New coalition's goal: Speed up the cleanup for the Bay

More than 50 environmental groups from Virginia to Pennsylvania are banding together to push for tougher, speedier actions in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay Coalition will officially launch itself and its inaugural campaign, Choose Clean Water, at a news conference today on Capitol Hill. I ts members have been organizing and talking for nearly a year and already are lobbying government officials.

The idea behind the coalition is simple: working together with one voice is better than dozens of advocates competing to be heard on the same subject.

"The failure of Chesapeake Bay cleanup is also our failure, and the culture of organizations working individually to restore the Bay must end," coalition members wrote in a May 5 letter to the governors of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The coalition arrives at an opportune time. President Barack Obama last week signed an executive order calling the Bay's restoration a national priority, and he empowered the EPA to take the lead in ensuring that significant progress is made.

At the same time, states bordering the Bay, including Virginia, have promised to be more aggressive. They pledged last week to do more to cut nutrient pollution, which is choking the Bay of oxygen and aquatic life, and to report their results in two-year increments, instead of through open-ended, long-term goals.

Most immediately, the coalition will urge Congress to pass a Surface Transportation Act that would require new highway projects receiving federal money to comply with strict new environmental standards.

Members also want lawmakers to act decisively on climate change; to consider stricter rules on pollution from farms, sewage plants and industries; and to spell out penalties when governments miss deadlines and targets within the Bay cleanup.

The coalition has hired a senior manager, Hilary Harp Falk, and is setting up a Web site: www.choosecleanwater.org. It is funded by several charitable foundations and by members themselves, Falk said, in hope of creating a permanent force on Bay issues.

"We intend to be around until we get the job done," Falk said.

Small and large environmental groups are part of the coalition, from Ducks Unlimited and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy and Wetlands Watch, an organization based in Norfolk.

Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, said that until now, his group could not extend its reach to Washington, where key decisions about environmental policy and funding are made.

The new coalition, however, risks confusing the public over which group is responsible for what. For example, there now is a Chesapeake Bay Coalition, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a Chesapeake Bay Commission, a Chesapeake Bay Program and an Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, for years a leading environmental voice on cleanup issues, said it got involved in the coalition to bolster its bumper-sticker message: Save the Bay.

"We've got something like 200,000 members, but with the coalition, we're now talking about hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people," said Doug Siglin, the foundation's federal affairs director. "Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?"

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