EPA says 5 states must fortify their Chesapeake Bay restoration plans or face federal action

EPA: 5 states must toughen Chesapeake Bay plans

BALTIMORE — Five of six states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed must strengthen their restoration plans or face tighter federal regulation, the EPA announced Friday.

Plans filed by the District of Columbia and Maryland represent a strong start but those of five other bay watershed states have gaps the EPA said are reducing confidence that they can cut pollution sufficiently to meet restoration goals. The other states are Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order last year placing the federal government in charge of a decades-long effort, once led by the states, that has so far failed to restore the largest U.S. estuary.

The six states are all at least partly in the bay’s watershed. Pollution that flows into many of their rivers and streams ultimately reaches the bay and encourages oxygen-robbing algae and sediment runoff in the ailing waterway.

The federal agency said its strategy, among other steps, calls for tightening of permits for wastewater treatment plants, storm water systems and other pollution sources.

EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin said in the statement the agency hoped the states would strengthen their plans to give greater assurance that their restoration goals would be met.

“EPA strongly prefers to achieve the necessary pollution reductions through the state plans rather than federal actions,” Garvin said.

The EPA released its plan Friday, after the states filed theirs in recent weeks.

Virginia filed late, drawing criticism from environmentalists. Virginia officials expressed concerns about the costs and science behind a strategy requiring sharp pollution cuts by farmers, sewage plant operators and others.

Garvin said in a conference call that the math for curbing pollutants did not add up for some state plans. In other cases, the plans did not fully spell out how reductions would be made to meet those limits, he said.

West Virginia, for example, was 18 percent over its nitrogen allocation, while Pennsylvania was 11 percent over its phosphorous allocation, according to EPA analyses of the state plans.

Secretary John Hanger with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said his state supports restoration efforts but has concerns.

“I’m very concerned about any threat by the EPA to revisit the permits that we and the EPA have approved to build water and sewer facilities on the Susquehanna,” he said of one of the major sources of fresh water entering the bay.

Much of the attention and restoration efforts have focused on farms and animal feeding operations, but EPA officials have said suburban and urban stormwater runoff is the only pollution source that is still expanding.

Online:

EPA Chesapeake Bay TMDL site: www.epa.gov/chesapeakebaytmdl/

Chesapeake Bay TMDL fact sheet: www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/pdf/pdf_chesbay/BayTMDLFactSheet8_6.pdf