Approaching the Chesapeake Bay Midpoint Assessment -- Part I

Mariah Davis

Mariah Davis

Amro Ali worked as an environmental engineer at the state and local government levels in North Carolina to enforce the laws and regulations that govern air and water quality. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in chemical engineering. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree in sustainability at Wake Forest University.
Melanie Benesh is a legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group. She provides legislative and regulatory analysis of federal food, farm and chemical law. Full bio.
Michelle Bryan is a professor of Law at the University of Montana, and teaches in the school's Natural Resources & Environmental Law Program. Full bio.
Chanté Coleman is the Director for the Choose Clean Water Coalition, where she leads the Coalition’s work to protect the Chesapeake Bay by bringing together 200+ organizations in the watershed, which includes Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, and the District of Columbia. She focuses on planning and development of grassroots/grasstops outreach, political strategy, federal policy and analysis, lobbying, media outreach, organizing conferences and workshops, research, writing and fundraising. Full bio.
Thomas Cluderay is general counsel at the Environmental Working Group. He leads EWG’s legal team and oversees all of the organization’s legal matters. He also works with the government affairs team to develop strategies for advancing EWG policy initiatives, represents EWG before lawmakers and other government bodies and provides regulatory and legislative analyses with an emphasis on public health, consumer protection and environmental policy. Full bio.
Mariah Davis is Field Manager of the Choose Clean Water Coalition. A Virginia native, she has led and executed clean water and climate action strategies to engage elected officials on the importance of protecting and sustaining programs most viable to the Chesapeake Bay. She strives to promote environmental justice to ensure overburdened communities share equitably in the benefits of clean water.
Kerry Darragh is a senior associate at The Hatcher Group, where she works with environmental and health care clients such as the Maryland Clean Agriculture Coalition, Behavioral Health Coalition of Maryland, American Rivers and Maryland Pesticide Education Network to help them achieve their policy and communications goals.
Elise Desiderio is a law student at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.
Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for investigative journalism.
Melissa Kelly is the staff director and attorney at the Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (CLEANR).
Robert Meltz is Special Counsel at Defenders of Wildlife.
Monte Mills is an assistant professor of law and co-director, Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the University of Montana. Full bio.
Celeste Monforton joined the Milken Institute School of Public Health in 2006. She is a regular contributor to the "Pump Handle," a blog known as "a water cooler for the public health crowd." She continues her work in occupational health and maintains her ties to The George Washington University by serving as a professorial lecturer. Full bio.
Kevin Morris is a J.D. candidate at the University of Hawaii at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law. He serves as a research assistant for CPR Member Scholar Maxine Burkett.
Alexi Nathan is a rising third-year law student studying environmental law and human rights at American University Washington College of Law.
Hari M. Osofsky is dean of Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs and Distinguished Professor of Law, professor of international affairs, and professor of geography. Dean Osofsky’s more than 50 publications focus on improving governance and addressing injustice in energy and climate change regulation.
Jarryd Page is an intern at the Center for Progressive Reform. Before interning at CPR, he earned a B.S. from the University of Maryland's Environmental Science & Policy Program in 2017. He has previously worked at National Geographic and served as Adjunct Lecturer at Marymount University. He also holds a B.A. in Art History from University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. in Art History from the University of Kansas.
Eric Panicco is a candidate for Master of Arts in Sustainability at Wake Forest University. Full bio.
Shannon Roesler is a Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma City School of Law. Before joining the law school faculty, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She was also a staff attorney and teaching fellow in the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center and a visiting faculty member at the University of Kansas School of Law. University bio.
Michael Robinson-Dorn is the founding Director of the Environmental Law Clinic, Interim Director of the Center of Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (Winter 2018), and Clinical Professor of Law, at UC Irvine School of Law. He and his Clinic students represent clients on a wide range of environmental and natural resources matters, and have appeared on behalf of those clients in trial and appellate courts across the country. Full bio.
Vanessa Zboreak is a Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Law. Her research centers around land use law as a public policy instrument, particularly state and local government land use policies influencing food systems, environmental justice, environmental health, sustainable communities, and demographic shifts. She received a B.A. from Grinnell College and a J.D. from Wake Forest. Full bio.

June 20, 2018

The Chesapeake Bay restoration effort is arguably one of the largest conservation endeavors ever undertaken. The Bay watershed is made up of 150 major rivers and streams and contains 100,000 smaller tributaries spread across Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. It supplies drinking water for more than 17 million residents and is one of the most important economic drivers on the East Coast of the United States.

The Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), enacted in 2010 by the Environmental Protect Agency (EPA) in collaboration with the Chesapeake Bay states, is a framework for allocating and eliminating excessive loads of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment polluting the watershed. It was designed to ensure that pollution control measures would reduce persistent dead zones in the Bay and its tidal tributaries by 2025. As part of the TMDL, the states and the District are required to develop Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) – roadmaps for addressing their share of pollution reductions. In theory, the WIPs are supposed to be binding plans, although in practical terms, they are only as binding as EPA is willing to insist that the states live up to their commitments. Each WIP is developed in partnership with input from stakeholders, scientists, nonprofits, and local governments, and each jurisdiction is required to develop WIPs at three distinct phases before the 2025 deadline.

