The Virginian-Pilot
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Virginia was the only state that missed a deadline Wednesday for filing its plan for reducing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.
Five other states that influence the Bay, along with the District of Columbia, were expected to turn in their required plans to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by Sept. 1.
The EPA is overseeing a push by the Obama administration to hasten the Bay's cleanup, mostly by imposing new regulations on myriad sources of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment. The three pollutants are choking the Bay, muddying its water quality, and creating "dead zones" where aquatic life must cope with little or no oxygen.
EPA officials said Wednesday that Virginia told them last week about the delay, explaining that the governor and other senior leaders needed a few extra days to digest the plan and approve the restrictions within it.
The officials expect to receive the state's plan by Friday, saying time is of the essence. They need to review and approve - or reject - state strategies by Sept. 24, when the EPA is expected to release a draft overall program for reducing pollution to safe levels Bay wide.
Gov. Bob McDonnell's administration has been critical of the regulatory approach favored by President Barack Obama but has agreed to cooperate in setting new limits to help restore the Bay by 2025.
Doug Domenech, McDonnell's secretary of natural resources, confirmed the delay in an e-mail and said he had been in meetings much of Wednesday over Virginia's proposed blueprint, called a Watershed Implementation Plan.
A draft version, obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, includes a litany of suggested controls.
They include: banning phosphorus in lawn and turf fertilizers; banning nitrogen from road de-icing material; requiring 95 percent of farms and all golf courses to write a nutrient management plan to better curb nitrogen and phosphorus pollution; and setting new and tougher rules on sewage plants and stormwater systems in cities and development sites.
The draft version lists only the controls up for discussion and does not recommend which ones to adopt.
The EPA has told leaders from six states that the Bay can withstand no more than 187 million pounds of nitrogen, 12.5 million pounds of phosphorus and 6.1 billion pounds of sediment per year.
In 2009, the states discharged an estimated 247 million pounds of nitrogen, 16 million pounds of phosphorus and 8 billion pounds of sediment.
Thus, each state must significantly cut its pollution in order to meet cleanup targets. The plans are the "road maps" for how each state intends to get there, said Katherine Antos, an EPA official working on the effort.
If the EPA believes a state strategy is lacking, the agency can write in its own remedies that the state would have to implement, said Jon Capacasa, a water-quality administrator with the EPA in Philadelphia.
The agency "is prepared to use its authority to ensure clean water in the Bay," he said.
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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Given Half a Chance, Mother Nature Can Clean the Bay Cheaper
Darryl Glover, manager of state water quality monitoring and assessment programs at the DEQ, finally admits that sanitary sewer overflows (during heavy rains and or storm surges) is at the root cause of much of the Chesapeake Bay’s fecal coliform pollution problem.
But the answer to the problem lies not in borrowing another billion dollars from the Chinese for some Rube Goldberg Filterra and Bacterra Storm Water Filters, as are the centerpiece of the pending Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Act.
The EPA Needs to Get Its Head Out of the Sediment!
Rather than spend billions more on sewage treatment plant upgrades. Programs that are of questionable benefit. Instead, dramatic upgrade of Chesapeake Bay water quality can be accomplished faster and much less expensively by removing flood plain dikes, dams, and obstructing pipelines. And enlarging those roadway culverts that currently restrict twice daily tidal flows to invaluable marshland.
And simply by doing any necessary navigation channel dredging by pipeline dredge. And depositing those dredge spoils, by pipeline, on long intertidal slopes just seaward of certain bulkheads and eroded shorelines nearby. Saving hundreds of millions of dollars, involved in transporting navigation channel dredge spoils and placement in US Army Corps of Engineer’s (USACE) vertical dredge spoil sites such as Craney and Popular Islands.
It's About the Sediment and the Hydrology, Stupid!
As well as saving future monies planned for other, questionably effective, rehabilitation programs. Like oyster reefs, sewage treatment plant upgrades and Bacterra and Filterra Storm Water Filters. Saving, literally billions of dollars.
