Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

(Posted by Roy Hoagland.)

The Pew Environmental Group recently issued a report, “Big Chicken: Pollution and Industrial Production in America,” which included a focus on the pollution problems contributed by agriculture to the Chesapeake Bay. Agribusiness interests quickly condemned the report, claiming that as of today, the industry was both “diligent and innovative” in its work to achieve a healthier environment.

The most visible organizations responding to the Pew report were the National Chicken Council and the US Poultry & Egg Association—two of the organizations now leading the fight to undermine the current initiative to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

The current clean up initiative, an ecosystem-wide “pollution diet,” is recognized as one of the most promising ecological restoration efforts in the nation. Yet the Chicken Council and the Poultry & Egg Association are now, in their pursuit of “diligent and innovative” environmental stewardship, arguing in federal court and in Congress that we should shut down this unprecedented state-federal partnership to achieve a healthy Chesapeake Bay.

What hypocrisy.

Monitoring data and modeling results establish that agriculture is the number one source of nutrient and sediment pollution to the Chesapeake Bay, accounting for nearly 40 percent of nitrogen pollution and approximately 45 percent and 60 percent of the phosphorus and sediment pollution, respectively.

During my tenure as vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, we helped deliver literally millions of dollars to farmers across the Chesapeake Bay watershed for assistance in implementing pollution reduction efforts. In partnership with others, we not only helped lead a successful effort to obtain the largest amount of federal Farm Bill dollars ever for those working in agriculture in the watershed, but we also worked side by side with farmers on the ground from the New York/Pennsylvania border to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to improve barnyard management, establish streamside buffers, employ precision feeding, and implement many other progressive changes.

Conservation organizations across the watershed, from national groups like The Nature Conservancy to regional organizations like the Foundation to state agencies like the Chesapeake Bay Commission to local organizations like the James River Association have worked hard to help provide farmers with assistance and as a result more farmers are doing the right thing. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the industry as a whole has not done enough. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture says as much.
If we are to accomplish the restoration of local rivers and streams across the watershed and in the Chesapeake Bay itself, agribusiness, as well as developers, homeowners, and other pollution sectors, must do more. Thus, the need to put the Chesapeake Bay on a pollution diet—an ecosystem-wide pollution reduction initiative that calls on agriculture and others to cut back on the pollution they are feeding to the Bay.

For the Chicken Council and the Poultry & Egg Association to argue that its industry is being “diligent” in its Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts while attempting to stymie this pollution diet, the only legitimate initiative for restoring the Bay, is, quite frankly, a lot of chicken poop.

Roy A. Hoagland is the owner and operator of HOPE Impacts, LLC, Richmond, Virginia. HOPE Impacts works with nonprofits, funders, and governmental agencies on environmental matters, including work on reducing pollution from agricultural sources. He has served as co-chair of America’s Great Waters Coalition, chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program, and vice president of Environmental Protection and Restoration for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

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(Posted by Mary Ann Lisanti.)

Two decades ago, when the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort began, the leadership of local officials was viewed as nice, but not essential. Times have changed. Today, with the deadline to develop local Watershed Implementation Plans looming, it’s clear that when it comes to improving the health of our local rivers and streams, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay, the elected leaders of town and county governments and the appointed leaders of local soil conservation, storm water, and planning districts throughout the Chesapeake watershed will be the ones to make it happen.

However, the feedback coming from local government is simply this: They need information, direction, and flexibility in choosing approaches, otherwise budget challenges will keep them from reaching their goals.

As the chair of the Local Government Advisory Committee to the Chesapeake Executive Council, it has become clear to me that there is a real disconnect between the expectations of the federal officials managing the new Chesapeake TMDL process and the understanding of many of the local government officials now charged with developing the plans to implement watershed improvements.

This is a critical moment that calls for clear, direct communication to local governments so local officials understand what they need to do, and understand the benefits their work holds for their communities.

Our committee, called LGAC for short, has begun to address this need. We worked with private funders and communication professionals to develop an initial education piece for local government leaders. We plan to follow it with more information. Last week in Richmond I presented the need for communication to the Chesapeake Executive Council and the Bay Program leaders. We now have their attention, but we need more help to get out the word.

There are 1,800 units of local governments in the watershed and nearly 11,000 elected officials. Reaching them all will take time. Individuals can help. The senior Bay leaders who created this blog and the Chesapeake Bay Action Plan can be of particular help. You are all influential, committed, and have been for a long time. You understand how the actions taken locally benefit not just that community, but the system as a whole. You can help us reach leaders in your communities.

