Legislative committees in both the Maryland House and Senate are holding hearings this week on the Poultry Litter Management Act, a bill that has been attracting a lot of attention in Maryland and beyond. I have been asked to testify as part of a panel featuring representatives of the United States Geological Survey and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The focus of my testimony will be the problems posed by farm animal manure – in this case, poultry litter on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. 

You can read the full testimony here, but the crux of it is that the creation of an effective and comprehensive manure management policy is one of the biggest missing pieces in the puzzle that is the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL). Simply put, addressing the massive nutrient imbalance in areas like Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the greater Delmarva Peninsula caused …

On May 12, 2009, the federal government finally got serious about protecting the Chesapeake Bay. That’s when President Obama signed Executive Order 13508 on Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration, which declared that the federal government would put its shoulder into the multi-state effort to restore the Bay. Taking turns at a podium perched on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, the Governors of Maryland and Virginia and the Mayor of Washington D.C. praised the President that day for ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies to take on this new leadership role that would culminate in the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL) the following year.

When it was EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s turn at the microphone, she pledged that EPA would take a tough stance when necessary to compel states to finally follow through with their …

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is a tragic reminder of the hidden costs of our nation’s failing infrastructure.  Whether through benign neglect or deliberate “starve the beast” cost-cutting measures, we are continually seeing the costly and sometimes terrible consequences of failing to meet our infrastructure financing needs.  The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state of U.S. infrastructure a D+ grade in its most recent 2013 Report Card, which included a D for both drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.  According to the organization, fixing the nation’s infrastructure will require $3.6 trillion through 2020.

This past week, EPA added its voice to this discussion over infrastructure finance with the release of its quadrennial Clean Watershed Needs Survey.  Every four years EPA submits this report to Congress, as required by the Clean Water Act, detailing the total capital wastewater and stormwater treatment and …

Last week the Maryland Court of Appeals heard several hours of oral argument in back to back (to back) cases regarding whether five different municipal stormwater (“MS4”) permits issued by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) complied with the federal Clean Water Act and state water pollution laws. Although divided into separate cases due to their unique procedural histories, the three cases were consolidated into one marathon oral argument due to the substantial overlap of the issues involved. The legal arguments have changed significantly since the first motions and petitions were filed several years ago, with some of the most ambitious legal theories having fallen away. What remains in dispute in these cases are largely procedural, though still crucial, issues regarding how to structure the permits so as to ensure that the permits are enforceable and that the counties are accountable to the public. Basically, the …

It’s a staple of the right-wing assault on government that “bloated” government programs, like those intended to protect the environment, are a burden to taxpayers. In my home state of Maryland, the numbers demonstrate otherwise. The percentage of taxpayer dollars spent by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) is tiny and getting tinier.  In 2014, less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the state’s general funds were expended by MDE, a 40-percent reduction in this share since 2004.  In fact, MDE’s general fund budget actually shrank between 2004 and 2014 – not just in inflation-adjusted terms, but in absolute terms – even as the state budget increased by more than 60 percent.  

That’s not to suggest that the state abandoned environmental programs. Over this same period, Maryland created several major new revenue streams, including a Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund, the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal …

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a long overdue rule that was designed, according to EPA’s description, to move the agency “into the 21st Century.” Since many of the rules’ provisions still will not be in effect more than two decades after the turn of the century, this rulemaking plays right into the hands of those who insist that the federal government cannot work efficiently — ironic, because efficiency is the very purpose of the eReporting rule. In this case, the absurdly slow pace of the rulemaking process and the final rule’s protracted implementation schedule also serves the critics’ agenda. Even after more than a decade in the making, the final rule hampers EPA’s ability to shine a light on the problem of underreporting of water pollution in the United States.

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) has long been the centerpiece of …

This week provided another important legal decision in the fight to regulate polluted runoff from agriculture.  A California lower court on Tuesday ordered the State Water Quality Control Board to reconsider its ineffective regulations on agricultural operations in the Central Coast region.  Judge Timothy Frawley of the Sacramento Superior Court ruled in favor of the Monterey Coastkeeper, the Otter Project, and other environmental and commercial and recreational groups, as well as a resident who could no longer drink her tap water because it was so polluted from runoff.  This decision represents another farm bureau loss and another crack in the wall that has long protected agricultural interests from having to comply with clean water rules.

Like most other states and regions, agricultural operators in central California have long been allowed to pollute surface and ground waters, enjoying special status granted to agricultural operations and other contributors of …

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the 2013 decision of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania that EPA did not exceed its Clean Water Act (CWA) authority in issuing the total maximum daily load (TMDL), or pollution diet, for the Chesapeake Bay.  The ruling affirmed the legality of the nation’s most ambitious TMDL and, more broadly, it also rejected the plaintiffs’ exceedingly narrow view of TMDLs.

As presented in a recent case brief, CPR Member Scholars Emily Hammond, Dave Owen, and Rena Steinzor and I argue that this decision is a good example of how judicial deference can protect important agency efforts to protect the environment.  According to brief co-author Rena Steinzor, “The Third Circuit provided resounding support for ongoing efforts to restore the Chesapeake and for EPA’s authority to work with states to …

Last Wednesday, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge held that the Montgomery County Water Quality Protection Charge is invalid and that the plaintiff should not have been required to pay any stormwater fee to the county. The case could have significant ramifications across the state for jurisdictions that have, like Montgomery County, established a stormwater fee similar to the one invalidated in the case.

First, some background.  In 2012, the Maryland General Assembly passed HB 987, which required any jurisdiction subject to a certain federal stormwater permit (including, for example, Baltimore City and Prince George’s County) to implement an annual stormwater remediation fee and a local watershed protection and restoration fund to hold those new funds. The law did not require the local governments to set the fee at any specific level or otherwise require them to collect a specified amount in revenues; each jurisdiction had …