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The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to speed implementation of bay pollution limits.
The foundation said Maryland and Virginia are expected to admit that cleanup goals called for under the Chesapeake 2000 agreement won't be reached by 2010. Once the states admit that, the EPA should immediately trigger the pollution limits, eliminating the lengthy public review and consensus building process called for in the agreement.
In a letter Monday to the EPA, the foundation said consensus building has failed the bay and there is no reason to delay developing the so-called total maximum daily load limits until 2011 as called for in the agreement.
"There is no technical reason why it should take four more years to complete the TMDL," foundation vice president Roy Hoagland said in the letter. "It is time - past time - for the EPA to exert its role as the enforcer and protector of the nation's waters under the Clean Water Act to develop a strong, enforceable, bay-wide TMDL. And it should do so, now, given the existing admission of failure of the current program."
In December, the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania met in Annapolis and announced that progress on Chesapeake Bay cleanup was going slowly and that the region would not meet the states' 2010 cleanup goals. Virginia and Maryland are expected to confirm that assessment when the states issue draft Clean Water Act reports categorizing the bay and many of its tidal tributaries as impaired, the letter to the EPA said.
State and federal leaders involved in the Chesapeake Bay Program, the EPA-led government coalition overseeing bay restoration, are scheduled to meet Wednesday with the pollution limits among the items on the agenda, said foundation spokesman John Surrick.
"What they're saying is we're going to spend the next three years talking about what we might want to do," Surrick said. "And we're saying 'you know what needs to be done. Let's spend some time actually putting things in place that are going to get the bay off the impaired waters list."'
Surrick said one of the key factors in bay cleanup is sewage treatment. While Maryland and Virginia are making progress, Pennsylvania is involved in a court fight over the issue, the foundation spokesman said.
Earlier this month, dozens of Pennsylvania municipalities sued their state government over the cost to upgrade wastewater plants as part of the bay cleanup strategy. The lawsuit argues that wastewater ratepayers in towns across much of central and eastern Pennsylvania bear an unfair share of the cleanup costs. Many municipal officials have expressed anger that the state has not committed money for the improvements, particularly when other sources, such as farms, contribute more pollution.
The lawsuit also contends that Pennsylvania entered into an illegal agreement in 2000 with Maryland and Virginia to improve the water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, which led to the federal government making the agreement mandatory five years later. If the 2010 deadline isn't met, the federal government could enforce much stricter standards, state officials say.
Pennsylvania contributes more sewage, farm runoff and other pollutants than any other state into the 200-mile long Chesapeake Bay. The pollutants, such as nitrogen, feed algae in the bay which makes much of the estuary uninhabitable for fish, crabs and oysters during the summer.
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