Today is the deadline for states and other local organizations to submit their comments on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to implement pollution reduction efforts for preservation of the Chesapeake Bay.
The EPA’s plan would enforce statewide and local limits on the amount of damaging nutrients and sediments allowed to flow into the bay, known as the total maximum daily load, or TMDL.
States had previously submitted drafts of plans of their own to meet the EPA’s extensive pollution diet, but only two jurisdictions wrote plans that would sufficiently meet the TMDL: Maryland and the District of Columbia.
It’s also the deadline for public comment on the states’ own current plans.
All the other states, including Virginia, would face the EPA’s strict and potentially costly measures of meeting the TMDL if they can’t devise their own means of lowering pollutants.
