Virginia is close to being on target to meet its Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals, but still has plenty of work to do to tackle runoff from farms and city and suburban streets and parking lots, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation analysis found.
No state in the Bay watershed is on pace to hit the 2025 clean water goal for the Bay, and Pennsylvania is far off-track, the foundation study found.
“We have seen some progress, but success is now in jeopardy,” foundation president William C. Baker said.
“Maryland and Virginia have plans in place that will achieve their commitments, if implemented. Pennsylvania’s elected officials, however, have failed … putting their neighbors downstream in jeopardy, and failing to clean up their own waters.”
Implementation, however, remains a worry. One key issue is whether Virginia’s funding commitment for water quality and stormwater projects will survive scrutiny in the General Assembly special session that begins next week, the foundation’s Virginia executive director Peggy Sanner. That special session will focus largely on budget amendments to copy with a drop in state revenue due to the pandemic.
Baker, meanwhile, blasted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not pushing Pennsylvania harder on its failing efforts.
While Virginia’s sewage treatment plant upgrades have met the 2025 target, after a 10-year, $1 billion state push, matched by locality spending, these gains are mostly offset by more runoff paved areas in cities and suburbs, the foundation analysis.
Farm runoff, largely from cattle that wander in streams and the state’s chicken-houses, remains a major source of pollutants, the foundation said.
The foundation said Virginia has set rules to limit sediment runoff from construction sites, but needs to revisit rules for managing runoff once a project is completed. The state also should increase its Stormwater Local Assistance Funds that help local governments pay for runoff reduction projects, the foundation said.
While the state has spent about $100 million to help farmers fence nearly 2,000 miles of streams to keep livestock out, agriculture still represents nearly 70% of Virginia’s remaining pollution reduction goals.
In addition to hitting a goal of fencing all perennial streams running through farms, Virginia should step up monitoring and inspection to cut ammonia emissions from poultry houses, the foundation said. Virginia’s poultry production has been booming, up 25% in the past decade, the foundation said.
State goal-setting comes through the 10-year-old Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint sets targets for pollution reductions that will lead to the Bay meeting U.S. Clean Water Act standards by 2025.
It sets two-year pollution-reduction goals, called milestones, to steadily reduce the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediments flowing into the Bay. It also sets sanctions if states don’t meet these goals. Those sanctions include cuts in federal funding and even suspension of state authority to issue clean water program permits.
The report found that Virginia is more than 20% off track to meet nitrogen and phosphorus reduction goals from farms, urban and suburban runoff as well as nitrogen run off from septic tanks, although the state hit its wastewater goals in 2018. Maryland has done better with its smaller farm sector, but it is also well off goals for city and suburban runoff.
Pennsylvania’s impaired rivers and streams increase by 5,500 miles since 2016 to total more than 25,800 miles.
The foundation used the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific model to estimate pollution reductions made between 2009 and 2019.
The foundation says pollution reduction efforts have already had an impact, noting that grasses are increasing, the dead zone is shrinking and crab populations have rebounded.
But it says recovery is fragile.
Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
