Tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue its final Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay, setting a pollution cap for the Bay that is comprised of 92 individual caps for each of the tributary segments that flow into the Bay. The Bay TMDL represents another important milestone in the long-running effort to clean up the Bay, the largest estuary in North America, and return it to health. Part of EPA’s release will include its response to the Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) submitted to EPA this fall by the six watershed states and the District of Columbia, which all contribute to nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollution in the Bay. The WIPs set forth the states’ planning to date to implement the pollution-control efforts that the TMDL will demand.
Since the states submitted their plans, a panel of CPR Member Scholars has been evaluating them, and we will shortly release grades for each state’s WIP. We’re eager to see EPA’s response to the plans, and intend to incorporate into our own report anything from EPA’s release that materially affects the WIPs themselves.
Without scooping our own report, I can say that the WIPs as a whole were still disappointing. Some plans are better than others, either in terms of the pollution-control programs they sketch out, or in terms of the transparency the states say they intend for their efforts. But by and large, the states’ plans simply don’t go far enough or commit to enough to demonstrate that they will indeed lead to significant improvement in the water quality of the Bay without additional prompting from EPA.
That makes EPA’s release tomorrow all the more important, and why it’s going to be so very critical that EPA and, for that matter, the public keep the pressure on the states to pursue genuine efforts to clean up the Bay. Too often in recent years, the efforts have sounded a whole lot more impressive in press releases than they have been on the ground or in the water. It’s long past time for that to change, and we remain hopeful that EPA is on track to help – or make – the states do just that.
We plan to publish our evaluation of the states’ WIPs in a matter of days, but of course want to take a look at what EPA has to say tomorrow. Watch this space.
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Yee Huang | December 28, 2010
Tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue its final Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay, setting a pollution cap for the Bay that is comprised of 92 individual caps for each of the tributary segments that flow into the Bay. The Bay TMDL represents another important milestone in the long-running effort to […]
Alice Kaswan | December 24, 2010
The environment received an early Christmas present from the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday, with EPA’s announcement that it would propose New Source Performance Standards (NSPSs) for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and refineries in 2011, and then finalize the regulations in 2012. The decision resolves a lawsuit brought by states, local governments, and […]
Ben Somberg | December 23, 2010
Two years ago this week, an earthen wall holding back a giant coal ash impoundment failed in Kingston, Tennessee, sending more than a billion gallons of coal ash slurry over nearby land and into the Emory River. The ash had chemicals including arsenic, lead, and mercury. Clean up costs could be as much as $1.2 […]
Rena Steinzor | December 23, 2010
Salmonella in eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, and spinach; and melamine in pet food and candy imported from China… With a regularity that has become downright terrifying, the food safety system in the United States has given us ample evidence that it has broken down completely. And so, in a small miracle of legislative activism, Democrats in Congress finally […]
Ben Somberg | December 21, 2010
A few stories from the last week that I thought deserved noting: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrapped up a rather impressive 8-day series Sunday on air pollution in 14 counties of southwestern Pennsylvania. Ultimately, the paper found that “14,636 more people died from heart disease, respiratory disease and lung cancer in the region from 2000 through […]
Lena Pons | December 20, 2010
In October, EPA requested nominations for substances that it should evaluate under the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). Today CPR releases Setting Priorities for IRIS: 47 Chemicals that Should Move to the Head of the Risk-Assessment Line — a paper that we've submitted to EPA as our nominations for priority chemicals. Following up on our recent […]
Wendy Wagner | December 17, 2010
The Obama Administration’s newly released science policy memo is an important and largely positive development in the effort to protect science and scientists from politics. In particular, the policy takes aim at many of the abuses of science and scientists that defined the Bush era. It’s particularly encouraging, for example, that the policy calls on political appointees […]
Daniel Farber | December 15, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. I thought it might be interesting to see the general trajectory of CERCLA litigation over the years. The figures for reported court decisions are readily available on Westlaw. (I searched for CERCLA or Superfund by year.) Part of the trajectory makes sense, but part is puzzling. There’s a clear pattern up […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | December 14, 2010
A particularly revealing story in The Washington Post this weekend reported on a sordid tale of regulatory failure that may have helped contribute to this spring and summer’s outbreak of outbreak of egg-borne salmonella that sickened more than 1,900 people and led to the largest recall of eggs in U.S. history. In an agonizing case of […]