken's problem actually stems froa zoningrdinance passed in the rly 1980s that barred bdivision of properties unde five aes. but to many rural ndowners, sims' new ordinance was thlast stw, and they formed the citizenslliance foproperty rights.

i met th several of them one evening over aeer in issuaw. >> we' in the same position that the blacks re in the l950s. absolutely. were calling, we are crying, we are dng everything we can to talk to tse who have their hands onhe levers, and they aren't lisning. >> smith: one robbing refrain was rentment against political dominati by the urban majority whh outnumbers rural voters nearly five tone. >>e talk about critical areas ordinance like it's a ni little oneage thing? we're lking about over 400 pages of amendments to exiing w. 400. over 400 pages. >> smith: homuch of the frustration out here ia matter not just oa single ordinance, t of a series of regulations that feel onerous? how much othis has built up over time? >> much of it has but up. it start in '88 with the sensitive areas dinance.

in 2000, we had a gintic down- zoning fight. and then, e coup de gras was the 2004 criticaareas ordinance. >> smith: so it's an accumulation. >>t's very much an accumulati of regulations. >> smith: they td me people were so steamed that ron sims rarely dared to come to eir part of the county. people on his staff y he's gotten threats. do you believe that? >> if wasn't for us, i bet somebody wou've have gone for 30-ought-sixes >> smith: u're talking about they wouldo for 30-ought- sixes? guns? >> i'm not saying they would i'm saying ty're terrified. i'm saying there are peoe who are so angryif we didn't have a way to dirt that to get some result i know there are people on this county that obably would have shot a few key people, they are so angry. >> smith: did you get y threat >> i alwayget threats. >> sth: i mean serious threats? >> always get serious threats. >> sth: do you take them seriously? >> i cannot restri my life and

what i do based upon peoe who are angry anpeople who wish to threat me. >> smith: you y it wasn't pleant. >> it wasn't pleasant. pele were yelling at me. we got a lot of nasty phon calls and emails, and it wn't fun being television. and, quite frankly, was abandoned by a lot of ople. even the eironmental community at t time were saying "ron, you might be too heavy-hand." >> smith: but simsas not backed down. he asserts tt the county ordinance was prompted by scieific analysis of runoff water flows, and he getsolid political backing from an overwhming majority in king county at do you say to critics who say, or e people who say, "look, they've taken my nd, in effect. i caonly use a third of my land two-thds of my land i've got toeave in forest and bushes." >> none has lost the value or usof their land. ere's not one case in king county where anybody been able to show that. >> smith: you meanobody's come forward and said "i wanto do this on my propey" and you've

turned tm down? >> what people have found th we're not gog to allow them to velop their land in terms of buildi a lot of homes on it, but the use of the land they still enjoy it, to this da >> smith: the rul people are saying "this burdeall falls on us. the city people don'have any burden on them." how do you respond? >> oh, the city people he far mo burdens and restrictions on their land than anyonen the rul area has. far more. d they have far more regulation on their land >> fol, stay tuned. this thing with the...nother round on the lawsu and the enforcent... >> smith: some angry ral property owners filed suit, and state appeals court has stru down part of sim critical areas ordinae. that issue is w before the state supreme court. >> if the supreme court uplds the court of aeals' decision, it'll be thebandonment of everythinghat this state has voted on consisteny, which is they want envinmental prottion here.

smith: while the legal dram plays out, the lesn for ron sims is unmistakable. >> we will never recov puget sounif we don't get a hold of e storm water. i never imagined that at body of water would just fundamentally unhealthy for whales and for salmoand all the thgs that make it a rich, wonderful enronment. we may, in the nt couple of decades, when i'm years old, if we don't do anying, people will s, "you... your generation, you lostt. you weren't willing to step and save i"

>> smith: back on e east coast,ear chesapeake bay, the problems of velopment sprawl th king county is fighting ha played out in the suburbs of washington,c. already 17illion people live in the chesapee bay watershed. in recent year 10,000 more moved in everyonth. and evermonth, 3,000 acres of forest were lost to developmt. >> virginia, the outer loop headg toward tyson's corner, reporting very heavy traic westbound... >>mith: the sprawl took off decades agout here in northern rginia, about five miles sou ofhe potomac river in a suburb ofashington caed tyson's corner. today, tyson's is a casetudy in t harmful impact of checked growth. but 60 yea ago, tyson's was just a rural crossads with a country store.

