Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

(Posted by Gerald Winegrad.)

Question: What are just some of the consequences of unchecked agricultural runoff in the Chesapeake Bay?

Answer: Skin-devouring diseases, destroyed oyster bars, and severely degraded water quality.

Question: Which large corporate agricultural lobbying organizations represent the major pollution sources causing these debilitating effects on the Chesapeake?

Answer: The American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Chicken Council, the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association, the Fertilizer Institute, the National Turkey Federation, the National Pork Producers Council, the National Corn Growers Association, and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

Question: Which corporate agricultural lobbying organizations have pitched in together to help cut their excessive nutrient and sediment pollution that is choking the Bay?

Answer: None. Instead, these groups have joined together as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in January to block the Chesapeake Bay restoration plan set by the EPA under the Clean Water Act in December and agreed upon by the states after years of extensive collaboration and hearings in all Bay states.

Yes, that’s right: even though agriculture contributes 43 percent of the nitrogen, 45 percent of the phosphorus, and 60 percent of the sediment to the Bay, more than any other source of these three key Bay-choking pollutants, these ag giants want to continue to soak the American taxpayer for billions of dollars in grants and subsidies without being held accountable.

Question: What specifically is the corporate agricultural lobby trying to do in this suit?

Answer: By filing suit in the federal district court in Harrisburg, Penn., the corporate agricultural lobby is trying to kill the detailed pollution diet set for the Bay and each Bay state that sets specific limits for nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. It’s after the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) which mandates a 25 percent reduction in nitrogen, 24 percent reduction in phosphorus, and 20 percent reduction in sediment by 2025. These pollution limits are further divided by jurisdiction and major river basin.

Since agriculture is the biggest polluter and since its pollution is the cheapest to stop, agriculture would come under mandated pollution reductions. Big Ag does not like such reductions being required—they prefer the failed voluntary system—which we’ve had for years—where the federal and state governments give them hundreds of millions of dollars not to pollute with little accountability.

Question: Is the agricultural lobby’s assertion true that there wasn’t enough input into and evaluation of were put into the EPA’s TMDL Bay pollution reduction efforts?

Answer: Absolutely not! Since 2005, the six Bay states and the District of Columbia have been actively involved in decision-making to develop the TMDL that is required by the Clean Water Act. The Bay states knew they were failing to meet the pollution reductions they agreed upon in the 2000 Bay Agreement. During the October 2007 meeting of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Principals’ Staff Committee, the Bay watershed jurisdictions and EPA agreed that EPA would establish the TMDL. Since 2008, EPA has sent official letters to the jurisdictions detailing all facets of the TMDL, including nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment limits. During 2009 and 2010, a highly-transparent and engaging public process was used to develop and seek input into the TMDL. The outreach effort included: hundreds of meetings with interested groups; two rounds of public meetings in each Bay jurisdiction; stakeholder sessions and media interviews in all seven jurisdictions; a dedicated EPA website; a series of monthly interactive webinars; notices published in the Federal Register with opportunity for public comments; and a close working relationship with Chesapeake Bay Program committees representing the farming community, local governments, the public, and the scientific community. Agricultural interests were well-represented and fully aware of this process and integrally involved.

Question: How do you respond to Big Ag’s assertions that the TMDL is flawed and the computer data is not accurate?

Answer: Development of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL required extensive knowledge of the stream flow characteristics of the watershed, sources of pollution, distribution and acreage of the various land uses, appropriate best management practices, the transport and fate of pollutants, precipitation data and many other factors. The EPA used its sophisticated computer system, actual data, and modeling that has been in use for years to guide the Bay restoration efforts. All Bay jurisdictions had input into this process and the states and affected interests, including agriculture, were well aware of this process and use of data. In fact, much of the data on farm pollution was verified by a recent study by the USDA.

Question: What else has the agricultural lobby done to block mandatory efforts to curb Bay pollution?

Answer: Ag groups, including the plaintiffs mentioned above, have consistently fought ag pollution curbs in Congress, the state legislatures, and by state regulators. For example, the Cardin Chesapeake Bay Restoration bill, even though significantly weakened and then supported by key Republicans, was defeated at the end of last year by the ag lobby. So extensive is their grip on the regulatory process that back in the 1980’s Big Ag achieved an exemption from all enforcement of the Clean Water Act against its nonpoint source pollution except for large animal operations (CAFOs).

