On May 12th the EPA released a new clean up plan for the Chesapeake Bay. This comes 38 years after the original clean water act was signed into law. How has 38 years of the clean water act faired? Well according to the lawsuit that was just settled out of court between the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the EPA it has been unsuccessful.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), its co-plaintiffs, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on May 11, 2010, settled their lawsuit with a binding agreement that will require pollution to be reduced across the watershed. This historic settlement is a legally enforceable commitment that requires EPA to take specific actions by dates certain to ensure that pollution to local rivers, streams, and the Chesapeake Bay is reduced sufficiently to remove the Bay from the federal "dirty waters" list.

The specific actions to be taken include setting and enforcing pollution limits as was originally intended via the Clean Water Act. Unfortunately change will be slow as the enforcement plan will not be 100% until 2025. The settlement calls for regulating nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment levels which are increased by runoff water from agricultural businesses, sewage, and erosion. Here the settlement requires "Reducing pollution from agriculture—The settlement commits EPA to proposing new regulations for controlling pollution from agriculture by Dec. 15, 2012 and taking final action by Dec. 15, 2014." This means in four years action will be taken on committing to new regulation. Seems like slow progress.

You can read the full list of CBF's Lawsuit Against EPA settlement mandates on the CBF http://www.cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=1547

One area of the settlement also requires tracking and the collection of data. This of course becomes the expensive part of the equation. Even if these levels are tracked in the river and bay, how do we assign accountability to the individual businesses? If you want to know more about the clean water act and the state of the Chesapeake Bay, we recommend watching the Frontline Poisoned Waters Episode below.

Interesting resources:
Frontline Poisened Waters Full Episode
Chesapeake bay interpretive buoy system
USGS Chesapeake Bay studies
NOAA Acoustic Seafloor Mapping of Chesapeake Bay
Image Source: Contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Norfolk District use high-pressure water cannons to spread oyster shells in the Lynnhaven River in Virginia Beach, Va., in an effort to build medium-relief oyster reefs for an ongoing oyster restoration project.