Environmentalists focus on Chesapeake Bay cleanup

VIRGINIA BEACH

MORE THAN 100 environmentalists from across the state converged here Saturday to hear the latest on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, possible uranium mining and its potential to contaminate local drinking water, sea level rise, and offshore wind energy.

The annual Virginia Environmental Assembly usually convenes in Richmond, but organizers decided to come to Virginia Beach this year, in part because many of the key environmental questions facing the state are focused along the coast.

The event at the Virginia Beach Convention Center featured a presentation by Anthony Moore, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell's newly appointed special adviser on Chesapeake Bay cleanup matters.

Moore, an environmental policy director for former Gov. Jim Gilmore, squared off against Ann Jennings, head of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia, and Jeff Corbin, a former scientist for the Bay foundation who now is an adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In a packed room, Jennings said a recently announced plan from the McDonnell administration to hasten Bay cleanup work, as required by the EPA, is woefully short of details and serious commitments.

Jennings urged Corbin, sitting next to her, and the EPA to demand Virginia do more. Absent that, she encouraged the federal agency to impose its own, more aggressive, blueprint for restoring the Bay in Virginia.

"I don't have a lot of confidence from reading this document that we'll achieve our goals," Jennings said of the proposed state strategy, called a WIP, short for Watershed Implementation Plan.

Under an initiative launched last year by President Barack Obama, the federal government is taking the lead in the 30-year-old cleanup and aims to reduce pollution enough to remove the Bay from a national list of dirty waters by 2025.

The Bay suffers from too many nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, too much sediment muddying up water quality, and too little oxygen for aquatic life to breathe.

Moore defended the state WIP, calling it a cost-effective and flexible prescription for cutting pollution without greatly inhibiting the economy.

He said the current cleanup campaign, ongoing since 1983 and reliant on voluntary actions, is working just fine.

"We've made a lot of improvements, a lot of progress," Moore said.

He said a big part of the new plan centers on "nutrient trading," a business-friendly approach in which sewage plants, factories, shipyards, local governments and farms can buy and sell pollution credits to reach compliance with tougher clean-water standards.

Credits stem from those companies and facilities that have cut nitrogen and phosphorus levels beyond their required amounts. The extra reductions can then be sold to a nearby factory, plant or farm that is not in compliance and needs help.

Moore said it is likely the McDonnell administration will sponsor legislation to establish this freer, wider market system.

Tom Leahy, director of utilities for Virginia Beach, spoke earlier Saturday about the potential risks to drinking water supplies from a proposal to mine uranium in Pittsylvania County, about 150 miles west of Hampton Roads.

Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Chesapeake get some of their drinking water from Lake Gaston, on the North Carolina border. Just upstream, a company called Virginia Uranium wants to overturn a state ban on mining the radioactive ore and tap one of the largest veins in the country for nuclear power generation.

Leahy said the city is conducting its own study of the proposal and expects results by the end of the year.

So far, he said, there are "no Earth-shattering results," only that mining would elevate radioactive levels in drinking water, if only slightly.

"If you're going to mine uranium, there will be an increase" in radioactivity, Leahy said. "The question remains, will it be significant?"

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