After 25 years of failed efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, the federal government jumped in on Tuesday to bolster states’ efforts to revive the dying watershed.
Estimated costs between 2009 and 2011 to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay watershed:Jurisdiction Amount
Delaware $17 million
District of Columbia $266 million
Maryland $774 million
New York $15 million
Pennsylvania $68 million
Virginia $1.2 billion
West Virginia $22 million
State breakdown of Bay pollution:State Nitrogen Phosphorus Del. 2% 2%
D.C. 1% 1%
Md. 21% 21%
N.Y. 6% 5%
Penn. 40% 20%
Va. 27% 48%
W.Va. 3% 4%
Data compiled by the Chesapeake Bay Program: A Watershed Partnership
But despite politicians’ promises to reduce pollutants faster than planned, Bay advocates familiar with the details fear a lack of ambition and too few consequences for failure.
“The Bay was supposed to be off of the [Environmental Protection Agency’s] impaired waters list by 2010,” said Tommy Landers of Baltimore group Environment Maryland. “Now we’re off of that timeline.”
Instead, Govs. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Tim Kaine of Virginia, with D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and governors of four other states, set 2025 as a new date by which all initiatives would be in place that would, they hope, result in a cleaner Bay. They were joined by EPA chief Lisa Jackson, who announced the first executive order concerning the Chesapeake since Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s.
President Barack Obama’s order “brings to bear the full weight of the federal government,” Jackson said, including the creation of a federal Bay leadership committee headed by her and including senior representatives from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security and the Interior.
The federal intervention will amount to more money and resources for the states’ new goals, specifically a two-year reduction in the levels of nitrogen and phosphorous found in the Bay. The nutrients encourage the growth of algae, which in turn sucks oxygen from the watershed and creates dead zones for animal and plant life.
“We will make full use of our regulatory authority and laws,” Jackson said, “strengthening existing permit programs and expanding them where necessary.” She added, however, that states would not lose federal money if they failed to meet cleanup goals.
The EPA also is creating a Chesapeake Bay “Total Maximum Daily Load,” essentially a pollution diet, which will result in an allocation of pollution levels by state by next year. About 35,000 similar areas have been created nationwide, but the Chesapeake will become the largest and will be a model for watersheds such as the Puget Sound and the Great Lakes regions.
“It’s probably a bad idea — it’s not clear what the Total Maximum Daily Load does,” said Robert Nelson, a University of Maryland professor who specializes in Chesapeake Bay policy.
Nelson explained that the EPA does not have regulatory authority over the largest source of the Bay’s problems: agricultural runoff. Farmland runoff accounts for more than half of the pollutants in the Bay, he said, but the agency’s authority is over “point sources,” or entities like wastewater treatment plants that drain directly into the water.
A Department of Agriculture official said the Bay would receive about $188 million over the next four years from the 2008 farm bill. That money will be used to pay farmers to reduce pollution running into the Bay.
At the state level, Kaine said much of the work would be done by local jurisdictions responsible for implementing new regulations for land development, for example.
Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council in Warrenton, said the success Kaine hopes for would depend on the commitment to enforcement.
“There are great initiatives and regulations, but that’s never been the real question,” Miller said. “Once they’re made, is anyone forced to abide by them?”
