Mayor Martin O?Malley unveiled proposals on Monday to improve the Bay if he is elected governor. He and his running mate slammed the record of Gov. Robert Ehrlich, saying the state had “failed miserably to meet its responsibilities.”
Not only did an Ehrlich spokesman challenge the charges, and accuse O?Malley of copying a program already underway, but the Chesapeake Bay Foundation issued a curt correction of the O?Malley news release, saying it had not given Ehrlich a bad grade for his performance.
A headline on an O?Malley release said, “Ehrlich Gets a ?D? for failure to improve the Bay,” but the 39-year-old foundation, whose well-known motto is “Save the Bay,” said that its “scientific report graded the health of the Chesapeake Bay at a ?D,? and at no time mentioned any government official.”
With the Bay as a backdrop at an Anne Arundel County park, Del. Anthony Brown said that “progress has stopped altogether” on the Bay cleanup, with beaches closed repeatedly and Program Open Space funds diverted.
O?Malley proposed instituting a BayStat program similar to the City Stat program he instituted in Baltimore to measure exactly what was happening in the Bay based on a number of factors.
“Things that get watched are things that get done,” O?Malley said.
The candidate also suggested forming a new body to coordinate Bay restoration efforts, and he wants to accelerate the upgrade of sewage treatment plants, one of the key programs instituted by Ehrlich and paid for by the so-called flush tax.
Of the 66 major plants scheduled for upgrade under the program, O?Malley said almost three-quarters, 72 percent, of the systems are not even in the design stage.
But the state environment department estimated that more than athird of the plants are in the design stage or under construction, and that by next July, construction will be underway at nearly half the plants.
O?Malley also wants to expand Program Open Space funding. He would redirect it to preserving land that protects shoreline buffers and wetlands, and reduces runoff.
“We?ve been doing that for the least three years,” Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said. “The Board of Public works reformed land preservation policies” so that Open Space money was used with an eye to improving the bay. “He?s just lifting from what we did three years ago,” Fawell said.
