Center for Progressive Reform :: Saving the Chesapeake

A national treasure, the Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America, home to more than 3,600 species of plants and animals. The Chesapeake Bay watershed – the land that drains into the Bay – encompasses parts of six states and Washington, D.C. The Bay has been deteriorating since the 1930s, when water clarity, crab and oyster populations, and underwater bay grasses began to decline. Excess nutrients – phosphorus and nitrogen – and sediment runoff from agriculture, urban and suburban development, and sewage treatment plants caused the Bay’s cloudy waters, resulting in “dead zones” containing too little oxygen to support aquatic life. The Bay’s oyster population has been devastated, down to 2 percent of its average levels in the 1950s. The Bay’s famous blue crab populations are also low, about 30 percent below the annual average from 1968 to 2002.

One reason for this steady deterioration of the Bay is the failure of public officials across the region to enforce pollution standards. In 1983, in response to increasing public concern about the state of the Bay, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, New York, and Delaware joined with the EPA in creating what is now the nation's oldest estuary restoration program. Since then, the Bay Program partner states have made a series of commitments about their states' efforts to clean up the Bay. The most recent set of agreements was embodied in Chesapeake 2000, which included more than 100 state commitments, organized under five broad restoration goals. For example, Chesapeake 2000 set a goal of correcting the Bay’s nutrient and sediment problems so as to remove the Bay from the impaired waters list under the Clean Water Act by 2010.

Unfortunately, most of the goals established in Chesapeake 2000 are not close to being met, and indeed, the Chesapeake Bay Health and Restoration Assessment, released by the Bay program in March 2008, concluded that “most of the Bay’s waters are degraded.” In 2007, the Bay was only 21 percent of the way toward meeting water quality goals. According to the Assessment, “based on available data, Bay program scientists project that little more than half of the pollution reduction efforts needed to achieve nutrient goals have been undertaken since 1985.”

EPA Steps Up

In May 2009, President Obama issued an Executive Order on Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration, declaring the Bay a national treasure and signaling that EPA will play a strong role in leading Bay cleanup. The order marked a dramatic departure, offering the promise of federal leadership on the Bay cleanup. The order:

Requires EPA to “examine how to make full use of its authorities under the Clean Water Act to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary waters”
Establishes a Federal Leadership Committee headed by EPA and including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Transportation to oversee program activities, including data management and reporting;
Requires the agencies identified as part of the Federal Leadership Committee to make recommendations within 120 days on the regulations, policies, and programs needed to restore Bay water quality, as well as on how resources under the Farm Bill should be targeted to better protect Bay waters;
Requires the Federal Leadership Committee to define goals for the Bay and milestones for meeting the goals, as well as specific programs and strategies for meeting the goals; and
Requires an independent evaluator to “strengthen accountability” and report periodically on progress made toward meeting Bay-wide goals and to ensure these reports are made public and posted on EPA’s website.

In May 2010, as many of the required actions under the order began to come due, CPR issued a briefing paper offering a series of recommendations for assessing progress and recommending follow-up.

Then in August 2010, CPR issued a set of metrics for evaluating state efforts in the next important phase in the process -- the development of Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs), intended to demonstrate how they will meet the pollution targets in the applicable Total Maximum Daily Load standards. While the soundness of states’ WIPs depends on a broad array of technical, financial, and administrative factors, CPR scholars maintain that they must at minimum be clear, objective, and transparent plans so that all watershed partners achieve their TMDL pollution reductions and ultimately restore the Chesapeake Bay. These WIPs will also enable the public to vigorously monitor the progress in meeting those commitments. Once the states publish their plans in autumn 2010, CPR Member Scholars William Andreen, Robert Glicksman and Rena Steinzor, together with Executive Director Shana Jones and Policy Analyst Yee Huang, will apply the metrics to the ' plans and issue a formal evaluation. In August 2010, CPR forwarded the metrics to the various state environmental officers.