Download a copy of our report, Our Waters, Our Towns, and put it in the hands of local elected officials and influential community leaders. Help us fill the information gap. Help them understand what they need to do, and how it will benefit them and their community.

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For those who dream of a chemical-free Cheasapeake Bay, this guest post from Safelawns.org founder Paul Tukey demonstrates that dreams can, in fact, come true.

The topic of what, exactly, facilitates real change in human habits has been the focus of behavioral scientists, political pundits and clever marketers for as long as we’ve had a mature free market system in North America. In the non-profit world, where resources are scarce, almost by definition, we’re constantly looking for ways to get our message its proverbial 15 minutes in the limelight. Often, we’re lucky to grab 15 seconds of someone’s attention, so our message better damn well be clear.

At SafeLawns.org, founded in Maine and Washington, D.C., in 2006 to reduce the toxic load on our backyard lawns, business and college campuses and public parks, we’ve taken many of our cues from a lone Canadian doctor. A quarter century ago, when Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist, heard the renowned author and activist Gordon Sinclair say that “letters to the editor are free,” she took it to heart.

Her relentless six-year letter-writing campaign and monthly visits to town meetings in her village of Hudson, Quebec, led her town to become the first municipality in the world to ban the applications of lawn and garden pesticides — the insect and weed killers that are applied by the millions of pounds in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and elsewhere in United States. By then it was 1991; she had started writing those letters, not just to her own newspaper, but to papers regionally and nationally, back in 1985 when she discovered a common lawn weed killer, 2,4-D, in the bloodstream of a very ill patient. And she always made a point of dropping off copies of her letters with her local mayor and town clerk.

The lawn chemical industry, both in the U.S. and Canada, immediately mobilized against the town and doctor. In Washington, the chemical industry funded the lobby group RISE (the Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment) to convince people that those lawn pesticides and chemical fertilizers were not a threat to people, pets or the environment. In Canada, the billion-dollar industry sued the little town of Hudson with its 5,200 residents.

In retrospect, though, that lawsuit was the most ill-fated decision the lawn chemical industry ever could have made. It gave Dr. Irwin and her then growing legions of followers the opportunity to write even more letters, and to organize other media oriented events including anti-pesticide rallies, educational sessions and inspirational speeches. By the time the Chemlawn v. Hudson case made it to the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000, millions of Canadians had seen the news reports, read the letters and had already made their decisions to quit the chemicals on their own. The Court’s 9-0 decision in Hudson’s favor, by then a fait accompli, set an epic domino effect in motion. Town by town, province by province, Canadians have banned products like Roundup and Weed ’n Feed in the past decade. Today more than 80 percent of Canadian citizens live in municipalities where the applications of these products are against the law.

The result, ultimately, has been real change in behavior. The very perception of what constitutes a beautiful lawn has been turned on its ear in Canada, to the point where neighbors frown upon other neighbors who don’t have at least a few dandelions and patches of clover on their lawns. If someone in Canada does have a perfect weed-free carpet, their neighbors call them out as cheaters — as people who traveled to a U.S. boarder state, bought the lawn chemicals here, then brought them back to Canada illegally.

None of this change, to be certain, happened easily. It happened because one person dared enough and cared enough to speak out and others followed. We have strived every day to make the most of Dr. Irwin’s work; we even helped make a documentary film about her story, titled “A Chemical Reaction,” that has played at theaters, high school auditoriums, church basements and living rooms across North America (see trailer below).

But have we had our 15 minutes? Not hardly. Sure, we’ve won a few awards and changed a few minds with our campaigns and the movie, but we’re still waiting to hit the zeitgeist. Yes, Maryland and elsewhere are starting to regulate phosphorus in lawn fertilizers, but toxins like Roundup and 2,4-D are still applied unabated. We rejoice in the fact that New York and Connecticut have passed the Child’s Safe Playing Fields Act to restrict the applications of pesticides on school grounds, but we bemoan the fact that similar measures have been shot down in numerous other states — because a well-funded lawn chemical industry shows up and lobbies like hell. They literally have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend to convince people that they’re somehow un-American if they let dandelions grow on their properties.

All we have is the ability to write . . . letters . . . and lots of them. And we’ll keep at it. And we’re thankful that organizations like Glenstone, a Maryland art museum in Potomac, has helped fund a long-term research project with the University of Maryland to help bring the best organic lawn information and practices to the Chesapeake Bay region. As Glenstone’s founder stated, “If we don’t do this, who will?”

