Coalition sues over bay cleanup

By Rex Springston

Published: January 6, 2009

The federal government and states bordering the Chesapeake Bay announced to considerable fanfare in 1983 that they would clean up the bay.

They announced a new agreement in 1987. And another in 2000.

But the bay remains polluted.

Saying enough is enough, a coalition led by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group, filed suit yesterday to force the federal Environmental Protection Agency to clean the bay.

Federal law requires the EPA to make sure the U.S. and state governments clean the bay, according to the bay group, which calls the suit unprecedented.

"The lawsuit is quite simple. We are asking the EPA to live up to their word, to live up to their commitment, and enforce the Clean Water Act," said Ann F. Jennings, the bay foundation's Virginia director.

The suit was filed yesterday in federal court in Washington.

Others joining in the suit include former Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., and watermen's organizations in Virginia and Maryland.

Benjamin H. Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a - statement that the agency is committed to speeding the cleanup.

"That means using innovative and sustainable tools and focusing on environmental cooperation, not just legal confrontation," Grumbles said.

The bay is polluted by an overdose of nutrients such as nitrogen, which comes from sewage-plant discharges and other sources.

Those nutrients aid the growth of algae that foul the bay.

The pollution is a major cause of the decline of blue crabs and oysters, as well as the industries that once thrived around them.

"There are families and entire cultures struggling economically because of our failure to restore the water quality of the bay, and those people are running out of time," Jennings said.

The suit asks the court to require the EPA to reduce the flow of nutrients to the bay, among other things.

Virginia already is cracking down on releases from sewage plants and factories.

But experts say it may be tougher to reduce animal waste and fertilizer that damage the bay after storms wash them from farms, yards and parking lots.

The legal action may become moot if the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama begins helping the bay, Jennings said.

But even then, she said, "we would need to see action and not a series of promises."

The 2000 agreement between the EPA and bay states called for cleaning the bay by 2010. It's clear that won't happen.

Now, the bay foundation wants the EPA to agree to cleaning the bay by 2015.

Grumbles said cleanup leaders might decide this year to make 2020 the new deadline for a cleaner bay. He said interim two-year goals could guide that effort.
Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or .