Bay Clean-up Way Behind Schedule

A recent federal report issued jointly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that the Chesapeake Bay region will not meet its cleanup goals by 2010 and may not for decades, primarily because of a failure to promote and fund pollution control by farmers.

The report stated that because farmers have few incentives, most see no profit in implementing nutrient- and sediment-reduction controls on their land. Most of the farms that affect the Chesapeake Bay are in Pennsylvania, in the watershed of the Susquehanna River, which is the largest tributary to the bay.

In an average rainfall year, according to the Chesapeake Bay Commission, the Susquehanna sends more than half of the fresh water—as well as 44 percent of the nitrogen, 22 percent of the phosphorus, and 22 percent of the sediment—into the bay. Agriculture is the largest single source of nutrients.

In 2003, the Chesapeake Bay Program set new nutrient- and sediment-reduction goals aimed at restoring clean water to the bay by 2010. But at the current rate of reduction, it will take 28 years to meet the nitrogen goals and 15 years to meet the phosphorus and sediment goals, the report said.

State-written tributary strategies, which describe how nutrient-reduction goals will be met, count on farmers to achieve nearly two-thirds of the nutrient reductions needed to clean up the bay, largely because controlling runoff from farms tends to be less expensive Of the 26 nutrient-reduction, best-management practices recommended in the tributary strategies, almost half barely have been implemented­—if at all—according to the report. “While the practices may be environmentally sound, they may not be economically beneficial to businesses with a limited profit margin,” the report stated.

The ultimate success of the bay program hinges on getting individual farm owners who do not see an immediate incentive to adopt new practices, the report said. The EPA and the USDA need to do a better job of working together to identify the most effective actions farmers can take to help cleanup efforts at the least cost, the authors wrote.

The Chesapeake Bay is an important national treasure. More than 100,000 rivers and streams drain into the bay, making it the largest estuary on the Atlantic coast and one of the largest in the world. It is a commercial and recreational resource for more than 15 million people living within its watershed, which encompasses some 64,000 square miles in parts of six states.

The bay has two of the five major North Atlantic ports in the United States and yields approximately 500 million pounds of seafood annually, supporting a fish and shellfish industry worth more than $850 million each year. The bay is home to more than 3,600 species of plants, fish, and animals.

—Jeff Mulhollem