Permanently-Polluted CHESAPEAKE Views EPA's Latest Get-Tough Measures With Skepticism!
Jesus'sPedoBoy
waste disposal and sewage treatment businesses, have helped such for-
profit companies reap large and continuing tax-funded fee increases --
for decades. In the name of "Save the Bay" guilt-tripping.
In reality, any honest scientist "could" have told us years ago the
Bay was [and is] beyond "saving."
Perhaps an enforced total one-year ban on work and pleasure-boats and
out-of-control farm-waste streams could ease the pollution problem.
But don't hold your breath, no matter how tempting that is when you're
downwind.
And doubtless an independent(!) survey of just how many of those older
beachfront mansions and bungalows still flush their raw human waste
directly into the Bay and its tributaries would be quite revealing.
Don't laugh. Wealthy Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, and Virginians --
old-line Bay people -- have been doing this since before World War II.
Accompanied by political winks and nods, naturally.
=========
"EPA threatens states for failing to clean up Chesapeake Bay"
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 30, 2009; B01
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, hoping that a get-tough
approach can turn around the failing effort to save the Chesapeake
Bay, outlined Tuesday ideas for punishing states that don't do their
part.
Those punishments, the agency said, will fall on states that either
don't meet their goals for cutting pollution draining into Chesapeake
tributaries or don't set those goals high enough. The consequences
might include changes in federal funding, rejections of permits for
new factories or tighter rules on some farms.
The mere threat of punishments is a new thing around the bay. Both
federal and state governments have routinely missed deadlines and
never faced consequences for it.
The question is: Can the EPA convince anyone that this time it's
serious? Agency officials were vague Tuesday about when they would use
specific punishments -- and said that none would be used until at
least 2011.
"The idea of this is ensuring accountability, not looking to rattle
the saber to rattle the saber," said Shawn M. Garvin, head of the
EPA's mid-Atlantic region.
"Our hope is that the states . . . will be able to meet the
commitments," Garvin said, so that no punishments would actually be
required.
Under President Obama, the federal government is attempting a historic
overhaul of the 26-year-old effort to restore the Chesapeake's health.
That effort has spent billions yet has failed to solve the bay's main
problem: pollution-driven "dead zones," places devoid of the dissolved
oxygen that fish, crabs and oysters breathe.
In the fall, the federal government outlined what it expects of the
jurisdictions in the Chesapeake watershed, which are Maryland,
Virginia, the District, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New
York. A computer model of the bay will be used to calculate a
pollution "diet" for the Chesapeake -- and each state will have to
reduce its pollution accordingly.
Tuesday's letter explained what might happen if they don't. EPA
officials said they might:
-- Object to state-issued permits for new sources of pollution, such
as factories, sewage-treatment plants or suburban storm sewers.
-- Require states to offset pollution in one area by cutting it in
another. If a state can't find ways to curb pollution from farms, for
instance, the EPA could require stricter cuts from sewage-treatment
plants.
-- Take tighter control of federal money that goes to states for
antipollution programs, to make sure it is used to solve outstanding
problems.
In Virginia, Natural Resources Secretary L. Preston Bryant Jr. said he
thought that the EPA's threats might actually change the trajectory of
the Chesapeake cleanup, by forcing states to take their obligations
more seriously.
"This letter, and whatever follows up from this, is going to get
people's attention," said Bryant, part of the outgoing administration
of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).
But the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said the EPA's threats were not
tough enough. William C. Baker, the foundation's president, said the
EPA wants to wait for states to set new goals for cleaning up
pollution late next year -- when it should instead hold the states to
goals they've already set.
Oliver A. Houck, a Tulane University professor who studies water laws,
said the EPA's threats don't solve a legal loophole that has bedeviled
the Chesapeake cleanup since its beginning.
Clean-water laws make it easy to crack down on pollution that comes
out of a pipe, such as treated sewage and factory discharges. But they
give states less power to crack down on pollution that doesn't come
from pipes, such as the fertilizer and animal manure that wash off
suburban lawns and farm fields.
Houck said that the EPA's threats wouldn't give states a new way to
tackle these diffuse sources -- and that they might only shift even
more pressure onto polluters with pipes who have already made
improvements.
"This is a little like, 'If you don't shape up, I'll kick your dog,' "
Houck said. "Your dog isn't the problem."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122902396_pf.html
