O'Malley still has 'scars' from Chesapeake Bay cleanup.

'It took years to bring together rural and urban residents on efforts to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay, and Martin O'Malley sees echoes of that fight in Iowa, the former Maryland governor said Thursday.

"I still have the scars from it," O'Malley said of his efforts to recruit farmers, industry leaders and local governments to help reduce runoff and pollution into the bay.

The long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful told The Des Moines Register's editorial board that water quality is one of the issues he hears most about from Iowans on the caucus trail. It's become a hot-button issue in the state, driven in part by a lawsuit brought by Des Moines Water Works seeking oversight of three northwest Iowa counties whose farm fields are heavy sources of nitrates in the Raccoon River.

O'Malley said water — while a major issue in dry states like California — hasn't been in the national conversation during the 2016 election cycle. Though each region faces specific challenges, the science behind the Chesapeake Bay's problems and those facing Iowa waters are largely the same, he said.

"One thing that isn't different is that if you pump enough sediment and phosphorous and nitrogen into your streams and rivers, you'll kill them," he said.

Nitrate pollution in the Chesapeake Bay stemmed from four sources: wastewater treatment plants, storm water runoff, agriculture and septic tanks, O'Malley said. During his time as governor, the state used subsidies to increase the amount of cover crops used to protect soil from erosion. The state went from 100,000 acres planted per year to more than 425,000 acres per year, he said.

Maryland lawmakers under O'Malley's predecessor passed a statewide "flush fee" tacked on to homeowners' property tax bills and used the money to update old wastewater treatment plants, he said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped the state pay farmers to create buffers along streams, and O'Malley credited the state's farmers with being leaders in the cleanup efforts.

"We would set the goals and we would engage in actions on the land to reduce the nitrogen and sediment phosphorous flow," he said. "Our farmers in Maryland, God bless them, were actually really ahead of the curve on this."

Other efforts, including wetland restoration and targeting public land buys to increase water quality, were also successful, O'Malley said. An online tool called BayStat allowed Maryland residents to see goals and track officials' progress.

In Iowa, discussions over water quality have often exposed a divide between rural and urban residents. State Sen. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, suggested after the Water Works lawsuit was filed that rural residents boycott Des Moines. O'Malley said he brought key constituencies together as governor, but that much of the groundwork had been laid by administrations since the 1970s.

"Forging a consensus wasn't easy," he said. "None of it was easy, but we found a way to do it because we reminded people of what the bay once was like and we talked about what sort of bay we wanted for our kids."

O'Malley addressed several other issues in his meeting with the editorial board.

College costs

O'Malley called himself the "poorest man running for president this year" due to the burden of borrowing to put his two daughters, Tara and Grace, through college. But rival Bernie Sanders' calls for making public universities tuition-free would only give colleges incentive to keep raising costs at taxpayers' expense, he said.

"It's a nice idea and I think I have a better one," he said with a laugh.

The former Baltimore mayor said he'd push for making college education debt-free, partly by increasing the amounts of Pell Grants given out by the federal government. Students should also have greater access to income-based plans that cap payments at an affordable level depending on a college graduate's job, he said.

O'Malley also advocated capping community college tuition rates at five percent of their respective state's median income.

Gun regulation

As president, O'Malley said he'd push to remove legal protections that make gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers exempt from lawsuits if their products are used to kill people. Gun control has become a premier part of his campaign message, and he used a significant amount of his speech Saturday at the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson Jackson Dinner addressing the issue.

Businesses should be liable if they fail to do proper background checks or fail to do their due diligence on somebody purchasing large amounts of guns or ammunition, he said. O'Malley specifically pointed to James Holmes, a mass shooter who killed several people in a Colorado movie theater in 2011. In the weeks before the killing, Holmes purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition online, according to the Huffington Post.

"All of us have seen too much death, too much carnage, too many massacres," he said.

Trade

O'Malley said trade with foreign countries should not be promoted in place of building the U.S.'s domestic economy. Addressing climate change could be "the greatest business opportunity to come along in 100 years," he said.

The former governor said he's opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership because he's not confident it will do enough to protect the environment from industry, he said.'

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/10/29/omalley-still-has-scars-chesapeake-bay-cleanup/74822328/