On May 6, 2011, Hudson, Quebec, celebrated 20 years of chemical freedom on its lawns, playgrounds and playing fields. Property values have soared because people want to live in a toxin-free environment. Lawns and gardens are more beautiful than ever, having found a harmonious balance with nature.

We tell that story far and wide. And we hope you’ll help, because the Hudson experience should be our reality, too.

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(Posted by Doug Siglin.)

Doug Siglin, Federal Affairs Director, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

I don’t claim to know Congressman Bob Goodlatte personally, but I was a Capitol Hill staffer for many years, and I met a lot of Congressmen like him. In Congressman Goodlatte’s worldview, the federal government should be small and unobtrusive. It should provide for the national defense and deliver the mail, as the old saw goes, and not do too much more. Regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency represent the worst possible face of the federal government. In this worldview, the EPA is a limiter of freedom, self-reliance, hard work, and the American way of life. Newt Gingrich, who is advocating the complete elimination of the EPA, also shares such a view.

Congressman Goodlatte has said several times that the EPA was “overzealous” and made a “regulatory power grab,” exceeding its authority in developing the Bay-wide TMDL. He feels very strongly that now it is Congress’ role to stop the TMDL and the related state watershed implementation plans dead in their tracks. He lost the first round last week when the Senate refused to accept his amendment, but he appears to believe what he says, and you can bet he’s not going home with his tail between his legs.

I don’t share much of Congressman Goodlatte’s worldview, but surely he’s entitled to his beliefs, and the voters of Virginia’s sixth district have elected him to represent them ten different times. I even grudgingly respect him for fighting hard for what he believes.

Here’s the significance of this discussion about Bob Goodlatte: A substantial majority of the U.S. House of Representatives now hold a worldview like his, and many of them are far more adamant than he is. Moreover, even much of the U.S. Senate now holds similar views. The next attempt to defund the TMDL will come on the 2012 EPA funding bill, most likely within the next six weeks. It may or may not be sponsored by Congressman Goodlatte. However it comes, it will almost certainly pass the House, and it could be far harder this time for the Senate to stop.

So the rest of this is about you. If you’re reading this, you’re interested in the TMDL – and chances are good that you want to see it succeed. So, now that you know that Congressman Goodlatte or someone else who shares his worldview is going to try again soon to blow up the TMDL, are you just going to sit there? “Politics ain’t beanbag,” said the fictional Mr. Dooley, meaning that it’s not an easy game.

I’ll update that for the internet age: politics ain’t armchair or deskchair. The right response to a significant political threat to what you believe in is to get up out of your chair and act, not just to sit there and wish that someone else will make it go away.

So here’s what you can do:

• Call and ask for an appointment with a congressional aide and tell him or her why the TMDL is critical to the region’s future.
• Make a substantial contribution to an advocacy group working on the issue.
• Write a strong letter to a newspaper editor or a website.
• Send an attaboy (or attagirl) to a member of Congress who is willing to stand up for the Bay restoration plan.
• Do something to fend off the attack.

Refusing to act out of indifference, or political cynicism, or the false feeling that you can’t make a difference, simply doesn’t cut it as a response to a dedicated political opponent.

Two centuries ago, the conservative French political philosopher Joseph de Maistre wrote that every nation has the government it deserves. A modest update of that thought might be that every democratic nation’s people get the policies they deserve. Unless you and a lot of other people with a different worldview than Congressman Goodlatte get legislatively active right now, you may have to live with the demise of the Bay restoration that we’ve waited so long for, and worked so hard to get. And you will deserve it.

(Doug Siglin is the federal affairs director in the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Capitol Hill office. He has worked in D.C. as a congressional staffer or environmental lobbyist for nearly 30 years.)

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(posted by Tom Simpson)

I was one of a sixteen signatories to the consensus statement of scientists and policyleaders for the Chesapeake Bay that resulted from a meeting convened by former Senator Gerald Winegrad. Four other colleagues decided very late not to sign the statement. Perhaps they were the smart ones. However, it was pretty amazing, and perhaps a little sad, that a broad, diverse group of respected individuals could reach consensus so quickly that the current approach to Bay restoration was not working and suggest broad actions needed to “restore the restoration”.

It seems my signature on this document has managed to alienate many of my “friends,” particularly those in the agricultural community, so I want to explain why I did it and would do it again.

