In the past 15 months, the combination of President Obama’s Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order and the EPA’s Bay-wide Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) process has established a framework for ensuring accountability and success in Bay restoration efforts. No aspect of this new framework is more important than the Bay states’ and the District of Columbia’s Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs), which will demonstrate how they will meet the pollution targets in the applicable TMDLs. While the soundness of states’ WIPs depends on a broad array of technical, financial, and administrative factors, our bottom line expectation is that states write clear, objective, and transparent plans so that all watershed partners achieve their TMDL pollution reductions and ultimately restore the Chesapeake Bay. These WIPs will also enable the public to vigorously monitor the progress in meeting those commitments.
The Center for Progressive Reform has just issued a set of metrics for grading and evaluating the Chesapeake Bay states’ and the District of Columbia’s Phase I WIPs. The metrics will evaluate each Phase I WIP by assigning letter grades that evaluate (1) the transparency of information in the WIPs in providing key information about their pollution control programs and (2) the strength of the programs in making actual pollution reductions. The WIPs provide an unprecedented opportunity to objectively measure progress toward restoring the Bay on a state-by-state basis, and the assigned grades will provide a clear and understandable tool for monitoring each state’s commitment to restoration.
In partnership with the Choose Clean Water Coalition, we are sending each state governor and environmental agency head a copy of the metrics to provide ample notice of what specific information we believe the WIPs should include.
The Chesapeake Watershed states are required by EPA to publish their draft Phase I WIPs by September 24, 2010, at which point they will be open for public comment for 45 days. A three-member panel of CPR Member Scholars will evaluate the draft plans and release the grades during that period.
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Yee Huang | August 9, 2010
In the past 15 months, the combination of President Obama’s Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order and the EPA’s Bay-wide Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) process has established a framework for ensuring accountability and success in Bay restoration efforts. No aspect of this new framework is more important than the Bay states’ and the […]
Lena Pons | August 6, 2010
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a trade association that represents chemical industry interests and is heavily connected to the plastics industry, filed a Request for Correction Monday on the EPA's Chemical Action Plan for Bisphenol A (BPA). The request, filed under a provision of the Data Quality Act (also referred to as the Information Quality Act), […]
Amy Sinden | August 5, 2010
It turns out there’s more than one way an offshore oil rig can kill a fish. Even when they’re not spewing oil into the ocean, oil rigs kill vast numbers of fish and other aquatic organisms in their daily operations by sucking them up into their cooling water intake systems, where they get squashed against screens […]
Victor Flatt | August 4, 2010
Cross-posted from Flatt Out Environmental. As expected, the EPA’s “tailoring rule,” under which it proposes to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA) only if they produce over 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent forcing per year, has been challenged in court by numerous organizations. These include industry, several states […]
Ben Somberg | August 3, 2010
The Minerals Managements Service’s coziness with an industry it was supposed to be monitoring has brought attention back to an all-too-pervasive problem: regulatory agencies becoming “captured” by the regulated industries. This morning the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts is holding a hearing on “Protecting the Public Interest: Understanding the Threat […]
Ben Somberg | July 29, 2010
You may have read of a letter sent by 31 Representatives to the EPA today to complain about coal ash regulation. I wasn’t planning on dignifying it with a response, but sometimes something just calls out for a little highlighting. Like when the members write: “States have been effectively regulating CCRs” That’s actually a case […]
Thomas McGarity | July 28, 2010
Now that Congress has passed legislation creating a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Treasury Department, attention has shifted to how the Obama Administration will implement the new law. The issue of who President Obama should appoint to head the new agency is now front and center. Consumer groups and many members of Congress […]
Lena Pons | July 27, 2010
The Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 (H.R. 5381/S. 3302), the primary legislation on the table in response to the Toyota unintended acceleration fiasco, went through the committee process in the House and Senate earlier this summer. The bills, as introduced, included some tough provisions to respond to gaps exposed by the Toyota episode. Among […]
Catherine O'Neill | July 27, 2010
The EPA released a guidance document on Monday that promises to integrate environmental justice considerations into the fabric of its rulemaking efforts. Titled the Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action, EPA’s Guidance sets forth concrete steps meant to flag those instances in which its rules or similar actions raise environmental […]