An Association of Community Associations
Established: October 9th 1990
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An Association of Community Associations |
After failing repeatedly over the last 25 years to meet self-imposed deadlines for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, state and federal officials appear ready to set a new-drop dead date — 16 years from now. But they say what really matters is what they pledge to do in the next two years.
Top aides to the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia and other officials involved in the cleanup effort have recommended that 2025 be set as the ultimate "end date" for reducing pollution so that the water is fit again for the fish, crabs and oysters that used to teem in America's largest estuary, according to officials involved in the decision. Officials said they did not want to be quoted, upstaging decisions to be announced on Tuesday.
Gov. Martin O'Malley, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and officials from the District of Columbia and four other states plan to gather Tuesday at Mount Vernon in Virginia to chart what they have vowed will be a more aggressive and more accountable course for restoring the bay. In addition to a new cleanup deadline, the leaders are expected to announce steps they plan to take in the next two years to accelerate the cleanup and achieve interim goals, or "milestones." And in an acknowledgment that past cleanup pledges have not been met, they will agree to have an independent body of experts track their progress.
Though some parts of the bay are seeing improvements, with underwater grasses returning and water clearing, much of it remains in poor and even declining health. Farm runoff is the leading source of nutrient pollution fouling the bay, but other major sources are runoff from urban and suburban development and fallout from power plants and motor vehicle exhaust.
Leaders of the bay restoration acknowledged more than a year ago that they would not meet the 2010 cleanup target date that had been set nearly a decade ago. It was the second deadline missed — in 1987, officials had picked 2000 as their first goal for completing the restoration effort.
Last fall, when bay leaders gathered in Washington, O'Malley and Kaine both had argued for an earlier cleanup date - 2020. But Pennsylvania officials and others had balked, saying they wanted a later date. As recently as a few weeks ago, several top aides had been arguing for delaying the setting of a new deadline for another year, in part to allow for more time to evaluate new data suggesting that the cleanup may require even more pollution reductions than previously thought.
But in recent days, officials have settled on 2025 as a date most could live with, according to those involved in the deliberation, though states would be free to try to reach their cleanup goals even earlier.
"We need to be realistically aggressive, and I think we will be," said L. Preston Bryant Jr., Virginia's secretary of natural resources, when asked about the 2025 deadline. Bryant's governor, Kaine, is chairman this year of the leadership council overseeing the bay restoration effort.
At the current pace of cleanup, some estimate pollution could not be reduced enough to shrink the bay's oxygen-starved "dead zone" until 2037 or later.
Analysis by EPA officials of the cleanup progress to date indicates that Maryland may have to double the pace at which it has been reducing nutrient and sediment pollution to reach the levels that scientists say are needed to let fish and other aquatic life thrive in the bay. But other states, notably Virginia, may have to accelerate their cleanup even more, perhaps tripling their recent reductions.
A spokesman for O'Malley declined to comment on the deadline, or to discuss in advance what the governor will propose to accelerate cleanup of Maryland's rivers feeding into the bay.
"We need to … work toward furthering those tools that help improve the quality of the bay and changing course on those that don't," said Shaun Adamec, O'Malley's press secretary.
Bay advocates, who have been calling for a more aggressive cleanup effort, say they believe setting short-term goals are more important now than the long-term deadline — because elected officials can then be held accountable during their term in office.
"They haven't achieved the long-term deadlines they've set for themselves in the past," noted Beth McGee, a senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Advocates also are hopeful that outside monitoring of the bay effort, to be performed by the National Academy of Sciences, will help bring added public pressure on politicians to fulfill their promises. But they say they have yet to see how the states or federal government propose to accelerate the cleanup, or what they'll do if they can't come up with the funding or reduce pollution enough through existing laws and programs.
"The devil is in the details, and the details aren't available yet," said Ann Pesiri Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which represents legislators from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
State officials and environmentalists alike say they hope the federal government under the Obama administration will play a more active role in pushing the bay restoration — using EPA's regulatory authority to deny permits for new growth, for instance, if states do not meet their cleanup goals. EPA officials say they are prepared to impose unspecified "consequences" if state efforts fall short, but likely won't outline what those might be until later this year.
