Save the Bay Rally

I just RSVP'd to attend a rally for the Chesapeake Bay TONIGHT AT 6pm in Baltimore. This fall we have an unprecedented opportunity to clean up our water and our communities. Come join me and help urge Gov. O'Malley to give our children a better future: water that is safe to drink and swim in and seafood that is safe to eat throughout the region. http://www.environmentmaryland.org/ourbay?id4=tafsent

Put Up (your pollution controls) or Shut Up (your whining)!

Supporters of the EPA project are pleased with the draft TMDL released this week, and urge congress to pass the current changes to the Chesapeake Clean Water Act in order to further support future clean-up efforts. The states that received the harshest criticisms from the EPA are, of course, complaining the most that the TMDL is unfair. Virginia, for example, skirted the issue of funding in their WIP, while the official summary of the Chesapeake Clean Water Act dictates allotments of funds to implementation grants, technical assistance to foresters and agriculture producers, and stewardship grants. Opponents are calling it a “hostile agenda aimed securely at rural America” and saying this process has been too “rushed”, to which I have to say they’ve had almost 30 years to take care of their own chore lists—they have no right to bitch now because mom is tightening the screws. 



Please note the brief foray the river makes into Maryland....
Photo courtesy of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission



One argument for leniency that I might make is in favor of the Maryland WIP, one of two (out of seven) to be accepted by the EPA as relatively complete. The EPA seems to think that Maryland should put more emphasis on regulating the Susquehanna, along with two other rivers.  The Patuxent and the Choptank are both primarily located in Maryland; they should certainly be addressed accordingly.  The Susquehanna, on the other hand is located mostly in Pennsylvania, with a significant chunk in New York.  The mouth of the river is in Maryland, but the bulk of the problem nutrients and sediment are accumulating upstream. It's ridiculous to expect Maryland to be able to regulate that effectively.

The TMDL is not a bid for power by the EPA. As they continually remind us, they are federally mandated to produce the TMDL because of the “insufficient restoration progress over the last several decades in the Bay” on the part of the bay states, and the timetable was agreed upon by the governors of said states two years ago (granted, some of those governors are no longer representing their states). The development of the TMDL consisted of three major steps: the EPA set limits for pollutants, the states and DC based their Watershed Implementation Plans on those limits, and then the EPA drafted the TMDL, defining “backstop allocations” where the WIPs were insufficient. Those backstops are what all the opponents are protesting as too heavy handed.

These are not dictates by the EPA--I'm sure they would much rather have the jurisdictions do their part of the work and come up with more constituent-friendly options, but that is the responsibility of the localities in question! It’s much easier, more visually supportable, and just more popular to attack open sewer pipes and defend the poor, subjugated farming and construction industries that couldn’t possibly afford to minimize their impact on their neighbors, immediate or remote. The deficient states seem to be relying on the general public to fear the involvement of federal government more than they fear the looming (but less imminent) environmental disaster that is developing in our nation’s water. The TMDL and related legislation may be landmark cases in future water quality conflicts. "If EPA can't make it work here, they can't make it work anywhere," said Oliver Houck, an environmental-law expert at Tulane University told The Washington Post.

Public opinion seems to be negatively influenced by the faulty reasoning that if you can’t see the Chesapeake from your balcony, you have no reason to be interested in its upkeep. Residents in Loudon County, VA (through which runs Loudon Creek, a secondary tributary of the Chesapeake) recently protested additional zoning to regulate construction sites near waterways, claiming they were too intrusive and expensive. County Supervisor Kelly Burk told The Washington Post that people felt that they didn’t “have an impact on the bay.” All the parties who feel threatened by the TMDL language cite the cost of implementing pollution regulation. No one seems willing to look at the big picture, to see past their profit margins to recognize the long term impacts of the Chesapeake Bay turning into China’s Yellow River.



Pollution-driven algal blooms in Norfolk, Virginia, starve the Bay of oxygen, creating ‘dead zones’ where nothing can live.  Photo by Morgan Heim, part of R.A.V.E. exhibit in DC. (http://www.cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=2040)

Dead zones continue to impact fishing and shellfish industries, and not only in the Chesapeake: the US coast now has hundreds of these blemishes. The 2010 oyster harvest in Maryland was 96 percent lower than that in 1983 (the FIRST year in which the bay states missed the deadline for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay), and the previously bay-reliant economy of small towns like St. Michael’s, MD, are becoming more and more focused on tourism for their income. Who’s going to visit (or build/buy homes or raise families or found businesses in) these towns when they overlook a morass of sludge, speckled with dead fish and overflown by majestic vultures instead of the ospreys and eagles that are so much more aesthetically pleasing?

The Chesapeake Photo Review

If you're in DC, try to take a moment next week to view this exhibit of photos documenting the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. The exhibit is free and open to the public from September 20-24, and is located in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building at Constitution Avenue and 1st Street, N.E.,Washington, D.C. The pictures truly illustrate the classic man vs. nature conflict at play in the Bay states.

Less Theory, More Action Items, Please!

On review of the Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) drafts submitted earlier this month, the general consensus thus far indicates a lack of concrete goals forming actual plans, little to no consideration of implementation funding, and an overall lack of commitment to the project on behalf of the states involved. The documents contain good theories and lists of existing programs, but no one seems to have really stepped up to the plate and aggressively addressed the issue of mandated pollution reduction aiming at achieving consistency with the Federal Clean Water Act which has been more or less ignored when convenient since 1972 when it was organized into its current incarnation.