>> as world r ii ended, it was a land of dairfarms and truck fas and abandoned farms, and relative little development. and it was wide open the government then, the political leaders thenthe business lears were all in favor of doing what s necessary to accommote the growth that was coming. >> smith: d for growth to happen, what develops needed was infrastructu-- sewers and ads and, especially, a highw around washington, dc, cald the beltway. >> when you puthe beltway at exactly the locati it was, which created about 1,0 acres in the centeof those... in the convergence of those rds, you had a fabulous development se. >> smith: withaxpayers footing the bill for infstructure, tyson's beca a transportation hub, a commercial center a a ltibillion-dollar bonanza fo developers.

>> the bic approach of most land speculators who are..who are the site delopers is to buy a piecof land that's farmland, d that is zoned as farmland and taxed as farmnd. >> smith: so, it's che. >> yeah, it's eap. and then get it re-pnned and rezoned as a subdivisionith someetail and commercial compents, and the land value ll go up dramatically. >> smith: , the formula is buy land cheaprom farmers; get the county and the state to t in the ros, the sewers, the schools-- all the stufthat makes it attraive... >> yep. >>mith: ...and then turn around and sell it for coercial or resideial at 30, 40 times the cos >>hat's correct. >> smith: the rmula worked like magic for tyson's. over the next years, it became one of america'largest commercial developmes and most successful retail centers. now, 120,0 people work at tyson's every da tyson's is the size of

downtown boston or phoenix there is nothing in thisountry of the scale and size and complexity of tyson's. >> tyson's cner is one of the most successful fice centers in the country; onof the most successful retail centers inhe country and thcombination of those two factors make ithe economic engine for fairx coun and really northern rginia. >> smith: an economic gine drdren by amica's loveffair with the automobile. >> in tyson's corner you drive in for breakfast and you g into your car and u drive to your first meeting. thenou drive to the next meetg and then, you know, if i have ttake some checks to the bank, even though it's for a good golr barely a long nine iron, yogot to get back in your c and drive back. there's no wayn tyson's corners that anybodyets around without a car. >> smith: the car built son's. it also built idlock that is now stngling tyson's. >> we're about half way tough thafternoon rush hour.

maybe. >> smith: almo no one lives here, practicalleveryone commutes. >> tremely heavy traffic that extends way beyond t beltway. >> the highway system is chod. d we can't sustain the model of sprawl in support of th economic engine that h happened over the last0 years. >> smith: can't sustn the model. u mean tyson's corner has so of reached the limit? >> tyson's corneis about as built out as it cabe if depeent on the automobile, because it exacerbates whas already a compcated but troublinenvironmental future. >> smith: envinmentalists call tyson'a nightmare for the potomac ver and chesapeake bay. it's a foress of impervious surfaces. >> you look at tys's and there is now tod... ase are sitting here today, thers about 46illion square feet of development in tyson's. in addition that, there is 40 million square ft of parking.

>> smith: 40 milli? >> 4million square feet of parking. so themount of development and the amount of rking is about equal, and that translates io close to 170,000 parking sces. and when we lk about impervious surfaces, i mean that just unbelievable. >> when you put wn an endless amnt of concrete parking lots and oftops, rain hits it-- it washes really qukly into the reams. it going to cut aw at those stream banks. it's going to pickp sediment. it's goingo be carrying all kinds of pollutants int. it's going tgo flying down into theotomac, and the potomac feeds in the chesapeakeay, and everything startsn these little streams. every time you lose a littl streamyou lose one more healthy piece the chesapeake bay osystem. >> smith: whatany see as the ecologic disaster of tyson's itomizes the collision of velopment and clean water nationwide.

