Maryland and four other states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have fallen behind in trying to reach their 2025 clean-up goals, according to two reports issued this week, prompting calls to push the deadline back. Adam Ortiz, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s region that includes the bay states, said earlier this week he will ask the Chesapeake Executive Council to “recalibrate the timeline” when it meets next week in Washington. Hilary Harp Falk, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s president said Wednesday the states need to make “key policy changes” to catch up, or potentially change the deadline.
“The Chesapeake Bay Foundation looks forward to working with the states, the Bay program and EPA to determine the appropriate deadline,” she said. “But we believe it should be a stretch goal measured in years and not decades.”
The EPA report found that despite significant efforts, Maryland is making only incremental progress in reducing pollution from farm fields and animal waste. It said the agency expects Maryland to accelerate its implementation of controls in that sector.
According to that report, only West Virginia and the District of Columbia are on track to meet their 2025 clean up goals.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s report said the states that collectively account for 90 percent of the Bay’s pollution—Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania—have made significant progress in upgrading wastewater treatment plants. But not enough to make up for pollution from farm fields and stormwater runoff.
Pennsylvania, with significantly more acres in farmland than Maryland or Virginia and a record of failing to adequately invest in conservation measures, is significantly behind in meeting the goals it agreed to in 2010, the report said.
Beth McGee, CBF’s director of science and agricultural policy called the size of the agriculture challenge in Pennsylvania ``“enormous.” She said more than 90% of the “remaining reductions in Pennsylvania need to come from agriculture.”
The Bay Foundation and Maryland’s Attorney General sued EPA in 2020 to get it to force Pennsylvania to do more to reduce the pollution coming from farm fields. Wednesday she said her organization wants the EPA to reject Pennsylvania’s latest pollution plan.
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