With a massive, proposed 31 percent cut to his agency looming in the background, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is preparing to visit Capitol Hill for an appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday. Lawmakers, their staff, and others are likely and understandably focused on the Paris climate agreement withdrawal, the Trump administration's proposal to end federal financial support for programs that help protect and restore a variety of Great Waters like the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, and damaging staff cuts that would cripple the agency's ability to protect our health and our environment. But we should be looking beyond the big-ticket items to fully assess the damage that Pruitt and President Trump are proposing to do. 

As someone who focuses on the vitality and sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay and other Great Waters in the United States, I'm convinced that the president's plans to …

The City of Baltimore is wrapping up an $800 million upgrade of its largest sewage treatment plant. At the same time, the city is starting a $160 million project to retrofit a drinking water reservoir; is in the midst of a $400 million project to realign a major section of its sewer system; and is spending several million on projects throughout the city to manage polluted runoff from its streets and other paved surfaces.

And these are just a few of the city's many infrastructure projects to upgrade drinking water and wastewater facilities, improve the systems of pipes that deliver clean water to homes and, separately, sewage to their treatment plants, and begin to deal with the thousands of acres of pavement that channel filthy water into the city's harbor.

Managing our need for water is both expensive and complicated. If you consider the challenge involved in …

In the early 1970s, Congress passed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act on nearly unanimous votes. The overwhelming support for these new laws reflected not only the horrific condition of America’s air, water, and landscape at the time, but also an appreciation of the collective action problem states faced, necessitating federal action.

The major environmental laws that passed in the following years were predicated on the need to set a federal floor for environmental standards in order to provide all Americans with a basic right to clean air, safe water, and a healthy environment, no matter the state they lived in. The laws also represented an understanding that states were no more likely to act alone in investing in new regulatory programs than a business would be to self-regulate without corresponding action from its competitors.

The clear consensus, then, was that the federal government …

Last year around this time, I happily deleted this headline, "A Dark Day for the Bay," which I was preparing to use for a blog post in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the appeal of the American Farm Bureau Federation and other plaintiffs in their challenge to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort known as the Bay TMDL. Ultimately, the Court denied that appeal, leaving in place the decision of a federal appeals court that upheld the Bay TMDL and solidified the Bay restoration effort at a critical time – the midpoint assessment period. I once again considered dusting off this ominous headline last fall when Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) successfully added a provision known as a "rider" to a budget bill, which would have blocked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from imposing any "backstop actions" to ensure the TMDL …

The ascension of Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ushers in a new chapter in the long story of cooperative federalism in the administration of U.S. environmental laws. Pruitt's words and actions as the Attorney General of Oklahoma suggest that, as much as any other issue, idea, or policy, federalism will be a recurring theme.

But are the cries about federalism really about finding the proper balance of state and federal roles in implementation of our environmental laws? Or is federalism merely a tool in the conservative toolbox used to achieve their real aim: dismantling environmental regulation?

To be sure, a focus on federalism has long been one of the core values of conservatives as they argue for devolution of power to state and local governments. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized federalism as one of the oldest and most …

This week, the Chesapeake Bay Program released its annual Bay Barometer report. Along with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's annual State of the Bay and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Bay Report Card, the Bay Program's report closes out the assessments of the Bay for 2016 (for what it's worth, CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor and I released our own assessment last year).

The Bay Barometer is chock full of charts describing the progress (and lack thereof) being made toward the many water quality, ecologic, and wildlife outcomes established by states in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. While glancing through several of the graphs in the Barometer report, I wondered: Which graphs would I use to convey a sense of progress? What would be my "chart of the year" for 2016?

For me, that chart-of-the-year honor has to go to a series I found …

Over the last couple of months, a pair of actions taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demonstrate the glacial pace of federal stormwater management policy under the Clean Water Act. In October, EPA rejected a series of petitions by a group of environmental organizations to expand regulatory protections for certain urban waterways. Then last month, EPA issued a new national rule clarifying existing urban water quality regulations, but only because it was forced to respond to a federal court decision now more than a dozen years old.

Let's start with the good news, however minor it may be. The new stormwater rule that EPA released in November is primarily procedural in nature. The issue at hand is when the public should be able to provide input to EPA and the states regarding the issuance of permits to their towns and cities that regulate polluted …

Last week, the Center for Progressive Reform co-hosted a symposium with the University of Maryland School of Law entitled "Halftime for the Bay TMDL." The symposium was supposed to be about what states, cities, counties, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), industry, and citizens can do to accelerate progress in the second half of the 15-year Chesapeake Bay clean-up effort. However, participants decided that it was equally important to discuss the potentially alarming prospects facing future Bay progress when a new administration and Congress take control next year.

Given that the conference was held one day after the election, it is no surprise that the agenda was partially hijacked by the need to answer big questions about the very future of the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). Attendees readily identified some threats to the Bay TMDL, such as the pending congressional effort to …

Today, the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) is releasing an assessment of the plans and progress of Baltimore City and the nine largest counties in Maryland to comply with their federal stormwater permits, a key component of the ongoing effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and restore it to health. The analysis looks carefully at the jurisdictions' past efforts and future plans, revealing a wide range in the apparent commitment and level of restoration activity as they work to restore their urban and suburban environments and address polluted runoff from impervious surfaces like roads and parking lots.

Several jurisdictions like Montgomery and Prince George's counties have a long history of innovative stormwater management work and submitted relatively strong plans. Other jurisdictions, however, did not produce plans that meet their legal obligations to identify enough stormwater projects to satisfy their permits. Some jurisdictions, like Frederick and Harford …