more than the quarters of americs population lives on or near our waterways. the plague of tyson's-styl sprawl has recently reatened neighboring lon county. but here in loudn, environmenl leaders fashioned a new taic to counter aggressive development and t protect chesapeake bay. >> getting up in frontf a crowd and saying"the bay's in tough shape, and theollution's getting rse, and we've got to change o lifestyles to save it," realldoesn't get you anywhere. but you can get people to the things that we need do to save the b, if we can train them in ways tt... that correspond to at they really care about. >> smithin loudon, what people care most about israffic and taxes. two issues the environmentists leveraged toaunch a political caaign against developers in 06. >> how do big developers plan t deal with our traffic probms?

they wanto build more homes in our area-- 33,000ore. that would mean thousands of more cars and more traffic. >> sth: tapping into local concerns, citizen activists organized carry the fight. >> it resonad a lot with residents en we spoke about transportaon issues. we spoke abo tax increases that wld occur and when we spoke about schools, howur children would constantly ve to change boundaries >> i think a l of us got inlved just for the whole quality of le issue and when it wenfrom the 33,000 homes meant an additiol 300,000 car trips on theocal roads. it meant highetaxes. the scols that had to be built. the roads that needed toe built. it was suburbanizing an ar that was never meant to suburbanized. >> smi: did all this public ououring of outrage stop or slow down this aggressive owth? >> the public responseas so overwhelming, that even the

board of supervisors tt was elected wi the support of the development commity ended up turning down the propols that th, the board, had submitted in the first pla. >> smith: so, theyacked off totall >> they backed off totallyand then ithe election that immediately foowed that cision to back off, they all lost. every one of tho candidates was voted out of office. >> smiththey got wiped out? >> they got ped out. >> smith: that vtory in udoun underscored that land use is a key to protecng the envinment. people talk abt saving cheseake bay, and you've got organitions that are talking about, "let's have a camign bay-wide." t listening to you, the nuts and bolts of this thing soun as though they have toe fought ouon a local basis, county by county. i think the conservation movement has to move awafrom wholesale ideas to... to retailing what we're talki abt. things that people dl with every day: traffic, schos, the lack oaccess to the... the kinds of parks and open ace

that people want oa day-to-day bas, rising taxes to pay for thcosts the developers weren't paying for. >> smith: d the bay is going to benefitbut it's not the oping argument. >> it's all about making t protection of the baa retail ise. what we need to mark is the lutions, and market in a way th people will embrace them, not market t problem. >> smithto help savel lnerable waterways like the potoc river and chesapeake bay, environmentalists are ao touting new eco-friendly development modeknown as" one of the nation's showcase r smart growth is right here inrlington, virginia. a shorsubway ride across the potomac fr washington, and just a few miles from tysos corner.

smart growth is maki suburban ving look a lot more like ci living with a human uch.bk>x3piu what's fascinating is where e we? look up here, for crying o ud. >> you're in a dntown, a new downtown in lington county. >> sth: i got a tour from smart growth advoce stewart schwtz. >> it's a burb that's grown up into a cit aextension of 's downtown. arlingn had no choice but to build up to compe with the ter suburbs. and om an environmental perspecte, we love this sort of place because we're blding here on d parking lots instead of building out in forts and farms. >> smith: arlingtos strategy to focus development not around the carbut around washingt's mass transit system, known as metro. >> around each of thstations, we call it a network olivable communities and increasinglyhe world's cities areeing built this way.

