Bay Program Begs for Patience

Letter from Leadership: Lag-times call for patience in awaiting a restored Bay

Between fast food restaurants and speed-of-light cell phones, we live in a culture of instant gratification. But the environment around us doesn’t operate that way. Instead, it is slow to respond to changes—like the upsets or imbalances created by human activity.

Scientific evidence shows that many of the pollution-reducing practices we are placing on the ground now may take years to show visible improvements in water quality. One reason? Pollutants can be persistent. French and Canadian researchers, for instance, tracked the movement of fertilizer through a plot of land over the course of three decades. While more than half of the fertilizer applied to the land in 1982 was absorbed by agricultural crops like wheat and sugar beet, 12 to 15 percent remained in the soil. The researchers predicted it would take an additional 50 years before the fertilizer fully disappeared from the environment.
...
The TMDL requires the six Bay states and the District of Columbia to implement their proposed pollution-reduction measures by 2025. There may be an expectation on the part of the general public and our elected officials that once these measures are fully implemented, the Bay will have met its water quality goals. But now we know that it may take some time before we can make that claim. As 2025 approaches, we must remind the public that lag-times exist and ask for their patience in seeing a healthy Bay. Because through patience—and vigilance—the Bay will be restored.

As much as I like to bust on the Bay Program, this is essentially correct, and an important observation.  However, voters need to decide if the costs are worth the gain.  We know the costs are estimated to be around $25 billion dollars by 2025, and additional costs (I would guess much higher costs) are being born by communities around the Bay.  Given that the Federal government, to the extent that it is responsive at all, is elected nationally, the localities affected have rather minimal inputs into the regulations.