Maryland's Bay TMDL Report: A Tale of Two States
Editors’ Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on measuring progress toward the 2017 interim goal of the Bay TMDL. The first three posts cover the region as a whole, and then Pennsylvania and Virginia. Future posts will explore the progress of the remaining four jurisdictions.
Judging from the Chesapeake Bay Program’s modeling of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland is a tale of two states when it comes to reducing its polluting emissions. On the one hand, the state is clearly lagging in reducing nitrogen pollution, one of two main contributors to the algal blooms that lead to “dead zones” in the Bay. On the other hand, it has made some progress. Indeed, Maryland’s experience appears to be quite similar to that of Virginia, a leader in reducing nitrogen to date, in that it owes most of its success to significant early investments in wastewater treatment plant upgrades. Like Virginia, Maryland has committed well over $1 billion to installing advanced technology on its major wastewater treatment plants, albeit a few years later than Virginia.
In an important respect, however, Maryland is unlike Virginia, or any state for that matter. Maryland has crafted its Watershed …
The State of Maryland released a long overdue report on Monday regarding the state’s plan to finance its implementation of the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL) requirements. The report was prepared by the Environmental Finance Center at the University of Maryland on behalf of the Maryland Department of the Environment, the Department of Natural Resources, and several other agencies in response to a 2014 request by the budget committees of the Maryland General Assembly.
Originating from a request in early 2014 by the joint chairs of the budget committees, the report was supposed to be released along with a companion report on past expenditures associated with restoring the Chesapeake Bay in time for preparation of the fiscal year 2016 budget this past winter. However, in the preface to the report on historic expenditures, the agencies indicated that the report on future funding needs …
Today, the Baltimore Sun published an op-ed by CPR President Rena Steinzor and Public Justice Center attorney Sally Dworak-Fisher entitled, "Maryland's whistleblower laws need teeth."
According to the piece:
Whistleblowers can help identify and put a stop to all sorts of illegal activity, if they're properly protected. Dozens of state and federal laws include provisions intended to shield whistleblowers from retaliatory actions by employers who have been outed. But this piecemeal approach, with different laws enforced by different agencies, is too complicated and has too many holes.
To take the load off of overburdened state investigators, Marylanders need a new law that gives whistleblowers the right to sue employers who retaliate. A comprehensive law with that fail-safe mechanism would be an invaluable tool for promoting better practices at worksites across the state because it would encourage workers to raise red flags when their employers skirt the …
