New Chesapeake Campaign Draws Curious Crowd

200 Attend EPA Meeting in Lancaster

Chris Torres
Staff Writer

LANCASTER, Pa. — An alarm bell sounded, literally, as the Environmental Protection Agency announced here Monday how it plans to develop stricter measures to limit nutrients from entering the Chesapeake Bay.

EPA hosted a public meeting in the 130-seat Stahr Auditorium at Franklin and Marshall College. The venue was packed, with organizers estimating about 200 people in attendance. The event was one of a series of 16 similar meetings being held throughout the watershed.

Many of the attendees Monday were farmers, anxious to hear what the impact of new Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) limits for nitrogen and phosphorus could have on agriculture.

About 77,000 farms are located within the six-state watershed, which also includes Washington, D.C.

Most of the crowd came just to listen and learn about the upcoming TMDL program, which has picked up momentum since earlier this summer when President Barack Obama declared the bay “a national treasure” and ordered federal agencies to take the lead in cleanup efforts.

The agency allotted about 45 minutes at the end of the formal presentation for a question and answer and comment period.

Only two persons in the room took advantage of the time and expressed their comments, although some comments from people listening via Internet were also entered into the official record.

One thing that did visibly rouse the crowd was a fire alarm going off during the meeting, forcing everyone out into the cold and rain. No fire was found, but it did result in some people leaving for the day.

Nevertheless, two officials from EPA explained the process for developing the TMDL and its potential impact on citizens.

Richard Batiuk of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office, said cleaning up the bay will take the effort of everyone living within the watershed.

“We can’t clean up the Chesapeake without help from each and every one of you all,” Batiuk said. “We’re not interested in pointing fingers, we’re trying to figure out what is a Chesapeake Bay we can sustain with 17 million people and growing.”

Bob Korancai of the EPA’s Region 3 office, said the TMDL program is being developed based on a fifth-generation water quality model, which he said is more precise and can estimate nutrient loads from 10 times as many segments as previous models.

Based on a 2008 assessment of the bay, about 291 million pounds of nitrogen, 13.8 million pounds of phosphorus and 3.3 million tons of sediment entered the bay from various sources last year.

However, the report stated that nutrient levels can be highly variable, based on weather conditions and river flows in a given year. The department is working on developing a new measurement tool to more accurately measure nutrient flow coming into the bay.

Between 1990 and 2008, yearly nitrogen and phosphorus loads have averaged about 345 million and 21.3 million pounds, respectively, according to measurements.

Korancai said, based on preliminary estimates, yearly loads would have to come down to about 200 million pounds for nitrogen and 15 million pounds for phosphorus in order to have a bay that is capable of maintaining its many species of aquatic life and underwater grasses.

From Pennsylvania alone, about 102 million pounds of nitrogen now enter the bay annually, and the state will be required to reduce that amount to 73.64 million pounds, according to TMDL draft figures. Phosphorus loading from the state is currently estimated at 3.5 million pounds, and will need to come down to 3.16 million pounds.

Sediment is still being studied and numbers for that segment are to be released sometime in the spring.

The TMDL will cap nitrogen and phosphorus loads for the entire watershed, including point source polluters (wastewater treatment plants) and non-point source polluters (farms).

But spreading the responsibility out evenly for cleaning up the bay, Korancai admitted, is not as simple as it might sound.

“This idea of equity is a tough one. My job is to bring the six states and D.C. together,” he said.

Each state, Korancai said, will be given the responsibility to establish the TMDL on the local level.

EPA will oversee the program through a performance and accountability system which will include the setting of two-year milestone goals.

He said that states will have some flexibility in reaching their goal, including exchanging one type of nutrient reduction for another within a particular basin or exchanging nutrient loads from one basin to another, so long as water quality goals are being met.

In such an exchange, Korancai estimated that 10 pounds of nitrogen would be equivalent to about 1 pound of phosphorus.

If a state fails to meet their goals, consequences could result, including more stringent reduction goals for point source polluters.

“If the states don’t deliver action, the EPA and the federal government will be implementing consequences,” he said.

John Hines, deputy secretary of water management at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said compliance starts with making sure people, including farmers, are adhering to current regulations first.

“We have to ensure folks are in compliance with what’s on the books today,” Hines said.

He also said the government must take into account best management practices that are not being considered in the discussion of the TMDL.

“We are only reporting on what we know. There are a lot of other things going on out there we are not taking into account,” he said.

When it comes to the ag community, Hines said he supports ideas such as regional manure digesters, but he also said farmers deserve some flexibility because what makes one farmer compliant may not apply to another.

“This is a Pennsylvania issue because if we don’t meet EPA standards, this discussion will go beyond just the Chesapeake Bay,” he said.

In the end, money, or the lack of it, could determine whether or not the goal of cleaning up the bay by 2025 will be met.

In 2005, the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Blue Ribbon Finance Panel estimated that it would cost upwards of $30 billion to make the necessary improvements to improve nutrient flow into the bay and restore it to a habitable system.

Funding was a question that was largely left unanswered after the meeting.

“I don’t know if we have answered that question completely. It’s going to have to be a blend of things,” Korancai said. “We will see if more money is coming. We have to be more creative in the future.”