Government should rely less on sewage treatment plant upgrades and more on Mother Nature’s sewage treatment program…eg, healthy stands of intertidal Spartina Alterniflora marshes. To decontaminate spilled sewage. And doing so without the use of deadly (at least to phytoplankton and zooplankton) chlorine.
We should cancel the installation of those multi million dollar Bacterra and Filterra storm water filters as they are designed to be bypassed (in times of heavy sanitary sewer overflows) during heavy rains and during storm surges. More Obama pay to play. And instead let the new living shoreline marsh grasses do it better and cheaper. Saving billions of borrowed Chinese dollars
Let the Restored Marshland Serve as Filter, Sponge and Nursery
Note: Breaux Tidal Marshland restoration projects in Louisiana …that is pipeline dredging of shipping channels in the Mississippi River and placement of dredge spoils, on a long 1:6 intertidal slope seaward of eroded shorelines so as to reestablish fringe marshes. Within one year, without marsh grass planting, and without rip rap sills, new living shorelines can be established (reestablished)’.
Note: the sediment, turbidity and pollution in the Mississippi River far exceeds that of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. And if hydraulic pipeline dredge projects have worked in the Mississippi River, surely they can work in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. In fact the beautiful salt marshes in the Indigo Dunes were created years ago using Lynnhaven Inlet dredge spoils.
Bay Cleanup Can Be Done Much Cheaper, Better and Faster
And NASA’s BC Wolverton’s studies…the ‘new (living shoreline) marshes can remove sediment, nitrogen, raw sewage, Hepatitis A viral particles, heavy metals, coliforms and PCBs from the waters that flow through them. During twice daily tidal cycles. Accordingly, water clarity is markedly improved and thus the “…ability to grow submerged aquatic vegetation…”…is enhanced!
Using the above proven watershed rehabilitation programs, the Chesapeake Bay watershed rehabilitation could be done much, much better than currently planned programs. And much faster. And it could be done for one tenth the cost. And it could be done without borrowed Chinese dollars!
But this would be too simple. Too fast. And the good ol’ boys with their pay to play scams like oyster reefs, Bacterra and Filterra storm water filters and sewage treatment plant upgrades….why the good ol’ boys would be left out in the cold. And we can’t have that, can we?
George Meredith MD
Virginia Beach
the other states
the other states that have "complied" are what you call,Administrative compliant.it means they will tow the party line and what ever flows from this rediculous Administration.I ask any of you liberal brainwashed fools.if the EPA was effective in there roll to clean up the Enviornment do you think this issues would have been adressed and in the 70's? besides if the EPA is asking the state for there plan,then why do we need the EPA?let the state work with the surrounding company's.not the Federal Government.all the Fed knows how to do is Regulate subsidize, and Tax. to me thats not the solution.
Sewage plants are the
Sewage plants are the biggest concern and barley mentioned. And not mentioned at all are the farms who are the biggest users of fertilizer. Time to make real change and not just give more lip service. But all you can expect from 0 and his EPA is more bunk.
to Goiv. Mcd
Get it done! This is far more imoprantnat than those jackleg things you and Cucci have been working. DO IT!
Kneejerk reaction
"Gov. Bob McDonnell's administration has been critical of the regulatory approach favored by President Barack Obama---". This is in line with his track record of being critical of ANY regulatory approach or other program favored by President Barack Obama. "We don't like it, so we'll pass a law against it."
Get that lawsuit ready
"If the EPA believes a state strategy is lacking, the agency can write in its own remedies that the state would have to implement, said Jon Capacasa, a water-quality administrator with the EPA in Philadelphia". No doubt the Virginia AG is preparing the lawsuit against the EPA for overstepping its boundaries with regards to State's Rights. Virginia may have lost the initial encounter in 1865, but the war isn't over yet.