New Bay Diet Vote Tomorrow

From the Bay Journal, Revised Chesapeake cleanup agreement set for vote Dec. 2

The Chesapeake Bay Program’s Executive Council is set to consider adopting a raft of updates to the blueprint that has guided the multi-state and federal effort for more than a decade. The Bay Program has overseen the estuary’s cleanup since 1983, directly and indirectly influencing the spending of billions of dollars in environmental projects.

The council includes the governors of all six states in the Bay watershed — Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware and West Virginia — as well as the mayor of the District of Columbia; the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which consists mostly of state legislators.

As the Bay Journal went to press, four governors were expected to attend the meeting: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer (D) and outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Also expected to attend are the District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and Maryland state Sen. Sara Love (D), chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission.

The 2014 version of the Bay agreement had set a 2025 deadline for putting in place actions necessary to achieve a variety of goals, including reducing nutrient and sediment pollution, expanding public access to waterways, planting trees along streambanks and opening the upper reaches of rivers and streams to fish passage. The effort met a number of its goals but fell short of others, including the foundational goal to reduce nutrient pollution in the Bay.

The newly revised agreement extends the region’s cleanup commitment by 15 years. Many leading environmental groups have criticized the document as lacking ambition. They point to rollbacks, for example, in the amount of wetlands to be created.

The federal government shutdown in October and early November also prevented many agency experts from participating in the final days of revising the agreement.

But advocates for the new plan say it is an improvement over the first draft circulated for public comment over the summer. The revised version sets a uniform deadline of 2040 to reach the plan’s goals, with a 2033 midpoint assessment. And it more firmly ties states to meeting a mandatory “pollution diet” that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enacted in 2010.

“The Bay restoration movement could have easily fizzled out in the current climate of division and uncertainty, said Keisha Sedlacek, senior policy director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the region’s largest Bay advocacy group. “Instead, everyone worked to find common ground, creating a vision for the next 15 years,”

I expect it to be every bit as successful as the last one.