Question: What must be done to overcome the agricultural lobby blockage of mandatory controls of farm pollution that are so extremely critical to restoring the Bay?

Answer: The federal and state governments, including the Congress and state legislatures, must overcome the ag lobby and impose meaningful measures requiring farm pollution reductions, whether from chicken manure or nitrogen fertilizer. Our Bay Action Plan details what needs to be done. The environmental community must act to develop and support the legislation and regulations detailed in our Bay Action Plan.

Instead of being occupied with off-shore wind turbines, new septic tanks, and waste-to-energy plants (as during Maryland’s last session), focus should be on the #1 Bay pollution source: agriculture. Without meaningful change, 27 more years will pass with the Bay becoming a dead body of water.

Share on Facebook

(Posted by Jeanne McCann.)

Settle in, grab some popcorn, put your feet up and prepare to be outraged when you hear what former Maryland State Sen. Gerald Winegrad, architect of the 25-step Chesapeake Bay Action Plan, has to say in this excellent public presentation at Quiet Waters Park, Annapolis, Maryland, on May 19, 2011. Sen. Winegrad doesn’t mince words when it comes to talking about what must be done if we have any hope of restoring the Chesapeake Bay. It’s not a pretty picture.

(Video shot by David Joyner, under Creative Commons license).

(Playing time: 1:40:00. You can also watch this video in two parts:
Part One;
Part Two.)

Share on Facebook

(Posted by Bob Gallagher.)

After decades of dissembling and broken promises, the President’s Executive Order 13508 and the implementing “pollution diet” proposed by the EPA represent the best chance we have had in a generation to actually start cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that corporate polluters have ramped up their opposition to the pollution diet to unprecedented levels to include massive spending on media advertising, lobbying, campaign contributions, litigation and scientific dirty tricks.

During one 60-minute segment of television news programming, I recently saw four oil and gas industry public relations ads, including one extolling the benefits of “fracking,” the process of extracting natural gas by injecting million of gallons of water and toxic chemicals into the ground. A legislative measure offered by Representative Goodlatte (R-Virginia) would have stripped the EPA of funding to implement the pollution diet. The Farm Bureau has sued EPA to prevent implementation of the pollution diet. Corporate polluters have funded bogus studies to undermine the science behind everything from climate change to the consequences of fracking.

Now some congressional beneficiaries of corporate polluters’ first amendment largess would require EPA to do a cost-benefit analysis of the pollution diet. It would not analyze the cost to the public of continued pollution of the bay and its tributaries. Rather, it would seek to determine whether the cost of implementation by EPA of the pollution diet would outweigh the value of the benefits of the regulation.

The idea is breathtaking in its perversity. Would we require the prosecutor of Bernie Madoff to demonstrate that the costs of investigation and prosecution would be less than any fine expected to be recovered? We are talking about enforcing a law that protects a public treasure.

The bay is owned by all of us. The Clean Water Act recognizes that by requiring that pollution of our waters stop unless allowed by a permit. In the decades since its passage, polluters have undermined the CWA by gutting funding for implementation and enforcement. Some point to this as the reason we have been unable to make the needed progress in improving the Bay’s health. Polluters’ attack on the pollution diet is a continuation of those efforts to undermine the requirements of the CWA.

Not even the worst corporate polluters pollute for pollution’s sake. It is all about the money. It is not about the role of government. Corporate polluters are happy to accept corporate welfare. It is not about states’ rights. Polluters frequently choose the regulator that brings the most benefit to their bottom line. It is not about jobs. We will have a stronger economy and more jobs with a clean bay. The only principle behind opposition to the pollution diet is money.

Corporate polluters do not expect indefinitely to avoid rules that will restrict their ability to pollute the bay. All they need to do is delay them. The longer they delay them, the more money they make by avoiding the costs of pollution reduction.

Historically, American corporations have made money and thrived by improving processes and productivity, opening new markets, fostering innovation and adapting new technologies. These profits are not easily achieved. They require hard work and risk of investment capital.

Arbitrage is profiting through the exploitation of an imbalance in the market with little or no risk. In this age of deregulation, corporations increasingly seek profits through creating or maintaining regulatory imbalances in the markets. The opportunities for huge imbalances, like those created by regulatory monopolies, have diminished. But, opportunities to arbitrage regulatory costs can yield huge risk-free profits. Even after spending millions of dollars on public relations advertising, lobbyists and campaign contributions, corporate agriculture—including corporate operators of factory farms—will reap millions in profits from delaying the day when they will have to clean up their animal waste, stop spreading arsenic and other contaminants on the land and stop releasing millions of tons of contaminated sediments into our rivers and streams. Other industries reap similar benefits from delay.

