Why Do 21 States Hate the Bay?

21 states, 8 counties join Farm Bureau challenge to Bay TMDL

Arguing that the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan “strips states of their traditional rights to make land use decisions,” the attorneys general of 21 states on Monday joined farm groups seeking to reverse a federal judge’s decision last year upholding the plan.

Their friend-of-the-court brief supports the appeal by the American Farm Bureau, the National Association of Homebuilders and several agricultural trade groups who are seeking to overturn Federal District Judge Sylvia Rambo’s ruling last September that the EPA acted within its authority to establish the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, or pollution diet, in December 2010.

Only one of the states signing onto the brief, West Virginia, represented a portion of the Bay watershed. But eight counties from the Bay watershed filed a separate brief supporting the appeal.

Both the states and counties argued that the EPA exceeded its Clean Water Act authority in the Bay TMDL because it not only set limits on the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that can enter the Chesapeake, but also set limits on the amounts of those pollutants that can enter from each major river basin and state. It further limited the amount that could come from major pollution sectors, such as wastewater treatment plants, agriculture, stormwater and septics.

What the states and counties are objecting to is not the federal government forcing them to make the reductions, but that they are telling them what they need to change, against their own wishes.  Even if they agree with the overall goal of reducing pollution, they

The states need not be in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to see what the EPA is doing, trying to claim dominion over all aspects of the their economies in the name of EPA's environmental goals.  The states in the Mississippi drainage fear a similar "diet" will be applied to the Mississippi next:

Most, though not all, of the states joining in the brief were in the Mississippi River drainage, where agricultural groups are worried that similar efforts may be made to force nutrient reductions from Midwest farms. The Mississippi is the major source of pollution to the northern Gulf of Mexico, which is also on the EPA’s list of impaired waters.

“Congress deliberately structured the Clean Water Act to involve states in the decision-making process when nonpoint source runoff is being regulated,” Schmidt said. “That’s because runoff regulation inevitably implicates land use decisions and private property rights, and Congress did not intend to centralize those decisions in Washington, DC.”

federalism

Political system that binds a group of states into a larger, noncentralized, superior state while allowing them to maintain their own political identities. Certain characteristics and principles are common to all successful federal systems: a written constitution or basic law stipulating the distribution of powers; diffusion of power among the constituent elements, which are substantially self-sustaining; and territorial divisions to ensure neutrality and equality in the representation of various groups and interests. Changes require the consent of those affected.