A national treasure, the Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America, home to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals. The Chesapeake Bay watershed – the land that drains into the Bay – encompasses parts of six states and Washington, D.C. The Bay has been deteriorating since the 1930s, when water clarity, crab and oyster populations, and underwater bay grasses began to decline. Excess nutrients – phosphorus and nitrogen – and sediment runoff from agriculture, urban and suburban development, and sewage treatment plants caused the Bay’s cloudy waters, resulting in “dead zones” containing too little oxygen to support aquatic life. The Bay’s oyster population has been devastated, down to 2 percent of its average levels in the 1950s. The Bay’s famous blue crab populations are also low, about 30 percent below the annual average from 1968 to 2002.
One reason for this steady deterioration of the Bay is the failure of public officials across the region to enforce pollution standards. In 1983, in response to increasing public concern about the state of the Bay, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, New York, and Delaware joined with the EPA in creating what is now the nation's oldest estuary restoration program. Since then, the Bay Program partner states have made a series of commitments about their states' efforts to clean up the Bay. The most recent set of agreements was embodied inChesapeake 2000, which included more than 100 state commitments, organized under five broad restoration goals. For example, Chesapeake 2000 set a goal of correcting the Bay’s nutrient and sediment problems so as to remove the Bay from the impaired waters list under the Clean Water Act by 2010.
Unfortunately, most of the goals established in Chesapeake 2000 are not close to being met, and indeed, the Chesapeake Bay Health and Restoration Assessment, released by the Bay program in March 2008, concluded that “most of the Bay’s waters are degraded.” In 2007, the Bay was only 21 percent of the way toward meeting water quality goals. According to the Assessment, “based on available data, Bay program scientists project that little more than half of the pollution reduction efforts needed to achieve nutrient goals have been undertaken since 1985.”
EPA Steps Up; Will the States?
In May 2009, President Obama issued an Executive Order on Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration, declaring the Bay a national treasure and signaling that EPA will play a strong role in leading Bay cleanup. The order marked a dramatic departure, offering the promise f federal leadership on the Bay cleanup. The order:
Requires EPA to “examine how to make full use of its authorities under the Clean Water Act to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary waters”
Establishes a Federal Leadership Committee headed by EPA and including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Transportation to oversee program activities, including data management and reporting;
Requires the agencies identified as part of the Federal Leadership Committee to make recommendations within 120 days on the regulations, policies, and programs needed to restore Bay water quality, as well as on how resources under the Farm Bill should be targeted to better protect Bay waters;
Requires the Federal Leadership Committee to define goals for the Bay and milestones for meeting the goals, as well as specific programs and strategies for meeting the goals; and
Requires an independent evaluator to “strengthen accountability” and report periodically on progress made toward meeting Bay-wide goals and to ensure these reports are made public and posted on EPA’s website.
In May 2010, as many of the required actions under the order began to come due, CPR issued a briefing paper offering a series of recommendations for assessing progress and recommending follow-up.
Then in August 2010, CPR issued a set of metrics for evaluating state efforts in the next important phase in the process -- the development of Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs), intended to demonstrate how they will meet the pollution targets in the applicable Total Maximum Daily Load standards. In the fall, the states and the District submitted their WIPs to EPA, and in January 2011, CPR's panel of water quality experts (Member Scholars William Andreen, Robert Glicksman and Rena Steinzor, and CPR staffers Shana Jones and Yee Huang) evaluated them, applying the August criteria. Their overall conclusion: The states plans were a disappointment. As Rena Steinzor said in releasing MIssing the Mark in the Chesapeake Bay: A Report Card for the Phase I Watershed Implementation Plans (CPR White Paper 1102 -- press release), "The EPA asked the states to come up with concrete road maps to reduce pollution, but instead the states submitted spotty plans that do not tell us clearly enough how they will reduce the pollution that damages the Bay. They must do better." With CPR's report were detailed assessment of each of the jurisdictions' plans: Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
More on CPR's work on the Chesapeake Bay:
Annapolis Capital Op-Ed. Read Bay Cleanup Needs Consequences, by Rena Steinzor, published in the March 24, 2012 Annapolis Capital.
Steinzor on WYPR. Listen to CPR President Rena Steinzor discuss the Abell Report article and the future of the Bay on WYPR Radio in Baltimore, with Maryland State Department of the Environment director Robert Summers and Rona Kobell of the Bay Journal.
Not So Fine: CPR Report on Clean Water Fees and Fines. Among the states in the Chesapeake Bay region, Maryland enjoys a reputation for being the most aggressive in enforcing Bay pollution requirements. You wouldn't know it from the state's structure for pollution fines and fees, according to a CPR report, Back to Basics: An Agenda for the Maryland General Assembly to Protect the Environment, by CPR President Rena Steinzor and CPR Policy Analyst Yee Huang. The paper recommends that the state’s legislature better protect the environment by providing MDE with the fees and fines structure it needs to operate its programs and to restore the full deterrent effect of its enforcement program. The paper was released at "A Time for Action: Accountability in the Chesapeake," a conference cosponsored by CPR and the Univeristy of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law on October 21, 2011.
One Year After the Obama Order. In May 2010, CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, Executive Director Shana Jones and Policy Analyst Yee Huang issued a briefing paper offering recommendations for assessing progress on state clean-up efforts. Read the briefing paperand the blog post.
MDE and the CWA. Read a report by CPR Member Scholar Robert Glicksman and Policy Analyst Yee Huang, commissioned by the Abell Foundation, on the Maryland Department of the Environment's enforcement of the Clean Water Act, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in Maryland Falling Short (7.9 meg download), CPR White Paper 1004. Or read the news release. Read an article on the report in the Abell Foundation's newsletter.
The Cardin Bill. In November, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) offered legislation to require cleanup of the Bay. CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, Executive Director Shana Jones and Policy Analyst Yee Huang applauded the bill, but offered suggestions for tightening key elements in a November 9 letter to Cardin. Yee Huang described the letter in a CPRBlog posting. On November 23, 2009, a distringuished group of scholars, including a number of CPR Member Scholars, sent a memo to Senator Cardin assessing the constitutionality of the proposed measure, and debunking constitutional arguments by opponents of tighter cleanup requirements. Read the memo. Read the bios of the signers. Read Yee Huang's blog post on the memo.
Comments on Draft Water Quality Report for the Chesapeake Bay. CPR Policy Analyst Yee Huang's comments on EPA's draft 202a Water Quality Report & 203 Strategy for the Chesapeake Bay, January 8, 2010.
Blog Posts. CPR Scholars and staff have blogged extensively on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort, discussing the problem itself, the failure of the states' efforts to clean it up, the Obama Administration's initiatives, and proposed legislative fixes. Read the posts, here.
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