Here's the Chesapeake Bay Foundation press release you couldn't see on their web site until about an hour ago (redated April 10). You could have seen other press releases dated April 8 and 9 and later there -- for example, see their Maryland PR page -- but not this, distributed by e-mail late Tuesday afternoon, April 8:
CBF WITHDRAWS CRITICAL AREA REPORT
(ANNAPOLIS, MD) -- The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) has withdrawn its February 2008 Critical Area Act report. Kent County officials raised questions about CBF’s data for the county, ...
The press release didn't appear on the Web site until a followup news report appeared Thursday morning in the Kent County News (Chestertown) and the Easton Star-Democrat. Unfortunately, the papers are subscriber-only Web sites.
The February 4 report, which their PR neglects to name, is called "The Critical Area Act: Intent, Reality, and the Need for Reform." The bay foundation site contains no other reference to its fate.
Look! Shiny River Otters!
Missing since Monday from their web site is the associated Feb 4 press release, and a news brief with link at the top of their "News" roundup page (which was hanging with dead links until earlier yesterday). The pictorial brief and link from their home page is gone, replaced by cute River Otters.
The PDF file? Gone. Into the memory hole. Of course, the Maryland General Assembly passed a version of the stricter environmental legislation that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation wanted -- the report was used to influence legislators -- so it has done what it was created to do, in the opinion of the Kent County Commissioners.
But Google retains an HTML version of the PDF.
The report presented waterfront zoning statistics from 1990-2000 and 2003-2006 for four Maryland counties (Queen Anne's, Kent, Calvert and Anne Arundel) to be used as a lobbying tool, showing an anything-goes mentality, apparently, among counties.
What's a Critical Area?
In Maryland the Critical Area is the 1,000 feet nearest tidal Chesapeake Bay waters. (That includes a great many rivers, such as the Potomac). The closest 100 feet -- by the new legislation, 200 feet for new development -- is the "buffer" and is supposed to be undisturbed.
The general idea behind the law is not to have strip malls and housing developments within 1,000 feet of the shoreline, inside the Critical Area.
Where the author or authors said there were, in Kent County, 58 Critical Area building variance applications with 50 approved, the county's planning office files show 37 applications; 19 approved, the rest denied or withdrawn, counting the years 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The years 2003 and 2004 included variances issued for people who had to rebuild or elevate their waterside homes after Tropical Storm Isabel ... hardly a normal pace of permit applications.
The 50-of-58 "96 percent approval rate" was used as a club to beat on the county's environmental decisionmaking and commitment to land preservation. Gasp! It was higher than the average rate of all four counties!
When files in the county's planning office are counted, 19 of the 37 anyone can find is a "50 percent approval rate" of a far lower number of applications: the lowest of any of the four counties and far below the average.
Whether their data is similarly flawed in the other three counties they reported on is an open question.
A thorough news report on the CBF's flawed statistics appeared in the Kent County News (Chestertown) on April 3 and the Easton Star-Democrat on April 4.
Nevertheless, it appears that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation owns up that they might be imperfect only grudgingly. It took about 48 hours to get four sentences on their Web site.
The voluminous PR that's posted happily quotes president Will Baker and executive director Kim Coble (read a few and see). You'd almost say it's standard procedure, or a PR template they use.
But if it's not happy news, as with "The Critical Area Act: Intent, Reality, and the Need for Reform," only a legal construct named "CBF" regrets anything.
April 8, 2008
For Immediate Release
For Information Contact
John Surrick 443/482-2045
CBF WITHDRAWS CRITICAL AREA REPORT
(ANNAPOLIS, MD) -- The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) has withdrawn its February 2008 Critical Area Act report. Kent County officials raised questions about CBF’s data for the county, and as a result of further review of county records and discussion with staff, CBF determined the Kent County data in the report were inaccurate.
CBF will engage in a thorough review of the data contained in the report.
CBF publicly apologizes for any errors in the report, and thanks the Kent County planning staff for their willingness to work with CBF to correct the record.
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