Progress in Bay Cleanup, But Much Work Remains – Lynchburg News and Advance

The Chesapeake Bay almost died in the 1970s when pollution came close to killing it off. Sewage and deadly agricultural and urban chemical runoff were well on the way to it.

Today, however, the Bay is in better health than its been in for decades, largely because of a determination from the federal government down that this iconic and unique body of water must be saved. Progress thats been called incredible has been made in Virginia, but much work remains.

Last month, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation released a preliminary report detailing the progress thats been made, especially in the last six years, in the fight to restore the Bay to health. Today, there is a record high level of sea grass the foundation upon which a healthy Bay is built, a noticeable rise in the number of female blue crabs, an oyster stock thats coming back from record low levels in the past decade and an oxygen-less dead zone thats projected to be 60 percent smaller than in the mid-1980s.

Considering how close the Bay was to death in the 1970s and 1980s, this progress is nothing short of amazing, though its taken more than three decades of effort to get to this point. Early efforts by Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Delaware simply were too limited in scope to tackle the problem, and because of the voluntary nature of the pact between the parties, the work of one could be negated by the inactions of another.

It wasnt until former President Barack Obama, through an expanded reading of the Waters of the United States Act, directed the federal Environmental Protection Agency to take the lead in the cleanup efforts. At the same time, the states of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York, large portions of which are in the Bays watershed, were added to the group of states involved in the cleanup. With the EPAs lead, came federal dollars the compact members could leverage in efforts to implement a wide range of environmental steps to limit pollution inflows to the Bay; currently, the federal contribution is $78 million annually.

The Bay foundations report notes that Virginia has made noticeable progress incredible progress was the phrase the foundation used in upgrading sewage treatments in the Bay watershed. The progress made on this front was enough to offset shortcomings in state efforts to meet pollution reduction targets for farms and for curbing urban/suburban runoff.

According to foundation data, Virginia fell more than 10 percent shy of the goal to cut urban/suburban runoff pollution. Rain washes chemicals such as nitrogen and phosphorus chemicals that lead to deadly algae growth from lawns and chemicals from roadways, along with sediment itself, into the Bays watershed. Meeting the 2025 runoff goal the EPA has set for Virginia, the foundation says, will be difficult, if not impossible.

The success rate for meeting the goals set for the state agriculture sector is a more mixed picture. While phosphorus goals were met, nitrogen and sediment goals came up short by 10 percent or so. One highly successful program to tackle agricultural runoff has been working with farmers to fence off streams and their banks, preventing livestock from depositing nitrogen-laden waste in the waters. There are currently more than 300 conservation plans encompassing more than 65,000 acres, with farmers receiving cost-sharing dollars to protect their waterways, but again, unsteady funding and a backlog of cost-sharing applications have held back progress.

We have written many times over the years of the Bays environmental and economic importance, both for Virginia and the nation. We have also written in support of President Obamas federalization of the cleanup efforts, the reasoning being that the Bay is a national resource whose protection and restoration is beyond the capabilities of any one state or group of states. And we have also written in support of congressional efforts to restore the $78 million for Bay cleanup efforts to the federal budget on the grounds that the taxpayers return on investment more than justifies the expenditure.

This Chesapeake Bay Foundation report underscores the success, thus far, of the new approach to Bay restoration. The raw data alone argues for the continuation of this policy; we can only hope Congress is listening and restores the full $78 million in funding for the Bays cleanup.

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Progress in Bay Cleanup, But Much Work Remains - Lynchburg News and Advance