It is much easier to boost the corporate bottom line by environmental arbitrage—by passing major costs of production to taxpayers and the next generation through the delay of environmental regulation—than it is to create value through increased productivity and innovation. Unless we require that the pollution diet be implemented without delay, we will permit corporate polluters, through environmental arbitrage, to continue to steal a public treasure a penny at a time. That is the real cost of delay.

Share on Facebook

(Posted by Fred Tutman.)

On May 19, 2011, the 18 Waterkeepers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and other Maryland-based Waterkeepers, staged an historic event in Annapolis at the City Dock. Firing up their patrol boats, the Riverkeepers (and one Coastkeeper), and a crowd of supporters motored into Annapolis in a Flotilla of Boats in order to make a point. On the day the Governor was signing (or vetoing) new legislation in the Maryland statehouse, this group of water advocates wanted to make sure that both the public and the legislature understood that time is running out to save our waterways and that it will take deeds–not just promise–in order to bring about necessary change. (“Riverkeepers decry ‘incremental solutions,’” Hometown Annapolis, May 23, 2011.)

The 2011 Maryland General Assembly session, recently concluded, had so much potential and so much promise to alleviate the many problems facing the environment and our declining waterways. And yet, instead of courageous and zealous action on the part of the legislature to champion the environment, we repeatedly heard and saw fear, paralysis and procrastination. Specifically, fear about the economy and jobs, in spite of the steady decline of the biggest economic assets one could ever have—clean water, air and land.

It is shocking that one could separate the need for a clean planet from the comparable need for a healthy economy. They are plainly one and the same. Both our environment and our economy are plagued by Bay dead zones, health hazards from toxics, an alarming decline in fisheries, lost habitat, shrinking open space, and dirty water runoff that promises a dark and bleak future unless we take action NOW to turn things around. The Waterkeepers Chesapeake who serve as the eyes, ears and voices of our waterways took the opportunity to express our anger, our disappointment and our demands for real outcomes and strong leadership on the environment from the politicians we elected and entrusted with these vital issues. Public service is a noble pursuit, deserving of our respect and support, but one must produce the results needed to carry the day and bring about change in order to remain in public office. One cannot expect to remain in office by failing to deliver on the core duties and obligations owed the public.

As for the Flotilla, I was enormously proud at the show of solidarity; the colorful spectacle of a citizen’s armada of boats expertly handled under storm clouds overhead, piloted by advocates who have made tremendous sacrifices to stand up for our water. Waterkeepers serve as the eyes, ears and voices of our watersheds and our message was that the Legislature has an obligation to advance solutions that are proportional to the daunting problems facing the environment. Not incremental, tepid or symbolic gestures, but giant strides toward goals that will solve problems that have been known all too well for decades. If my house was on fire and you brought a water pistol in order to help, I would not give you accolades for doing a good job. We are facing serious environmental problems statewide and what got passed this last time round, barely warrants a press release and does not represent serious progress or even good faith.

Consider the Waterkeeper press conference a legislative report card in an off-election year! Had this been an election year, I assure you the environmental vote would have brought the winds of change to Annapolis like a hurricane.

Undeniably, the citizens of Maryland did not elect politicians to represent us because we wanted to defer problems to future voters or to future legislatures. It is not a stretch to consider that many of us actually want genuine progress towards goals that have been in front of us for decades. Swimmable, fishable waters, clean air, protected land. We want these things not as a favor, or as alms—but because we are entitled and because it is the right thing to do.

In the end, the Waterkeepers and their boosters do not really care if you have a good legislative environmental score card from some group or other (the usual excuse I hear from politicians who want to authenticate their “green” credentials in the face of low performance). It doesn’t even matter if you have great intentions for the environment. Instead, it matters only that you can deliver the goods. As advocates, as voters and as citizens we stood united at the City Dock to make it clear that we insist on deeds, not unfulfilled promises. We demand solutions, not regrets. One earns the role of leadership in Annapolis or anywhere else, by walking the walk, not by just talking the talk. It is not about being a friendly face for the environment, it is truly about passing tough laws (and of course enforcing them). Guess what? The environmental problems won’t go away once the gavel of sine die has resonated, they linger on, causing real suffering, and genuine economic and social problems until the day something is actually done.

