Feds Might Be Last Hope for the Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is one of the most historically and ecologically important bodies of water in America. And if tough steps aren’t taken soon — at the federal level — the Bay, as we know it today, will likely become a giant deadzone.

It was the Chesapeake Bay that made the survival of the colony of Virginia possible in the early years of the 17th century. Its rich fisheries fed the Colonial economies of Virginia and Maryland, while the bay itself and the riverways feeding into it were the watery version of interstate highways for commerce.

But today, the Bay sits on a precipice. Twenty-six years ago, Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and the federal government vowed to clean up the estuary, which then was as close to death as an eco-system could be.

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Today, it’s in worse shape, if that’s even possible.

The human population living in the Bay watershed has increased in size from 13.2 million in 1983 to almost 17 million in 2008. Virginia has accounted for the bulk of that growth, from 4.15 million people in 1983 to 6.17 million today.

According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, about 87,000 people are moving into the watershed area each year, and the population by 2030 is projected to be close to 20 million.

(The Bay’s watershed includes much of Virginia and Maryland, all of the District of Columbia and portions of West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York. Topping 64,000 square miles, it’s the largest watershed on the Eastern Seabord of North America.)

And all those millions of people and industries in the watershed are having a massive impact on the Bay. Silt, nitrogen, phosphorus and a host of other chemicals and compounds make their way daily into the Bay, rendering it the region’s septic tank, in a manner of speaking.

And it’s backing up on us now.

Regional compacts between the states that comprise the watershed have failed to make a noticeable dent in the Bay’s problems. Voluntary in nature, all of their recommendations to improve the Bay’s health quickly got pushed to backburner.

First, the cleanup goal was 2000, then 2010 ... and nothing substantive happened. Then 2025, but only for a “plan.”

That’s why President Barack Obama, at the urging of Govs. Timothy M. Kaine, of Virginia, and Martin O’Malley, of Maryland, injected the federal government into the middle of the problem in a major way, basically taking control of the Bay cleanup efforts and centralizing that control in Washington.

Experts have calculated that the Bay generates more than $1 trillion in economic output annually, even today. That fact alone warrants tough federal intervention.

And it may come, in the months ahead, in the form of massive federal penalties against states that miss deadlines for cutting the runoff of deadly nutrients into the Bay. Farmers, builders, homeowners and businesses are the source of much of the runoff that’s killing the Bay, and it will take the power of Washington to get all the stakeholders to reach a binding consensus on how curb the Bay’s rapid descent.

Cleaning up the Bay, indeed, restoring it to something resembling full health, is well within the realm of the scientifically achievable.

What’s been lacking, so far, is the political will to tackle this extremely difficult task. It’s time the political leaders stepped up the plate.