using trant as the spine for >> smithwhat's been the track record in arngton county in terms of jobs, development congestion on e streets? >> they've had an explosn of development in the cordor in the last 30 years. they've had tripli and quadruplg of the number of residents, the number jobs in the corridor, and it all been achied without an increase in traffi >> smith: thkey to smart grow is high-d%óy living combined witmixed-use delopment. commercial, retail a(nyf residentl all mixed together. >> smith: u know, looking at this, there are gh-rise buildings here. i mean, to a certa extent this kind of looks li tyson's. it's our ima of it, lots of concrete or brick orhatever. >>ut very different. grt public spaces here like this park. you have shopping u can walk to rig there. great bus stop here. outdoor fes. probably two to ree times the number of ople living here as do live in tyson's corr. and in fact, theuture of tyson's is going to be ihaving more peopllive in tyson's corner and to ma tyson's

corner look a lot more lik arlington. >> smith: in fact, at son's, thers been a tectonic shift in the mindset of busins leaders. with the comrcial luster of tyson's fading, they are now banking onhe planned arrival of metro'sapid rail to spur a new kind of redeveloent. we can't continue to accommate cars and the number accommate cars and the number i an, the choice moving forwaris you do more of the same and get wt you got. or you change what you d and ild to a new... a new goal, you willa new culture. and that cultu will be focused on mass transit. it's, in essence, designg a place that is much more a humascale pedestrian friendly that'll be the key to e success tyson's for the next 20 years. >> smith: 's a welcome change to aocates of chesapeake bay. making tyson's corner gives local governnt a chance to fix the storm water stem, create parks and reore green zones

and local streams feedg into the potomac and thbay. >>o, growth is happeng, and we have to accommodate i buwe can do it better. we can plan it better. we can put it in bette locations. we can put it in places wherwe can al with the impacts in the most effectiveay. >> smithare you saying we have a choice? >> always. we he a stark choice. have a very dramatic choice if we do iright, the effects the environment are reduced by half or more. if we do it wrong, the..the possibily of actually losing the chesapeake bay goes dratically. >> smith: we do have choic to make. and fromhat i saw and heard on

myourney, time is much more urgent and the stakes are ch gher than i had once realize >> we e not going to make it the wawe are going now. it doesn't mean we can't reuble our effort, you know. we c re-enroll, try again. t yeah, it's a failure. condition the chesapeake bay is like e canary in the co mine. it is a symbol. it is an indicat of what we are now learning to expectn any body of water tionwide, anacross the planet. >> smith: thdanger signs are everywhere: de zones; dying younwhales; intersex in male sh.

health proems for humans. >> the '70s were a l about, "we're the good guys, wee the envinmentalists. we're going to go after the pouters." and it's not reallabout that anymore. it's about the way wall live. d unfortunately, we are all polluters. i am. you are. all of us are. >> smith: success is psible. but the leon driven home to me, again and again, ithat the y is public engagement. >> if the publics not engaged, puget sound for example, we will fail. we wl fail. i haveo confidence, whatsoever, we can get t job3i done, unless, and until, everybody steps up, acpts responsibili and becomes part ofhe solution.

>> you can'txpect the clean war act alone to do the job for puget sound or csapeake bay or any oer water body. you have to piece gether clean water, clean air, and taking care of thland. d at this point in our history, we ha to restore what we've screwed up. >> smith: water llution has ipped off our radar screen ib>1k the ce of other, seemingly more urgent crises.xwo# but pollution is a tking time bomb. it's a chronic cancer at is owly eating away naturaleqñ resources thatre vital to our survival. >> the estuaries and the wetlands are wth vastly more money an we have acknowledged. i mean, we could calculate and persuade the public abt

how valuable the wetlandare in terms of theeb of life, we would be guarding them le the familyewels instead of using them as our eat sewage dump. >> whave a window of time. whereas,f we do not succeed in taking action the next ten to 20 years on a whole rae of issueswe are in fact putting our planet on a ajectory that it will be very, very rd to undo. and i say at because the decisis we make are going to have arofound effect as to our planet's futurover the next 100 year

there's more to explore our website, where youan watch the fullrogram again online. explore what'safe to eat and drink. find out why is taking so long to clean up the waterwa. what theuality of your water is, and what you can do help >>ou're talking about billions of dollars oeconomic impact with oysrs, crabs, shabs... >> plus read thinterviews with experts. >> absolutely no ogen in these dead zones. >> tse are the modern canary in the mine. >> humans, rats, killer ales, harbor seals, iteally doesn't matter. >> and join the disssion of th program at pbs.org.

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