By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 2, 2010; 7:30 PM
The Environmental Protection Agency will take a month to evaluate plans from four states and the District that show how they'll aggressively reduce pollution that flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
Conservation groups such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Sierra Club didn't need nearly that much time. They polished them off just three days after they were filed, and their verdicts are in.
The groups said Thursday that the plans are a big improvement on drafts the states provided to the EPA several months ago, but they don't push hard enough to do what's needed to bring the bay back to good health, and states haven't committed the money to accomplish their goals.
The foundation and the Sierra Club pored over the plans of Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and the District, which filed on time Monday.
Maryland and New York have yet to file. Maryland "plans to have it done by the end of this week," a spokeswoman said. New York didn't say when its plan was coming.
The states were required to show in detail what they will do to aggressively reduce wastewater runoff in the next 15 years. The EPA will decide on the adequacy of the Watershed Implementation Plans by Dec. 31.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation had few nice things to say about Virginia's plan. It liked that state employees spent part of Thanksgiving working on it, and that the state committed to six million pounds of nitrogen reduction into the James River.
But what about phosphorus reduction from farms? How the state will actually reduce the more serious problem of farm runoff is anybody's guess, said Ann Jennings, the foundation's executive director in Virginia.
The state will require farms to implement "resource management plans" to lower pollution, but failed to say what should be in those plans, "and requires them only if adequate funding is available," Jennings said.
The plan praised the governor's commitment of $36 million to water quality improvement as a "gesture of good faith" to the EPA. But the state was obligated to put up that money - 10 percent of any state budget surplus goes to improving water quality, said J.R. Tolbert, assistant director of the Sierra Club's Virgina chapter. "It's not a show of good faith," he said. "The governor is just following the law."
The EPA has threatened to recommend sanctions against the states if their plans are inadequate. The sanctions include redirecting federal funds for other state projects to water quality programs and opposing state permits to developers.
Anthony Moore, Virginia's assistant secretary of state for Chesapeake Bay Restoration, took the criticism in stride. "I think from the foundation that's about the best we're going to get.
Pennsylvania's plan would hire workers who would show farmers how to limit runoff, something the foundation likes. But they didn't commit enough funding for their plan, said Matt Ehrhart, Pennsylvania director of the foundation.
Thomas Au, the state conservation chair for the Sierra Club, said the plan also doesn't commit enough resources to limiting wastewater runoff from Marcellus shale drilling into the Susquehanna River.
"I think the county storm water plan has been underfunded for years," Au said.
John Hanger, director of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, said the plan commits $15 million a year to cleaning the bay. "We have stronger rules than we've ever had," Hanger said. "I'd fall out of my chair if the Chesapeake Bay Foundation had nothing but praise."
Beth McGee, the foundation's senior water quality scientist, said West Virginia and Delaware share the same problem - backing their plans with money.
Delaware "did a good job of identifying gaps and where the money needs to go," McGee said. "But they couldn't say where funding would come from."
West Virginia determined its level of wastewater runoff, but the state did not say how much money it would cost to lower it. McGee said it was hard to trust the state's conclusion that it had enough resources to pay for the work.
"We could take them at their word, I guess," she said.
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