Leaders choose not to sue EPA over 'pollution diet'

CHESAPEAKE

Political leaders from across the region decided Thursday not to take legal action against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its new and aggressive strategy for restoring the Chesapeake Bay.

The leaders of 16 cities and counties in Hampton Roads had been mulling a legal challenge for weeks, arguing that a "pollution diet" approved late last year for the Bay would cost too much, is based on flawed science and might not succeed.

State officials estimate the plan, also known as a Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, will cost Virginians $7 billion to implement over the next 15 years. Local officials have estimated it will cost each household between $350 and $1,000 a year.

"Help me explain to my people that we're going to pay all this money to clean up the Chesapeake Bay when they don't have enough money to eat," said Greg McLemore, a city councilman from Franklin, who noted the record loss of jobs in his town due to the recent closure of the International Paper plant.

While still unhappy with the heavy expense, and unsure where the money will come from, leaders of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission nonetheless voted unanimously to defer any legal action against the EPA. They instead sent a letter to the agency outlining their concerns and asking for answers to a list of questions within 30 days.

A lawsuit "is off the table," said Dwight Farmer, executive director of the HRPDC, after a three-hour meeting with state environmental officials, an attorney from Richmond and the EPA's senior adviser on the Bay cleanup, Jeff Corbin.

"What we heard today was incredibly positive, and we just need to keep talking, keep working through these issues," Farmer said.

Specifically, what they heard from Corbin were words and phrases such as "flexibility" and "cost-efficient" and "better information" - indications, Farmer and others said, that the EPA's strategy is open to give and take.

"This is about reducing pounds of pollution," Corbin told a standing-room-only crowd that squeezed into a boardroom in Chesapeake. "We're saying, 'Hit your targets, meet your goals.' We're not saying you have to follow every specific step in some rigid process."

Environmentalists in attendance were pleased with the no-lawsuit decision. They wore blue lapel stickers proclaiming "No Delay."

For localities, the biggest concern is new requirements that they better control stormwater runoff from their streets and through their storm drains. Such runoff occurs after rainfall and often is loaded with fertilizers, oil, fuel, grease, dirt and pet wastes.

Urban runoff is the only pollution source afflicting the Bay that is increasing; the others have decreased the past 30 years due to largely voluntary measures intended to help restore the Bay.

Overall, the plan targets three pollutants: excessive nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment. They conspire to cloud water quality, rob life-sustaining oxygen and cause too much algae to bloom.

While supporting the goals, regional leaders said they feared the TMDL would not give them credit for past environmental improvements, that advances in cleanup technology would not be factored into the computer models driving the program, and that the models themselves are inaccurate guesses.

Corbin said the EPA is running new computer models that take into account some local concerns, and that the results, due by July, will likely mean that Virginia and other states will not have to cut as much pollution as first thought.

Still, he said, the cleanup will mean sacrifices.

"I would have loved to bring a big federal checkbook with me today, but I can't," Corbin said. "Funding will be a challenge, no doubt. But we can do it, we have to be creative."

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