Farmers, Builders Resist Bay Diet in Court

Chesapeake restoration plan challenged in court

A judge in Pennsylvania is weighing whether a federal strategy to clean up the Chesapeake Bay tramples on state's rights and uses erroneous data to set pollution limits.
Lawyers for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders and other groups on Thursday asked the judge to block the plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency created the "pollution diet" to reduce the bay's levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment. EPA attorneys argued that without strong federal oversight and threat of sanctions, states had repeatedly missed their pollution-reduction goals over the past 30 years.

We've seen this fight building for at least a year now.  Farmers and builders feel that they are being asked to make sacrifices that other nutrient sources are not being asked to.  I'm not sure that's so true the municipalities and counties are being asked to come up with enormous amounts of money over the period of implementation.  They also argue that the 'Bay Diet' (shorthand for the TMDL, shorthand for Total Maximum Daily Load), is based on faulty models, which unfairly exaggerate the role of agriculture and construction in the pollution that plagues the bay.

This follows up on this post from January, when the Farm Bureau filed the suit.  This brings us one step closer to finding out how this will be settled.

This was the big story on the Bay today, and numerous articles came out about it:

Chesapeake Bay restoration plan challenged in court

Federal Judge Hears Arguments in Chesapeake Bay TMDL Case

Lancaster County farmers dispute EPA rules on Chesapeake Bay

Court Decision Will Decide Bay's Future

AFBF Presents Case on Chesapeake Bay Regulations

You can find everything from the Farm Bureau's to the Bay Programs spin on it.