Supporters urge prompt action on Bay 'pollution diet'

HAMPTON

Supporters of a "pollution diet" to hasten the Chesapeake Bay cleanup outnumbered critics Thursday night in the final public meeting in Virginia on the controversial topic.

Wearing lapel stickers proclaiming "I support clean water," a crowd of students, environmentalists and senior citizens told state officials in attendance to stop delaying action and support the diet pushed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Obama administration.

"I would like to see this state take the lead on this issue instead of

lagging light - years behind," said Benjamin Duff, a Virginia Beach resident and member of the Sierra Club and Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The meeting in a hotel conference room in Hampton was a stark contrast to an earlier one in the Shenandoah Valley, where farmers and politicians sharply criticized the plan as too intrusive, expensive and scientifically flawed.

Farmers from the Eastern Shore and Essex County came Thursday night and said they only want to be treated fairly. Chiefly, they said they have been taking strides, voluntarily and without government money, to curb nutrients and sediment that might wash off their fields and taint streams and creeks that feed the Bay.

Now, they argued, those measures are not being counted in computer models that define how much pollution the Bay can tolerate and still meet all clean-water standards.

"Please don't regulate us," Bruce Holland, a farmer from Accomack County, pleaded.

The plan in question is called a Total Maximum Daily Load. It calls for six mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia to cut nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 25 percent over the next 15 years and sediment runoff by 16 percent.

If it is achieved through tighter controls on farms, development sites, urban storm drains and air pollutants, the EPA believes the Bay will finally come off the national dirty waters list.

"If this was easy, if it was cheap, if it was simple, I wouldn't be here tonight," said Jeff Corbin, a special EPA adviser on Chesapeake Bay matters and a former Chesapeake Bay Foundation scientist in Virginia.

Anthony Moore, Gov. Bob McDonnell's assistant secretary for Bay restoration, said Virginia is cooperating with the EPA effort but thinks it can attain reductions "without a lot of new programs or new regulations."

Moore said the state needs "to tweak" some existing programs and encourage farmers, cities and developers through incentives to continue progress.

Virginia's plan was deemed short of meeting the mark when it was submitted to the EPA last month. The agency, in turn, added "backstops," suggesting the state must do more to cut pollution.

One federal direction is to force sewage treatment plants to reduce the nitrogen and phosphorus flowing back into the Bay.

Ted Henifin, general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which operates most sewage plants in the region, said the crackdown would cost $690 million. That would translate into significant rate hikes to tens of thousands of residents and businesses.

To Andy Baan, a Virginia Beach dad who brought his sons to the meeting and who described himself as "a conservative Republican guy," putting off investments is becoming too common in America. "Let's not delay this anymore," Baan said.