One of my neighbors cut his leg while working on his dock.

“He immediately washed out the wound, put an antiseptic on it and a bandage,” my community association warned in an email. “But the next day, he had to be taken to the hospital for the effects of Vibrio. Medical staff worked hard for the next several days to get rid of the bacteria and save his leg, which was, for a time, in jeopardy."

This is climate change.

Increased rainfall makes this naturally occurring bacteria grow in the Chesapeake Bay, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts there’s an 80% chance that the water at the end of my street is swimming with it.

It’s rained every Wednesday for the last eight weeks, and we’re still behind the average for the year. When it comes, it comes in great gushes, rolling off parking lots and baked-hard yards into streams and rivers reaching inland from the bay.

It washes garbage and leaves and dead animals and poop into the water. If you’re not careful, the rain will make you sick.

Read More

Annapolis leaders went to Sweden to learn about climate change. I went to IKEA.

Oct 4, 2024

“I swim in the bay and I let my kids swim in the bay,” said Elle Bassett, the riverkeeper at Arundel Rivers. “I think that the key is that I don’t let my kids swim in certain conditions. And everyone should have access to the knowledge to know what those conditions are currently and have the tools to make the educated decision.”

Public health agencies on the bay test for recreational water quality, telling you when to stay out. Anne Arundel County, with more than 500 miles of shoreline, samples weekly at 64 locations in all five county watersheds and biweekly at another 17.

They’re looking for enterococci and E. coli, bacteria that lives in the lower intestines of warm-blooded animals. When it rains, poop — dog, deer, goose or, ew, human — is flushed into the water.

Swallow the bacteria or get it in your eyes or an open cut, and you might get sick. The Environmental Protection Agency sets maximum safe levels, and health agencies post warnings when test results exceed those limits.

More than half an inch of rain triggers an automatic advisory for 48 hours, so health agencies don’t test when it rains.

“An advisory would already have been determined and further testing at the time would not be productive,” said Megan Pringle, a county Health Department spokesperson.

It’s a fine system for swimming, and this week the no-swimming flag went up over three places, including Mayo Beach Park.

It just misses the catastrophe of climate change.

“I fully support the recommendation not to swim for two days after the rain,” said Tammy Domanski, head of the environmental center at Anne Arundel Community College. “That doesn’t tell us the magnitude of the problem.”

She leads Operation Clearwater, a network of nonprofit groups, students and volunteers that collects water samples. They test rain or shine, every Wednesday and Thursday.

The difference between safe and unsafe swimming can be as slight as a 1% change in bacterial levels. Domanski’s results show contamination 100 times higher when it rains.

“That tells us something about the effect of development over time, and the effect of more impervious surface and even the effect of more highways,” Domanski said.

It tells us something about climate change.

All weather occurs in a changing climate, influenced by higher temperatures. A warmer atmosphere carries more water. That means flash floods, not just passing summer showers.

Right now, we’re in peak flash flood season.

Texas’ flooding was the deadliest, but there has been less severe flooding in New York, New Mexico, North Carolina and Arizona. The National Weather Service put most of Maryland under a flash flood warning Wednesday night, and predicts more is coming.

On the Chesapeake Bay, the result is in the water. Every Wednesday this summer, Domanski’s network has gotten samples after another flooding rain.

Arundel Rivers monitors 32 sites on the South, West and Rhode rivers below Annapolis and sends the samples to Operation Clearwater’s labs. More than half the testing sites are failing regularly.

“That can be a little confusing to folks,” said Bassett, the riverkeeper. “We’ve tested for eight weeks, and of those eight weeks, six of them have had rainfall within the previous 48 hours of over a half-inch.

“We have seen a significant amount of failure this summer, whereas the county data is not showing that because they are not testing after rainfall.”

The culprit is climate change.

That’s what suffocated hundreds of cownose rays in Glen Burnie last week.

Bacteria decompose what washes into the water with each flash flood. As they grow, they consume dissolved oxygen, creating dead zones that can kill anything living in the water.

“Fish kills, unfortunately, are a reality due to a range of factors that include warm weather’s effect on water conditions,” said Jay Apperson, spokesperson for the Maryland Department of the Environment. “This die-off was actually rather unusual.”

Life, especially for the 19 million of us crammed into the Chesapeake watershed, is messy.

Swimming only gets the briefest of mentions in the proposed new Chesapeake Bay Agreement, “Beyond 2025,″ which is making the rounds for public comment.

“Better water quality means swimmable, fishable waters for Bay residents and visitors,” the document says. “Increased public access to the Bay inspires people to care for critical landscapes and honor the region’s heritage and culture.”

It’s intuitive. If you get in the water, you care more about the quality.

That was Bernie Fowler’s idea. The late state senator started publicly wading into the Patuxent River near his home in Calvert County 38 years ago, going out to the point where he could no longer see his white tennis shoes.

It capitalizes on your ability to judge whether the Chesapeake Bay is getting cleaner, an effect that continues in Fowler’s memory.

In June, the results were 48 inches, twice the depth of last year.

And then it rained some more.