Del. Cosgrove is elected chair of bay commission

State Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, has been elected chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, a tri-state government panel that works to clean up the famed estuary.

Cosgrove will assume leadership of the commission at a meeting next week in Washington, and then he will participate in executive talks about the Bay on May 12 with the governors of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the new director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson.

Cosgrove was elected to the one-year term as chairman by fellow legislators from the three Bay states that comprise the commission.

"We must find the resolve to increase our efforts to clean up the Bay," Cosgrove said in a statement. "By strengthening our partnerships with the federal government, our localities and the private sector can mobilize new technologies and make significant progress on the ground."

Specifically, Cosgrove said he will lobby Congress to increase funding to modernize the Blue Plains sewage plant in Washington, which discharges the most nitrogen into the Bay of any such plant in the watershed.

He also indicated a desire to press for more production of biofuels that do not rely on food crops such as corn.

- Scott Harper