Key environmental group seeks more action on Bay cleanup from feds, states

Sunset on the Chesapeake Bay. Photo from The Nature Conservancy.

A leading regional environmental group is using the federal government’s latest study on the health of the Chesapeake Bay to push for more aggressive action in 2025 and beyond.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released its latest biennial report charting progress on regionwide efforts to reduce pollution in the Bay. The EPA has already acknowledged that many of the states in the Bay watershed, including Maryland, are going to fall short of their targeted goals by the 2025 deadlines prescribed in a 2010 agreement with the federal government.

But the agency struck a hopeful note. It reported that the seven Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions – Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia –are making “incremental progress” toward their 2025 goals. The partnership has already implemented practices to achieve 100% of the targeted sediment reductions, and practices are in place to achieve 57% of the nitrogen reductions and 67% of the phosphorus reductions, the report said.

“Enforcement, engagement, investments and accountability – these efforts have helped us accelerate progress across the Bay and in all sectors – especially agriculture,” said a prepared statement from Adam Ortiz, the former Maryland environmental official who is now EPA Mid-Atlantic regional administrator.

Shortly after the latest results were released Wednesday, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group with operations in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., called for a more aggressive push for Bay health, noting that the original Bay cleanup agreement between the states and the federal government is due to sunset next year.

The CBF argued that policymakers should use the December meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council to chart the future for Bay pollution reduction. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is current chair of the executive council, which consists of the governors of the six states, the mayor of Washington, the EPA administrator and the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which is a group of regional legislators,

The foundation said Wednesday it is calling for the following actions at the December meeting:

• Attendance in person by each of the executive council members;
• A formal recommitment to maintaining the Bay restoration partnership, as well as meeting the pollution-reduction and other restoration goals already agreed to by executive council members; and,
• A commitment by the executive council to update the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement by the end of 2025 to address challenges identified by the latest science.

“While tremendous progress has been made, these evaluation reports demonstrate we still have a long way to go,” said CBF President and CEO Hilary Harp Falk. “As climate change, development, and population growth make finishing the job harder, we must be direct about the challenges ahead.

“The immediate next step is clear,” she said. “This December, the Chesapeake Bay’s six governors and federal leaders must recommit to working together and pledge to update the Chesapeake Bay Agreement by the end of 2025, including a new timeline for water quality goals that should be measured in years, not decades.”