Lawns and Fertilizer in the Post Today

A few months ago I posted a link to Todd Haiman's blog Landscape Design and More.  The subject: lawns. 

I offered my own reservations about an irrational abundance of turfgrass in the landscape, saying restricting lawn use could be for ecological reasons because, "you don't want to use too much fuel for your mower or water for irrigation."  Well, shame on me for not adding excess fertilizer and runoff of chemicals to that list.  I surely know that's another hazard of lawns, but failed to add that in my post.

Perhaps fertilizers are more on the brain these days -- I've been teaching a horticultural science course at the Grad School here in DC and recently lectured on plant nutrition.  I'd like to think I was fairly strident when telling my students to avoid thoughtlessly throwing fertilizer on everything, precisely because it's contributing to the pollution in our waterways. And I'm part of a much larger trend, as evidenced today in the Washington Post.  The piece features a study by the Environment Maryland Policy and Research Center citing lawn fertilizers as one of the major sources of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and imploring the state to issue mandates limiting their use, similar to restrictions in New York and New Jersey.  The study is countered by the president of the Maryland Turfgrass Council, Vernon Cooper, who offers a quote that is full of bad science: "[turf is] one of the best filters to prevent damage to the bay." He elaborates that it acts as a sponge that filters nutrients from rain runoff and adds. “A weak or thin lawn allows more sediment to be washed in the bay,”  His quotes are theoretically accurate: plant coverage reduces erosion and the loss of topsoil and sediments to nearby waterways.  But turf that is inundated with fertilizers which in turn wash into waterways is far more damaging than "sediment." Grr.