Our Bay: The politics of cleaning the bay

For years, environmentalists have lamented that the federal government didn't seem to be doing much when it comes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

In the last year, however, the feds have stepped up their game and made promises to do better. But the steps the federal government is taking can be confusing.

First came President Barack Obama's executive order in May, directing federal agencies to look into a host of ways that they could contribute more to bay cleanup.

Then, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started the process of developing an enforceable "pollution budget" for the bay, to replace the previously voluntary pollution reduction goals.

And just this fall, U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin introduced a bill in Congress aimed at beefing up the government-led bay cleanup.

"There's a lot of overlap between all of these initiatives," acknowledged Beth McGee of the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which has been prodding the EPA for more action and supporting Cardin's bill.

McGee said the bay foundation sees these steps as moving in the right direction. There's hope, she said, that one, two or all three actions could make a difference.

"I think this is our moment," she said. "It really is an incredible opportunity."

Gerald Winegrad, a former state senator from Annapolis, teaches a course on bay restoration at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy in College Park. He's revised his course to reflect the recent federal actions.

But he's not sure any of the federal actions are going to work to restore the bay's health.

He said the executive order and the drawn-out process to establish a pollution budget for the bay are just the latest in decades of delays in cleaning up the bay. He acknowledges his outlook is "a little gloomy."

"We're back to the same-old, same-old politics of postponement," Winegrad said. "What's needed is much bolder strokes and they're needed now. Each month this is postponed, it becomes more costly."

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EXECUTIVE ORDER

When governors from the bay-area states met at Virginia's Mount Vernon in May, their promises and plans were overshadowed by an executive order from President Barack Obama.

Executive Order No. 13508 is an eight-page document that charges federal agencies to do a better job on bay cleanup.

The president's order declared the bay 'a national treasure' and acknowledged that there needs to be a 'renewed commitment' to the clean-up effort.

In response to the order, federal agencies issued a series of reports in September that are now being consolidated.

Many of the promises in the agency reports are minor, but the big promises came from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA promised to get its new pollution budget for the bay completed and to penalize the states if they don't meet the budget.

The EPA also pledged to look into beefing up regulations, specifically mentioning a need to boost oversight of factory farms and broaden the scope of stormwater-discharge permits.

There will be a public-comment period on the executive order-inspired plans in the coming months. The plans will be finalized by May 2010, one year after the executive order was issued.

Bay advocates have said it's significant that the president found the bay important enough to mention in an executive order. But they agree the bay's 'pollution budget' and legislation in Congress will likely do more to speed up the cleanup.

While there's overlap among all three, scientist Beth McGee of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said the executive order is the weakest of the three.

For information on the executive order, visit http://executiveorder.chesapeakebay.net.

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POLLUTION BUDGET

The Environmental Protection Agency is working on a 'pollution budget' or 'pollution diet' for the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed, which is all the land that drains into the bay and its rivers.

The pollution plan's formal name is 'Total Maximum Daily Load,' or TMDL.

ight now, the EPA is coming up with total pollution loadings for nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment and parceling those amounts out to the states.

Each state will be responsible for coming up with a way to get down to those pollution levels by 2025. The plans will be called 'implementation plans.'

The plans could include details as fine as setting levels of pollution from certain sewage plants or from stormwater from certain cities or rural areas that drain into rivers.

If the states come up with subpar plans, or if they don't reduce pollution down to the allowable levels, the EPA can step in with sanctions. That could include pulling federal money or the EPA taking over authority for issuing certain environmental permits.

The pollution budget will replace the previously voluntary targets for pollution reductions that have been missed time and time again.

The pollution budget was spurred by a 1990s lawsuit from advocacy groups. As part of a settlement, the EPA agreed to keep trying voluntary pollution programs until 2010. If the bay wasn't cleaned up by 2010 — and it won't be — the settlement called for the creation of the formal, enforceable pollution budget.

Meetings about the pollution budget are scheduled around the watershed through the end of the year.

The two closest meetings are at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 8 at Maryland Department of the Environment headquarters in Baltimore and at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 11 at Chesapeake College on the Eastern Shore.

For more information on the pollution budget, visit www.epa.gov/chesapeakebaytmdl.

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CARDIN BILL

U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin is pushing a bill in Congress that he's calling the 'Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009.'

The bill takes many of the concepts from the pollution budget and the executive order and puts the force of law behind them. Some like this approach, because laws are difficult to undo, while promises from federal governments can be wiped out with a change of administration.

'It would be huge. It would be putting into law something we're working on already,' said Beth McGee a scientist with the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The foundation had a hand in helping Cardin's staff write the bill.

Cardin adds some extra ideas as well, on top of mimicking the executive order and the pollution budget. Cardin would spend $1.5 billion to fixing bad stormwater controls, send more money to help farms with pollution controls, ban the introduction of the 'Asian' oyster into the bay and study menhaden, a fish species that is a key part of the food chain but is subject to a huge commercial harvest.

Cardin's bill also would set up a trading program for nutrient pollution, kind of like the cap-and-trade plans for air emissions that cause climate change.

Under Cardin's trading program, for example, a cash-strapped city that needs to reduce pollution from a sewage plant might be able to instead pay a farmer to go above-and-beyond with his pollution controls.

Cardin expects to have hearings soon on the bill, as he is chairman of the Senate subcommittee where it has been assigned. He said the bill might not pass on its own and could be attached to another piece of legislation.

To read the text of the bill, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and enter 'S1816' or 'HR3852.'