The Bay program has been a voluntary collaboration of Chesapeake Bay states and the federal government (and DC). As such, it remains the global model for inter-jurisdictional cooperation to attempt to improve water quality. However, the program has relied upon a series of agreements with worthy goals but absolutely no consequences if not met. I spent the last 10 years as Chair of the Bay Program’s Nutrient Subcommittee so I certainly share the blame.

Goals without consequences are almost never met by nations, states or individuals. Weight loss comes to mind. While being overweight has health consequences (not unlike ignoring the health of the Bay), their onset is gradual and long-term so it’s easy to ignore our well intentioned goals. But, what does it matter if we wait one more year? That same logic has been applied to the Bay Program and we are almost to the point of not having leaders who remember what a healthy Bay is.

I must credit the Bay program with having prevented the Bay from getting worse until recently, when past “progress” seems to be eroding in the face of growth. Clearly, the Bay would have been worse off had it not been for the program. But it is holding its own, at best, not recovering, after we committed in four different agreements.

The statement called for a new approach where states have mandatory nitrogen and phosphorus reduction targets and suffer consequences (loss of federal funding or control of delegated programs?) if the targets are not met by a specified date. Don’t throw out the baby with the wash water; keep the good science and monitoring and keep, but revamp the modeling. Do put the evaluation of goals, actions and progress in the hands of a more autonomous body with authority to invoke the consequences when the states or a pollution source sector don’t meet agreed upon performance levels on time.

While government friends were aggravated at my signing the document, Ag organization staff seemed the most outraged. That furor may have been sparked by what they viewed as inconsistency with the work of a new nonprofit, Water Stewardship, which I started rin Juily of 2008. We are working with foundations and major food system corporations to integrate water quality protection, and thus bay restoration, into the food system supply chain.

Consumers, stockholders and Wall Street analysts all want enhanced corporate environmental responsibility, and major food corporations know that this must start on the farm with production. We are working to with the Bay watershed and beyond to pilot an independent third party assessment, verification and continuous improvement program that will result in farms reducing nitrogen and phosphorus pollution to levels needed for their part of Chesapeake Bay (and other coastal water) restoration.

The statement listed six broad actions that need to be pursued in addition to changing the bay program. Since everyone contributes to bay pollution, the six actions ask something of everyone but one reads “require mandatory controls and increased accountability to reduce agricultural pollutants” which some interpreted as calling for more government regulation. Ironically, I had fought to keep regulation for agriculture out of the statement because current attempts at government regulation have had very modest impacts, at best, and are unlikely to improve as government staff and resources continue to shrink. Even if fully implemented they won’t reduce nitrogen pollution nearly as much as needed. The public and the supply chain are calling for better and more accountable environmental performance from agriculture. Only two approaches have been offered: more regulation or marketplace expectations (mandates?).

We started Water Stewardship because we were convinced government lacked the capacity, resources and political will to enforce existing rules, much less take actions to achieve the even greater reductions needed from agriculture. The purely voluntary, walk in the door and get assistance and money, programs of the USDA and state conservation agencies have had some impacts but reach only a limited number of farmers, lack accountability and have not proven capable of delivering significant pollution reductions. Water Stewardship would work with the market to make water quality protection an expectation of the food system over time. We don’t want to impose this program on farmers today but to prepare them to meet an expected market requirement. We are convinced you perform better for the person buying your product than the government.

So, for the record, Tom Simpson and Water Stewardship do not support more government regulation of agriculture because we do not think it will be more effective, or less cumbersome, than current regulation. We do think consumers, stockholders and analysts have issued a “mandate” that there be less impact on water quality from our food system, starting with production.

Farmers try to be stewards of land and water resources but our production system and slim profit margins mean that the cost of water quality protection has not been a “specification” with value for their products. While it will be challenging to integrate this new “spec” into production, the market wants it and like many other changes, it will happen. We want Chesapeake farmers to be prepared for this change and help decide how it will occur so they can have an advantage in the marketplace. That won’t happen through more regulation and the continued lack of accountability of current incentive programs. It requires independent third party assessment and continuous improvement.

I am so convinced of this I am leaving the University of Marylandand dropping retirement plans to create an independent, accountable, continuous improvement program to help farmers reduce their impact on water quality, particularly in the Chesapeake Bay. If that constitutes “mandatory controls and increased accountability”, then I am indeed guilty but I invite the food system to join me in meeting this societal “mandate”. If the only answer is more ineffective government regulations or unaccountable incentives, think I’ll retire and go fishing while there is still something left to catch in the Bay.

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