The reviews are in, and they're not good: Commenters had stern words in the just-closed public comment period for the newly revised Chesapeake Bay agreement, a voluntary clean-up pact between the states that surround the nation's largest estuary.
In more than 1,000 comments from scientists, advocates, regular residents, current and former legislators and even a former Maryland governor, the Chesapeake Bay Program was told that the proposed terms of the plan are too weak, especially considering that the bay states failed to achieve all the goals in the previous agreement .
Commenters, including leading environmental nonprofits, have largely panned the revisions to the expiring 2014 plan. They note that a critical pledge has not been met from that plan, to curb the damaging nutrient and sediment runoff that comes from agricultural fertilizers, human and animal waste and even vehicle emissions.
They took issue with lowered goals for underwater grass acreage and forest buffers, and for failing to mention the legally binding "Total Maximum Daily Load," a restricted "pollution diet" for the bay set during the Obama administration. The document gives the bay states five more years before new pollution goals must be developed using an upgraded computer model.
And opponents noted the aversion in the new plan to climate change, referring only to "changing environmental conditions." They faulted Bay Program leaders for not immediately granting a request from seven federally recognized Native American tribes to join as signatories.
"They're unacceptable," Patuxent Riverkeeper and longtime environmentalist Fred Tutman said of the revisions. "They're not going to have the desired effect. How could they? They're weaker. We've been failing with the other measures, and now we're going to weaken those measures further."
The new agreement comes as billions have been spent over the years for Bay restoration, which has reduced projected pollution loads into the bay, chiefly through major upgrades at sewage plants. But stemming the flow of pollution from farms -- and an ever-increasing amount of developed lands -- has proved much more vexing.
Despite those millions, 70.6% of the bay and its tributaries have not attained water quality standards, according to the latest metrics from the Bay Program. That's compared to 73.5% of the bay in the late 1980s, when the restoration effort got off the ground.
The architects of the new plan face a delicate political situation. States with varying political leanings -- not only Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia but West Virginia, Delaware, New York and Washington, D.C. -- are all signatories and must agree on the changes. And then there's the federal government, which signed the 2014 pact, but is also the legal enforcer of the Bay's pollution diet.
President Donald Trump's (R) return to the Oval Office has placed the bay restoration effort on a somewhat shaky footing. Trump has slimmed down federal environmental agencies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the U.S. Geological Survey, amid a broader effort to slash bureaucracy. Trump's administration has targeted environmental regulations for rollback and attacked renewable energy projects and associated tax incentives.
Unlike his first term, however, Trump first budget proposal this time did not cut funding for the EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program, which administers the multistate partnership. Bay Program officials say that federal agencies have remained at the table helping to shape the revised agreement.
But Bay advocates see Trump administration fingerprints on the revisions, including deleted references to diversity initiatives and climate change.
"I would be stunned if that [Trump administration policy] was not at least a significant part of the reason that this is so milquetoast," said former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening of the revisions.
But other observers have faulted the bay states just as much as Trump's EPA.
"Maryland lacks the leadership -- the bold leadership -- that is necessary in this area," said Gerald Winegrad, who served in the Maryland General Assembly from 1978 to 1994. "That's the linchpin of what's happening here."
Gov. Wes Moore (D) was elected chairperson of the Executive Council of state leaders overseeing by restoration, but Winegrad said he worries that Moore's alleged aspirations for higher office -- Moore has repeatedly denied he is running for president -- make him less likely to challenge key industries, including agriculture.
In a statement, representatives from the EPA's Region 3, which includes all of the bay states, emphasized that the revisions "are being made jointly" by all members of the bay partnership, "informed by the public and stakeholders ... These are not unilateral EPA actions or decisions."
"EPA wears multiple hats when it comes to the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Partnership. Specifically, EPA acts as a funder, regulator, and co-equal partner," read the statement. "In these roles, EPA does not act alone."
One particular portion of the agreement caught the attention of
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) led a letter of 23 bay-state members of Congress who argued that the document was not as ambitious as they had hoped. One thing that caught Van Hollen's attention in particular was the section focused on nutrients, which called for the states to "continue to implement and maintain practices and controls to reduce excess nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment" through 2030.
By December 2030 -- when a new computer model that estimates pollution in the Bay region will be completed -- the goal would be updated with "revised targets."
"They are giving themselves this long lead time -- 2030 -- to establish some of the goals when it comes to pollution reduction," Van Hollen said. "I understand the need to gather the data, but it's also important that between now and then, we continue to work hard to achieve the targets in the current agreement."
Longtime Chesapeake Bay scientist Don Boesch, a former professor and president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, argued that there is no reason to wait for the computer model to take action.
"The model is not going to lower the bar. It's not going to say you need to do less. It'll probably say you need to do more," Boesch said. "So, let's just do what we said we're going to do."
He joined with several other bay scientists from UMCES, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and Cornell in penning comments urging a renewed focus on nutrient reduction, and on new strategies to slow runoff -- including by rewarding conservation practices based mainly on how successful they are.
Bay Program officials defended the agreement but indicated that changes could be coming in response to the public's concerns. That could include a reference to the bay's TMDL, said Anna Killius, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which includes legislators from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia -- and is a signatory on the Bay agreement.
"We tried to avoid what we thought were kind of unapproachable terms, like TMDL," Killius said. "The stakeholders that really pay attention to those things took that as a sign that we are walking away. We can't walk away."
Killius said the Chesapeake Bay Program's Management Board is now taking the comments under advisement. The group will likely adapt the agreement during a retreat at the end of September.
The revised agreement must be finalized by December, when the governors of the bay states will convene for an annual meeting, along with the other signatories of the agreement.
Killius noted that the agreement does call for a 0.2% improvement in water quality each year. And though it may sound "absolutely ludicrous" on its face, it reflects experts' careful consideration of what is possible, given the bay's current trajectory, she said.
"You want to stretch beyond what's comfortable, because that's how you build muscle," she said. "We also want to set our managers and our teams up for success."
Killius added that it is the first time that a Bay agreement has called for measurable improvements in water quality, rather than basing the goal on estimated reductions in nutrient pollution.
In its statement, the EPA's Region 3 office also defended the way the revisions were written with regard to the TMDL, arguing that the document "provides specific targets that will be developed and a timeline to achieve the new targets," and further information will come from the new computer model.
Killius said that the team reviewing the comments also heard "loud and clear," the numerous requests for a consistent timeline, instead of myriad target dates, including 2030, 2035 and 2040.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, among the largest bay nonprofits, is pushing for the entire agreement to have a deadline of 2035, said Keisha Sedlacek, federal director for the foundation.
The document released for public comment also included a number of blanks, in the place of more specific numerical goals for forest and wetland conservation, among other subjects.
"That's unacceptable. We can't ask our governors, the mayor of D.C. and the executive director of the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], to sign a document not knowing what exactly they're committing to. That's not fair to the states and jurisdictions. It's not fair to the public," Sedlacek said.
In its comment letter, the EPA targeted those passages for removal, writing: "It is EPA's position that these outcomes/targets lack sufficient detail, are not ready for inclusion in the Agreement at this time, and that the targets should be removed," read the letter from Lee McDonnell, acting director of the Chesapeake Bay Program office.
The Bay Program also has some soul-searching to do about how low -- or high -- to set its aspirations, environmental advocates say.
"It just seemed like [they were] trying to set these targets in a way that 10,15, years from now, we can say: 'Oh, look, we achieved this goal,'" said Kristin Reilly, director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition, which represents more than 300 environmental organizations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
"We don't want to lower the bar just to have success," Reilly said.