So, this is not a time to celebrate the successful end of a legislative session, but instead to start the process of making amends for the missed opportunities, for egregious failures and for deferring tough problems to yet another day. This last session was on credit. In the next one, we expect results.

Share on Facebook

(Posted by W. Tayloe Murphy Jr.)

Twenty-five years ago, in a speech to the Virginia Seafood Council, I reminded the audience that when it comes to pollution, there truly is no free lunch. Last year, when states were submitting their Chesapeake Bay cleanup plans to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, amidst a deluge of complaints about the fed’s heavy-handedness, I found myself repeating my warning in an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

But it seems like some folks have yet to get the message. So here I am again.

For years, I told the group back in 1985, we have cheerfully operated under the assumption that we could all operate outside the laws of nature and economics. Thus, in the “good old days,” cities disposed of their inadequately treated sewage for “free.” Factories poured industrial wastes into the Bay and its tributaries at little or no cost—to them.

However, I said, even though the costs of such activities did not show upon any ledger book, they were in fact being paid for, with heavy interest.

The downstream municipality forced to find another water supply, the waterman facing condemned oyster grounds and dwindling stocks, the tourist campground and charter businesses whose customers were driven away by polluted water and depleted fishing—all of them picked up the tab for these “free” activities.

I said that we need to keep this in mind as programs to protect the Bay begin to pinch powerful special interests. As complaints about costs come in from this group or that group and as legislators begin to backpedal, fearing the reaction from various constituencies, we need to remember that each exemption and each exception simply transfers the cost from someone whose responsibility it should be to someone else—most often to the individual whose livelihood depends on a healthy bay.

Each time this happens we grant a subsidy to the favored group just as surely as if we took money from the public coffers and handed it over. Only, this type of subsidy is even more dangerous than the monetary kind, because it is paid in a currency that is not replaceable—the very life and health of the Bay.

Thus, for those whose livelihoods depend on the Bay, this type of subsidy is fatal.

And although there’s widespread consensus on the need to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, we keep getting stuck when it comes to demanding substantive changes by those most responsible for its degradation.

Today, the U.S. EPA and the Bay states are part of an aggressive Bay cleanup effort that calls upon everyone—farmers, cities, developers, factories, wastewater treatment plants, homeowners—to reduce pollution so the Bay can recover from decades of abuse.

The strategy levels the playing field for everyone responsible for the Bay’s pollution problems and demands action and accountability from all stakeholders.

Yet even as Bay states were submitting plans and goals for meeting science-based water quality standards, farm leaders, builders, and some local and state government officials were already complaining about having to pay more to reduce their pollution. They seem oblivious to the thousands of citizens who already are paying the price for someone else’s “free lunch”:

• The number of Bay watermen declined from 14,000 to 1,500 between 1993 and 2009. Thousands of watermen have sold their boats and gear because they no longer can earn a living on the water.
• Diseases and poor water quality have decimated the Bay’s native oyster population, a loss to the economies of Virginia and Maryland estimated at more than $4 billion.
• Despite recent comebacks, the bay’s crabbing industry lost 4,500 jobs between 1998 and 2006.

Just as Americans have rightly insisted that BP pay the cost of cleaning up its pollution in the Gulf of Mexico, we must insist that polluters pay the cost of cleaning up their pollution in the Bay. Not to do so is unfair, unsustainable, and, as history has shown, a policy for failure.

I’m a longtime Bay advocate. While I am excited about the genuine momentum of an unprecedented state-EPA partnership that promises finally to save the Bay, I am troubled because I fear the complaints we are again hearing from special interests may frustrate the Bay’s best and, perhaps, last chance for restoration.

I urge Bay state leaders to stop handing out “free lunches” to the polluters and hold them accountable. A truly restored Chesapeake Bay will redound to everyone’s benefit, boosting jobs, the economy, and quality of life. Twenty-five years hence, let us not be recycling old speeches; let us instead be celebrating a clean Bay.

W. Tayloe Murphy Jr. served 20 years in the Virginia House of Delegates, was chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, is a former Virginia secretary of natural resources, and serves on the board of trustees of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Contact him at tayloe.murphy@verizon.net.

Share on Facebook