The Phase I and Phase II WIPs were developed and submitted to the EPA in 2010 and 2012, respectively. The Phase I WIP was designed to identify the distribution of nutrient and sediment loads by source, sectors, and areas of drainage. It included "final target loads" to meet water quality standards that are to be achieved by 2025. Phase II WIPs were developed by each of the jurisdictions with the goal of achieving 60 percent of the final pollution-reduction targets by 2017. In the third and final phase, now upon us, jurisdictions are responsible for developing WIPs that account for all remaining pollution reductions before 2025 and that integrate critical policy decisions on growth and climate change, for example.

In this post and a follow-up, I'll take a look at how each of the Bay states characterized and evaluated prior WIPs, remaining challenges for meeting pollution targets, and how the public can engage in the next Phase of the WIP development.

New York

The WIP development in New York has been a collaborative effort between New York State's Department of Agriculture and Markets, the Upper Susquehanna Coalition, and Cornell University. Implementation took place at the county level by the Soil and Water Conservation Districts, which are collectively implementing more than 5,000 conservation projects. Pollution reduction from the agriculture, wastewater, and stormwater sectors has been a main focus in the previous phases of the WIP.

New York's Phase II WIP failed to fully implement its nitrogen and sediment reduction goals. While New York has comprehensive programs, particularly for agriculture, tracking best management practices (BMPs) and sharing that information across projects has been difficult.

Fortunately, some improvements were made to curb phosphorus leaching through wastewater and fertilizers. Through the legislature, several laws were passed to limit these pollutants in commercial use. Reinvestments in wastewater, sewer, and septic upgrades were also made to clean water infrastructure.

For the Phase III WIP, advocates in New York would like to address the future impact of climate change and improve data tracking. The Upper Susquehanna Coalition is currently developing the National Environmental Information Exchange Network (NEIN) for future data reporting on the Chesapeake Bay Program. The data will be used for WIP III planning and specific data needs.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's development and implementation of its Phase II WIP failed to adequately enforce county targets, which has led to the state's substantial shortfall in meeting its goals. Future improvements, such as a county-level scale and enforceable local TMDL efforts, could prove beneficial for the Phase III WIP development.

Pennsylvania's effort to meet its reduction targets faces a number of challenges. Insufficient funding by the state legislature has hampered efforts to implement a number of common sense practices. Establishing a dedicated clean water fund, such as the proposed HB20, would be crucial. Along with this, state resource agencies have not received adequate funding over the last several years. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been slashed by roughly 40 percent over the past 14 years, which has increased wait times on permits and decreased and their ability to provide oversight. The state lacks a dedicated funding source for implementation of various best management practices and clean water programs.

Moreover, the state's agriculture cost-share program is in need of a complete overhaul. While the program does provide financial support to producers and processors through cost-sharing of applicable certification fees for practicing good agriculture practices (GAP), this program does not incentivize the use of various conservation practices such as BMPs.

In addition to addressing these shortfalls, advocates are pushing for a comprehensive plan outlining public engagement to garner buy-in from the community and stakeholders for the Phase III WIP in four pilot counties (Lancaster, York, Adams, and Franklin counties). Through this process, the state is hoping to better engage individuals from a variety of backgrounds to develop BMP's to help meet the TMDL. The DEP and the state are doing this from a local level; they want to make sure they allow the counties and their local governments to set goals that are quantifiably reachable for their region. The state has developed a steering committee dedicated to restoring its rivers and streams via the WIP process, and the public is encouraged to engage in steering committee meetings to provide input on the WIP, which focuses on local government engagement. For any of that to succeed, however, it is imperative that EPA exerts its authority to implement backstops for pollution reduction goals at the state level so that goals will be met even if the state's efforts falter.

West Virginia

The implementation process of WIP II implementation in the state has been steered by the West Virginia Chesapeake Bay Tributaries Strategies Team, a partnership of agencies and nonprofits working with local governments, utilities, land owners, and the public. Coordinated by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) with support from the Conservation Agency, Division of Forestry, Division of Agriculture, and the Eastern Panhandle Regional Planning Development Council (Region 9), this effort has been primarily focused on finding connections among the goals and mandates of local governments with the goals of the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership. Pollution reductions from the agriculture and stormwater sectors remain a particular focus in West Virginia.

The Eastern Panhandle Regional Planning and Development Council (Region 9) staffs the Region 9 Chesapeake Bay Program Coordinator to work with local governments and utilities to develop projects across multiple sectors to include agriculture and stormwater. This key role is to identify critical matching funds for projects to meet the goals of the TMDL.

Two projects in the City of Charles Town and the Town of Bath exemplify how the local governments leveraged existing funds for projects that reduce wastewater discharge and provide solutions to stormwater management through green infrastructure practices. While these projects have helped mitigate pollution entering the watershed, success lies in helping local governments solve their identified problems by tapping into the Chesapeake Bay Program effort.

Inadequate funding for conservation practices continues to be an impediment in West Virginia. For the Phase III WIP development, advocates in West Virginia aspire to see more capacity for local governments to enhance on-the-ground project coordination. Planning for green infrastructure and innovative land conservation have funding needs but would be ideal to consider in the development of WIP III.

Additionally, there is a need for more robust public awareness throughout the state. Much of the focus on the WIP has been technical without a clear vision as to why these practices benefit local waterways that benefit public health and prosperity for the state.

In a subsequent post, I'll take a look at WIPs work in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. Stay tuned.

Approaching the Chesapeake Bay Midpoint Assessment -- Part I

June 20, 2018

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