I was thinking about doing this one yesterday, but got lazy and didn't. I'm glad because this is a better article than most of the ones I saw yesterday.
The NRC is the heavy hitter in science analysis. They don't come bigger than that. They may not be perfect (they are human, after all), but there's no chance that they are not seriously addressing the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan. They will come with the usual biases that most scientist have, strongly favoring government intervention, but within those strictures, they will do diligent analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of the plan.
Their evaluation is that, overall, the plan is a decent start, but that it was formulated in the absence of adequate data:
The jurisdictions participating in the Chesapeake Bay Program [a collaboration between EPA, six states, and Washington, D.C.] reported mixed progress toward their first milestone goals. However, the committee was largely unable to assess the likelihood that the Bay jurisdictions will meet their ultimate nutrient load reduction goals with the data provided. Nearly all jurisdictions have insufficient data to evaluate implementation progress relative to their nutrient reduction loads. Without timely updates and synthesis of progress, most jurisdictions lack the information necessary to make the mid-course corrections that are pivotal to the milestone strategy.In other words, the EPA and the States didn't do their homework. Mo money, please...
The problem of the mid course correction plans are not insignificant. How can you make adjustments in such a plan when the outcomes vary annually due to weather and climatic conditions which are not controllable, and whose effects are not all that well understood (because of lack of data)?
Not with any accuracy.
You can find the report online here.
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