A Review of the EPA’s Assessment of Maryland’s Bay Cleanup Progress
By Neil Saunders
According to the EPA’s recent interim assessment of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland is presently on track to meet the 2017 TMDL reduction targets for two out of the three major pollutants in the Bay: phosphorus and sediment. Maryland is not on track to meet the target reductions for the third major pollutant, nitrogen. New information obtained by the EPA shows that Maryland is actually contributing more nitrogen to the Bay than previously thought. Therefore Maryland must plan to implement even more effective practices to ensure that it will meet its 2017 targets for nitrogen.
So what do these results mean for the Chesapeake Bay going forward? For one, Maryland is the only state currently under the lower “ongoing oversight” for each sector category that the EPA assesses: agriculture; urban/suburban stormwater; wastewater treatment plants and onsite testing; and offsets and trading. While this is far from encouraging overall, it does demonstrate that Maryland, the state most synonymous with the Chesapeake Bay, it making positive strides towards meeting its reduction targets. The EPA expects Maryland to implement additional measures to reduce nitrogen pollution.
Also, much of the progress made in Maryland, including the recently proposed phosphorus management regulations, still must be implemented to achieve the projected pollution reductions. At this stage in the TMDL process, many of the projections are based on practices that have yet to be implemented. It is critical, that Maryland continue efforts to put practices into place. Sometimes, this is easier said than done. Similar regulations to the Phosphorus Management Tool regulations have been pulled and/or delayed in the past (the environmental community has advocated for stricter phosphorus management for over a decade now), so it is crucial for Maryland and the Department of Agriculture to follow through with implementation.
The interim assessments were released for the six Bay States’ 2014-2015 milestones. These assessments, which form part of the EPA’s overall accountability framework under the 2010 Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed, play an integral role in evaluating the progress of the Bay States towards meeting their respective pollution reduction targets, and are used to identify areas of concern that require additional measures to meet those targets.
The EPA and Bay States are currently in Phase II of a three-phase, fifteen year process of the TMDL, which means that they are continuing to work towards implementing practices by 2017 that will meet sixty percent of the total pollution reductions needed to clean the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The third and final phase is to be completed by 2025, and requires 100 percent of the pollution reductions measures to be in place.
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