Our Bay: Legislators miss the boat for the bay

This Week's Take

By ERIC MICHELSEN AND CHRIS TRUMBAUER, For The Capital

Published 04/23/11 in The Capital

At the beginning of the 2011 Maryland General Assembly session, many of us in the environmental community believed we were poised to make significant progress in the epic struggle to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. After last year's legislative session, in which we were frequently told to "wait until after the elections," we watched as candidates from both major parties fought over who could position themselves to be more "green" in the 2010 elections.

So, despite the difficult economy, we felt this year's legislative session presented a perfect opportunity to show Maryland's commitment to getting serious about the recovery of the Chesapeake Bay.

Several other factors contributed to the feeling that now was the time for change.

In December, the Maryland Department of the Environment submitted a Watershed Implementation Plan to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency laying out an ambitious plan for how Maryland would achieve Chesapeake Bay clean-up within Gov. Martin O'Malley's accelerated 2020 timeframe.

In early 2011, the EPA handed down its new "pollution diet," a series of Total Maximum Daily Loads for pollution into our waterways, establishing enforceable limits for sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus. These two initiatives represent the roadmap that will allow the bay to recover.

Surely, given their professed support for the Chesapeake and its waterways, the fact that the elections were over and the increasingly costly obligation to meet clean-up benchmarks, our legislators would take tangible steps to clean up the bay in 2011, right?

Wrong.

Nearly every major environmental policy initiative that was put forward in the 2011 legislative session died. Like a school of menhaden trapped in a dead zone, these initiatives were bottled up in committee and unable to survive.

Attempts to keep wastewater treatment plant upgrades on schedule and solvent, as well as requiring local governments to begin getting serious about their multi-billion dollar stormwater backlogs were shelved before they even saw the light of day.

And, even though it had the vigorous support of Gov. O'Malley, a plan to require new major subdivisions to use the best available technology to treat wastewater faltered mid-session, the victim of a concerted push by the development industry.

Even an effort to place a 5-cent per bag fee on single-use bags, a proven model that has been successful in Washington, D.C., was killed in committee in both the House and Senate, thanks in part to a late push by lobbyists for the American Chemistry Council.

In D.C., this policy has resulted in an 80 percent reduction in bags purchased by retailers and 66 percent fewer bags found in river clean-ups of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. The Maryland bill, in addition to demonstrably reducing trash in our waterways, would have reduced expenses for retailers and consumers by uncloaking a hidden cost we all pay. After all, "free" bags aren't actually free.

Protections against the impacts of drilling for natural gas in Marcellus Shale, reducing arsenic in chicken feed and several renewable energy initiatives also went down in flames. And, as if adding insult to injury, a bill that significantly weakens the state's renewable energy portfolio standard by adding in garbage incineration passed.

The only significant legislation to pass with potential to improve water quality was a bill which reduces pollutants in lawn fertilizer.

The environmental community doesn't live in a vacuum. We are aware of the incredible economic hardship facing our state. Legislators, rightly so, were consumed with dealing with a budget in which there just wasn't enough money to go around, and thankfully, attempts at permanent cuts to Program Open Space and the Chesapeake Bay Trust Fund were defeated.

In 2011, the legislators may have found a way to once again balance the budget, but they also once again put off taking action to give Marylanders what they consistently demand: A clean and healthy Chesapeake Bay.

Inaction never pays. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to restore the bay, and the more it will cost.

Well, there's always next year.