As expected, the Environmental Protect Agency issued its draft Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay this afternoon – essentially a cap on total pollution in the Bay, as well as caps on each of 92 separate segments of the Bay. EPA also issued assessments of each of the affected states’ Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs), evaluating proposals for implementing the TMDL from Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.
As I said in this space this morning, the TMDL is a major step forward. Reading through the draft reinforces my view that there’s good reason to hope that, decades from now, we’ll look back on the issuance of the TMDLs as a watershed moment in the protection of the Bay. It’s been a very long road to this point, with a couple decades of false starts. And we have a long road ahead of us yet. But EPA has stepped up to the plate to its great credit, and to the credit of the Obama Administration.
Over the years, the states have treated the Bay badly, for the most part buckling to industry or other political pressure to avoid meaningful protections. In my home state of Maryland, agri-business has been one such powerful force against progress, for example. As part of its release today, EPA also offered up comments to the states on their draft WIPs, and, again to its credit, EPA seems to mean business. It identified “serious deficiencies” in the plans from five states – Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and “minor deficiencies” in the plans from Maryland and the District of Columbia. The message EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is clearly intending to deliver to the states should be clear: there’s a new sheriff in town, and she means business.
It’s long past time.
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Rena Steinzor | September 24, 2010
As expected, the Environmental Protect Agency issued its draft Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay this afternoon – essentially a cap on total pollution in the Bay, as well as caps on each of 92 separate segments of the Bay. EPA also issued assessments of each of the affected states’ Watershed Implementation Plans […]
Ben Somberg | September 23, 2010
Two items of note tomorrow in the Chesapeake Bay realm: The EPA will publish the draft Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) – a cap on the total water pollution that can be discharged into the Bay. The TMDL will be open for public comment until November 8, 2010. The states (and DC) in […]
Celeste Monforton | September 22, 2010
Cross posted from The Pump Handle. MSHA announced Tuesday that it will be issuing on September 23 an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to improve a practice to prevent coal dust explosions. The rule addresses “rock dusting”–the decades old practice of generously applying pulverized limestone dust throughout a coal mine to dilute the potential power of […]
Ben Somberg | September 20, 2010
The toxic drywall issue has been relatively quiet in the press for some time now. Some guy in Manatee County FL looks to be trying to flip a few contaminated houses (unclear how much he’s repairing them). Habitat for Humanity had a drywall problem in New Orleans. No real big announcements from CPSC of late. […]
Rena Steinzor | September 16, 2010
Today Jacob Lew heads to the hill for two Senate hearings on his nomination to be the new director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. He is expected to be confirmed. The hearings will likely focus on budgetary issues, but no less important is another division of OMB: the Office of Information […]
Daniel Farber | September 15, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Imagine a problem: it’s global; it stems from an extremely complex, interconnected system; it has major economic implications. Sounds like climate change, or in other words, like the kind of problem that the world can’t seem to address effectively. But no, it’s not Global Climate Change, it’s Global Economic Change. And […]
Ben Somberg | September 14, 2010
Today CPR releases a new white paper, From Ship to Shore: Reforming the National Contingency Plan to Improve Protections for Oil Spill Cleanup Workers (press release), a look at how decisions were made about safety protections for cleanup workers in the aftermath of the BP oil spill — and the lessons for the future. The […]
Matt Shudtz | September 8, 2010
In Tuesday’s New York Times story, “In a Feast of Data on BPA Plastic, No Final Answer,” Denise Grady characterizes the continued development of new studies about the endocrine disrupting chemical as yet another dispute between environmentalists and chemical manufacturers over a ubiquitous chemical with uncertain health effects. While her assessment of the state of the […]
Alyson Flournoy | September 3, 2010
Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill offers a chance to learn a lesson that we should have learned five years ago. Certainly, the two events differ in important ways – the hurricane itself was a force of nature, and the oil well blowout although powered by nature, was clearly the result of […]