After nearly a year, the agreement governing the Chesapeake Bay cleanup is nearing the final stretch as officials from the US Environmental Protection Agency, the six Bay states and the District of Columbia meet next month to finalize their reviews.
The agreement, the first major update since the last revision of the original 2010 plan involving all participating states in 2014, is considered a key step in reducing pollution in the bay, the nation’s largest estuary with a watershed consisting of approximately 64,000 square miles of land in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Western Columbia, New York, Maryland, New York.
After minor revisions in 2022, the agreement underwent more extensive changes earlier this year and was made available to the public. The executive committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), a multi-jurisdictional partnership that includes federal agencies, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations, is expected to adopt the resulting revised agreement at its Dec. 2 annual meeting in Baltimore, according to Keisha Sedlacek, senior policy director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF).
“It’s taken them a year to go through the process of going from a draft of how to update the 2014 agreement to having something that they’re close to finalizing,” Sedlacek told ENR. Once that’s done, he said, the process begins to figure out how to implement all the goals and outcomes.
Higher earnings
The biggest benefits of the deal so far have come from improving wastewater treatment plants, said Sedlacek, who added that there are hundreds of such plants in the watershed. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollutants can come from a variety of sources, including wastewater treatment plants.
However, wastewater utility groups have consistently argued, sometimes in court, that they have already done much to reduce pollution and that farms should be required to do more to reduce animal waste runoff. A 2022 study by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation concluded that agricultural waste and urban stormwater runoff were key challenges to meeting pollution reduction goals by 2025. The new agreement would extend the goal reduction timelines to 2030.
A spokesperson for the National Utility Contractors Association (NUCA) told ENR that “we applaud any efforts that increase investments in stormwater management, wastewater treatment plants and aging infrastructure,” adding, “Our members will continue to work with our federal, state and local government partners to deliver infrastructure projects that improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.”
Citing EPA’s 7th State Drinking Water Needs Assessment, NUCA said $625 billion will be needed to improve drinking water infrastructure nationwide over the next 20 years, and a recent ENR analysis pegged the funding gap for wastewater infrastructure needs at roughly $780 billion.
Clean water goals
The agreement sets several goals for the Bay states, including a clean water goal that aims to reduce excess nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment entering the Bay and its tributaries. The reductions are necessary, the agreement states, to meet applicable water quality standards as outlined in the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL) program, which limits the discharge of these three pollutants into the Bay. Nitrogen pollution, in particular, is the Bay’s biggest problem.
The agreement sets a 2030 deadline for states to revise planning goals for the three pollutants while incorporating the latest watershed models, monitoring data and research results, and a 2040 deadline to develop new or modified watershed implementation plans to meet the updated goals.
Through 2030, according to the plan, states should continue to accelerate completion of all interim water quality planning goals by implementing Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plans, making two-year milestone commitments and using other strategies to achieve and maintain reduced levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment.
Some states are doing better than others in reducing pollutants, but as a group, they won’t meet all the goals by the end of this year, Sedlacek said.
Setting the scene
The reviews bring “everything up a notch” from the 2014 agreement, focusing on more specific areas and looking at measurable actions that can be taken, he said. However, while it is an improvement over the 2014 agreement and sets the stage for authorities to formally recommit to the bay’s restoration goals, it is not as ambitious as CBF and other advocacy groups wanted, he said. For example, he added, CBF and other groups, including the Choose Clean Water Coalition, pushed for the agreement to set earlier deadlines for meeting the goals.
He added that this is a massive partnership and while this latest review may not be perfect, it is a framework for all members of the partnership to continue working together and moving forward.
