Bay advocates to feds: Your move

EPA set to issue plans next month

Friday, Aug. 14, 2009

They say that state-set goals, which have lacked federal oversight or penalties for failure, repeatedly have been set and gone unmet for more than two decades.

"There's just not many — or any — examples that we'll be able to accomplish this simply by doing these voluntary efforts," said Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge.

On the flip side, government bans on the chlorofluorocarbons found in hairspray that contribute to ozone depletion and on smoking in public places are effective, Boesch told a standing-room only crowd of about 300 people at the forum on the health of the Bay.

The Bay needs "game-changing solutions," said Chuck Fox, the Environmental Protection Agency's senior adviser on the nation's largest and most prized estuary.

Changing the game means reducing the nitrogen pollution that feeds algae blooms and creates oxygen-deficient "dead zones" that are uninhabitable by the fish, crabs, oysters and plants that once thrived in the Bay, Fox said.

To "save the Bay" the nitrogen pollution must be reduced by 40 percent — from the current average of 320 million pounds that is dumped into the water each year to 175 million pounds, he said.

Under an executive order signed in May by President Barack Obama (D), the EPA and other agencies have until Sept. 9 to draft plans to clean up the Bay.

"What goes into that plan will have a lot to do with what happens over the next decade to clean up the Chesapeake Bay," said Brad Heavner, state director of Environment Maryland and the moderator of Tuesday's discussion.

The federal order sets 2025 as an "end date" to put in place strategies for a Bay cleanup.

Advocates have called the order an unprecedented action by the federal government to take ownership of a problem that has defied efforts by the six Bay watershed states.

States will work toward two-year milestones for reducing the Total Maximum Daily Load of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution that is dumped into Bay and its tributaries. The TMDL goals, which will be announced Oct. 22, are unique to each state. Meeting the first set of milestones by the end of 2011 would yield a combined reduction of 15.8 million pounds of nitrogen and 1.05 million pounds of phosphorus.

"Like it or not, [the federal government] is the only jurisdiction by law that can manage the Chesapeake Bay watershed as a single system," said Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which has a pending lawsuit against the EPA that calls for the agency to enforce the federal Clean Water Act.

The legislation, the biggest tool the federal government has for cleaning up the Bay, has worked well, Fox said. Yet, only 40 percent of all air pollution sources are regulated by federal or state governments, making deposits of airborne chemicals a problematic source of waterway pollution.

"That number has to change," Fox said. "We have to find a way of building more accountability and more performance into the system."

Conservation practices need to be in place on 80 percent to 90 percent of the farmland in the Bay watershed, he said.

Federal money has not been focused on the right things, said Fred Kelly, an environmental attorney and head of the Severn Riverkeepers, a nonprofit focused on protecting and restoring the Bay tributary, which is included on the federal impaired waters list under the Clean Water Act.

The federal government spent $15 million over 15 years on an ultimately inconclusive study of whether introducing an Asian oyster species to filter pollution from the water would improve the Bay's health and oyster population.

"If you just give me a couple million of that, I'll restore the Severn River," said Kelly, who complained of lax building permit enforcement by Anne Arundel County that has led to pollution from stormwater runoff.

The key is to make local communities part of the solution, while leaving the feds to coordinate state efforts, Del. Ronald A. George said after the meeting.

"The answer isn't to have the federal government force things on local communities," said George (R-Anne Arundel). "But the federal government does have to come into play on the Chesapeake Bay watershed."

Some actions must be taken immediately, such as using the pollution limits set by the TMDLs, said Bernie Fowler, a former state senator and staunch Patuxent River advocate.

"There can't be any escape clauses there. That has to be … concrete," Fowler said after the meeting.

While tough times mean money for such efforts is scarce, "this is not the time to practice inactivity," he said.

A group opposed to the development of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant bemoaned the environmental hazards caused by the 11 reactors already situated in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Cathy Garger, co-founder of People Against a Radioactive Chesapeake, said the lack of recognition about the damage done by nuclear plants is "a big cover-up."

The EPA will hold public briefings about the TMDL process in November and December and will accept formal public comments on pollution limits. It expects to draft reduction plans next summer.

In the meantime, the public can track the development of the pollution reduction plans and see other information related to the executive order at http://executiveorder.chesapeakebay.net/.

Staff writer Alan Brody contributed to this report.