Washington D.C. To Continue Polluting Bay

EPA renews D.C.’s stormwater discharge permit

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it renewed the District’s permit to discharge stormwater into local waterways, but only under the condition that it significantly reduce rainwater runoff and the huge amount of garbage that comes with it.

Under the terms of the permit, the District is required to add a minimum of 350,000 square feet of green roofs on city properties, plant at least 4,150 trees yearly, and assure that new properties of 5,000 square feet soak up more than an inch of rainwater over a 24-hour rainfall to keep it from flowing into sewers and into rivers, streams and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay

The city will have a year and a half to carry out the measures. The requirements are partly the result of the EPA’s strict new pollution diet placed on six states and the District in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

OK, I was a little hard on them in the post title.  They are making it better, somewhat.  However, we have plenty of rain events in this area that vastly exceed one inch in 24 hours (TS Irene for example, gave us 7 inches in 24 hours, over a foot in some areas close by).  For them to be able to achieve it in six months suggests that they already have the ability, and are not using it.

If this were a corporation whose pollutant release were being tightened up, I'm sure they'd focus on how much pollution being left in the environment rather than how much was being remove.