Organizations and individual states have been trying to improve the Chesapeake Bay for decades, but making slow, irregular progress. A study by the USGS released September 15th proves that a unified effort is needed to make true positive headway towards clean water. New methods of analysis show that improvement in some rivers is negated by decline in others. If all the parties responsible are regularly informed of their neighbors’ processes and all parties are held to the same standards by a higher authority, then and only then will Bay water become substantially less of a risk and more of a resource.

In press releases, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) offers some criticism of the existing WIPs and encourages the public to take part in the open comment period, which will last from September 24 to November 8. There is a definite theme in the comments. In her review of the MD WIP, Jenn Aiosa, Senior Scientist at the CBF Maryland Office praises strengthening requirements for stormwater permits, but cites “lack of clear delineation of the changes in practices and programs necessary to guarantee that pollution reductions will occur.” From the CBF Pennsylvania Office, Matthew Ehrhart, Executive Director, chastises the PA WIP as “largely a summary of programs and initiatives that already exist.” He continues to exhort PA (and the rest of the involved parties) to work together in an attempt to remedy the damage civilization has inflicted on the Bay. Ehrhart reminds the states of their responsibility to contribute to a solution and of the potential consequences to be faced by those who shirk their duty.

The Virginia Office of CBF says some good theories are presented in the VA WIP, but calls the plan “stunningly deficient” in offering up any practical applications to execute said theories. Even before the Bay TMDL is finalized, laws are being proposed and debated that will impact the effectiveness of the document. The VA Farm Bureau is even now planning to send representatives to protest Senate Bill 1816, proposed modifications to the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009, legislation that obviously relates to the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. According to WTVR CBS 6 out of Richmond, VA, although they plan to protest "heavy handed" restoration initiatives "the Farm Bureau says Virginia farmers are committed to doing their share to clean the bay." They are supporting an alternative, House Resolution 5509, the Chesapeake Bay Program Reauthorization and Improvement Act. The Bay TMDL is supposed to equitably address the concerns and define the responsibilities of vastly conflicting interests; I don't see how it's going to manage, especially without fully vested involvement by the state governments involved.
Despite the convictions of groups like the CBF or the VA Farm Bureau, who are "in the know" as it were, I fear that there isn't enough force propelling the necessary changes into being.  I am amazed by the lack of general media coverage pertaining to this issue, considering how many millions of people will be impacted by legislature that regulates the Chesapeake Bay watershed. There needs to be a much stronger public outcry to draw attention to this project now, while it's in the early stages, so that no one can say later that they didn't know.  There are multiple public meetings planned in locations throughout the watershed. I can only hope that enough regular people attend to attract some media coverage. Then maybe the political machine will realize that people do care about their water and are willing to make changes to improve it.

And What If We Don't?

Part of my concern with the viability of this project is defining the repercussions for not abiding by the new rules. Who will be responsible for supplying enforcement? When will the ‘higher power’ step in? The EPA, with full initial support from all involved, created an aggressive timeline planning to yield a final document by December 2010 which would define benchmarks by which progress could be measured as early as 2012. This is a huge step towards achieving the goals set forth by the Chesapeake Executive Council to designing and implementing nutrient and sediment controls by 2025 (perhaps an enthusiastic response to new federal legislature due to the failure to achieve goals set out in Chesapeake 2000: A Watershed Partnership).

I found the punitive definitions in an official letter to the Secretary of Natural Resources from the Regional Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from December 2009. According to the letter, the six states involved and Washington, DC (States) will be responsible for formulating and enacting Watershed Implementation Plans which will lead them toward self-defined two-year-goals. If the EPA finds a State lacking in progress, they are prepared to: revamp the current regulation of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits to be more inclusive and under more stringent Federal oversight, pay more attention to all sources of pollutants in the watershed (including air pollution), base future funding on “demonstrated progress” towards reducing nutrient and sediment pollution, and hold localities to federal standards of water quality if the local laws aren’t adequate. If the States do not address their load allocations adequately in the drafts, EPA reserves the right to establish appropriate requirements in the final document. Also, they plan to potentially hold point sources (water treatment facilities, factories, etc.) responsible for more than their “fair” share of pollutants. New facilities or expansions of existing ones may be required to offset more pollutants than they anticipate discharging. EPA also may expect point sources to offset enough to compensate for non-point sources (agriculture, urban run-off, etc.) which will be unable to guarantee a reduction in their load.

Pollution Entering the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Photo: Chesapeake Foundation

Is this fair to the factory owner? Personally, I don’t think so, but I’m sure the dairy farmers of Pennsylvania will be relieved. Point sources are easy targets because they are so well-defined and can be monitored and measured relatively accurately. Non-point sources are where I feel more emphasis should be placed, if only because they pose a greater challenge and will take longer to address due to their nebulous nature.

Amish Dairy Farm
Photo: Ad Meskens

Welcome!

By September 1st, the EPA received state-specific Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) reports from New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Washington, DC (the state of Virginia requested an extension).  The EPA intends to create a Chesapeake Bay TMDL by the end of the year, encompassing all six states and DC, in order to create regulation governing pollution from point sources (factories, water and sewage treatment plants, etc.) and non-point sources (farms, construction projects, general use by the population). A successful end result would yield a regulatory document outlining enforceable policies that can be applied across state lines. Am I all in favor of improving water quality for the millions of people who live, work, and play in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed? ABSOLUTELY! Can it be done using this type of all-encompassing document? How will this new TMDL impact farmers and fishermen and men-on-the-street? Who will be responsible for enforcing the new policies and what sort of penalties will infractions elicit? These questions and more will be the focus of this blog as I follow the progress of the EPA in this epic endeavor.

The following video by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio provides a glimpse at the scope of this project. 
Do you think there's a chance it will be effective?