Creating an Accountability Mechanism for the Chesapeake Bay
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. Approximately 17 million people live in the watershed, and more than 100,000 streams, creeks, and rivers drain into the Bay.
The Chesapeake 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.
Established in 1983 in response to increasing public concern about the state of the Bay, the Chesapeake Bay Program is the nation’s oldest estuary restoration program. Agreements among Bay program partners (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and EPA are the primary partners, with West Virginia, New York, and Delaware agreeing to certain water quality goals) define the Bay program’s goals. The most recent agreement, Chesapeake 2000, set out more than 102 commitments, organized under five broad restoration goals. The goals were ambitious. For example, Chesapeake 2000 set a goal of correcting Bay’s nutrient and sediment problems so as to remove the Bay from the impaired waters list under the Clean Water Act by 2010.
Yet the state of the Bay’s health is grave, and most of the goals established in Chesapeake 2000 are not close to being met. The Chesapeake Bay Health and Restoration Assessment, which was 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.”
Since 2005, the Program has faced increased scrutiny from the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Inspector General for EPA for not having a comprehensive implementation strategy and for not effectively and credibly reporting the state of the Bay’s restoration progress. In response to the GAO report, in 2008, the Senate and House Appropriations Committees withheld $5 million from the program until EPA implements GAO’s recommendations.
Accountability a Key
In response, the Bay program and its state partners are considering ways to reorganize the program and increase accountability. Some of the discussions have included creating an independent entity to monitor the performance of the program and hold EPA and the states accountable for their efforts to reduce nutrient loading in the Bay.
Working with an ad hoc committee of the Bay program’s Principals’ Staff Committee, the Center for Progressive Reform provided recommendations to help establish a framework for the accountability mechanism. Part of CPR’s participation in this effort included interviewing key stakeholders to gain insight into how they perceive the program’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their thoughts about various ways to improve program effectiveness in meeting goals such as increasing oyster and crab populations, reducing agricultural runoff, and reducing overfishing and addressing possible jurisdictional and regulatory problems preventing the program from achieving its statutory mission.
In June 2009, CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor and Executive Director Shana Jones published Reauthorizing the Chesapeake Bay Program: Exchanging Promises for Results, proposing how the federal government should hold states accountable for meeting pollution reduction targets. The report recommends that Congress require the EPA to evaluate whether Chesapeake Bay Watershed jurisdictions are meeting two-year targets, and authorize EPA to penalize states that do not meet targets by prohibiting new point source pollution permits and withholding financial assistance. (Also available is Steinzor and Campbell's An Accountability Mechanism for the Chesapeake Bay: Interview Findings, and memoranda on options for a proposed office charged with holding EPA and the state partners accountable, and on proposed metrics for accountability.)
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.
More on CPR's work on the Chesapeake Bay:
The Cardin Bill. In November, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) offered legislation to require cleanup of the Bay. CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, Executive Director Shana Jones and Policy Analyst Yee Huang applauded the bill, but offered suggestions for tightening key elements in a November 9 letter to Cardin. Yee Huang described the letter in a CPRBlog posting. On November 23, 2009, a distringuished group of scholars, including a number of CPR Member Scholars, sent a memo to Senator Cardin assessing the constitutionality of the proposed measure, and debunking constitutional arguments by opponents of tighter cleanup requirements. Read the memo. Read the bios of the signers. Read Yee Huang's blog post on the memo.
Comments on Draft Water Quality Report for the Chesapeake Bay. CPR Policy Analyst Yee Huang's comments on EPA's draft 202a Water Quality Report & 203 Strategy for the Chesapeake Bay, January 8, 2010.
Blog Posts. CPR Scholars and staff have blogged extensively on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort, discussing the problem itself, the failure of the states' efforts to clean it up, the Obama Administration's initiatives, and proposed legislative fixes. Read the posts, here.
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