When it comes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, it would be a gross understatement to say that we’ve missed the target. The arrow hasn’t even left the bow—and the archer has taken several large steps backward trying to take aim.
A 2000 agreement between the EPA, the governments of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia—whose Potomac is one of the bay’s tributaries—set 2010 as the deadline for having the bay cleaned up.
Now, with little to no progress made, the EPA is recommending that progress be accelerated to achieve that deadline.
That kind of rapid progress is probably impossible. Michele Guander-Collins, the Director of Public Affairs for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, said that even before the financial questions are considered, the renovations are far beyond what could be completed in a three-year time frame.
“We don’t believe it’s possible to have that kind of work completed and functional by 2010,” she said. “Maybe 2014 or 2015.”
Even if they were possible, the massive infrastructure renovations would prove costly to the local citizen, either in the form of taxes or service rates. WASA’s Blue Plains sewage plant, located in the south of the city and serving 572,000 customers in the District, would require between $700 million and $1 billion dollars worth of upgrades. Since WASA is a private company that receives very little government funding, this would ultimately translate into rate hikes for their customers in the District—rate hikes that are probably beyond many citizens’ means.
And that’s just one sewage plant. Cleaning up the Chesapeake by 2010 would involve major sacrifices totaling $28 billion in private septic tank renovations, farm overhauls and sewer refurbishments, according the Washington Post. More of this price would fall to the District than our residents can handle.
History certainly doesn’t vindicate this extravagant goal. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 2006 State of the Bay Report noted improvements in the bay’s pollutant and wildlife levels, but they were incredibly slight. Even more worryingly, they were the first recorded improvements in the last 30 years. Having failed to make any tangible progress in three decades, the EPA is unlikely to fix the problem in three years.
Any hope of recovery can only be realized in a plan that takes the realities of the regional infrastructure and the political landscape into account. In their zeal to protect the bay, the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program has offered a plan that will only serve to terrify potential supporter which, ironically, will only hurt the watershed more.
The Chesapeake Bay Program’s goals are bold by necessity, but the 2010 lacks the measured resolution needed in such critical situations.
