Kaine pushes Obama for action on Chesapeake Bay cleanup

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is urging President Barack Obama to issue an executive order to speed up the Chesapeake Bay cleanup.

At a private meeting Wednesday in Washington, Kaine delivered a draft order that he wrote to Obama's new chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. It calls for more federal attention, money and regulatory clout for the Bay.

In a separate letter also hand-carried to Jackson, Kaine encouraged Obama to press Congress to take several actions in support of the Bay, including the creation of a "Clean Water Trust Fund."

One section of the proposed order suggests what environmental groups have been requesting without success for years - that the EPA get tougher and ensure that pollution standards are being met by hundreds of sewage plants, factories and other facilities that discharge nutrient-rich wastes into the Bay.

Excessive nutrients - nitrogen, phosphorus and ammonia, mostly - are the biggest pollutants affecting the Bay. They steal oxygen, spark algae blooms and cloud the water so that few underwater plants and grasses can survive.

The result is a greener, soupier Bay that supports less aquatic life and has more "dead zones."

"EPA is directed to use its Clean Water Act authorities to the maximum extent possible or identify new authorities needed to enforce water quality standards," a copy of the draft order reads.

A spokeswoman for Jackson, Roxanne Smith, said Friday that her boss is interested.

"Administrator Jackson is reviewing a number of issues at EPA, including great bodies of water like the Chesapeake Bay," Smith said in a statement. "She will consult with EPA staff as she decides on a course of action."

Kaine, a close political ally of Obama, met with Jackson in his role as head of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council. It consists of the governors of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, the mayor of Washington, D.C., the chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the chief of the EPA.

Kaine's secretary of natural resources, L. Preston Bryant, also attended the meeting at Jackson's office Wednesday morning. Environmentalists were delighted, saying they could not recall a governor pushing so hard and so early on the Bay with an incoming president.

"He's saying, 'Mr. President, please tell your EPA to step up to the plate and get serious about the Bay,' " said Roy A. Hoagland, a vice president with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group. "He deserves credit for that, for sure."

The meeting came as the Bay foundation is suing the EPA, saying it's not cracking down on nutrient pollution.

Hoagland said the remedies that the foundation's lawsuit seeks are nearly identical to what Kaine outlined in his draft order.

Bryant, Kaine's environmental secretary, agreed that the EPA can, and should, do more.

"We believe that existing enforcement tools are likely sufficient, if they'd only use them," Bryant said Friday in an e-mail.

The president of the Bay foundation, Will Baker, sent a letter to Kaine

on Thursday praising his initiative: "Should the president choose to issue an Executive order like the one you have proposed, and should Congress move forward with legislative changes, we have begun to chart a new path for accelerated Bay restoration."

Kaine also urged Obama to declare the Bay "a national treasure," a status that would elevate the cleanup's importance in Congress and in public debate.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com