Bay Restoration

Release of proposals for bay cleanup is delayed a day The promised public release Wednesday of new federal proposals for jump-starting the lagging Chesapeake Bay restoration was delayed by a day and is now planned Thursday, officials said. The state and federal bay "partnership" had announced that it would release a series of draft reports outlining proposals for accelerating the pace of cleaning up the Chesapeake and safeguarding its fish and wildlife Wednesday. But late in the morning, Jim Edwards, deputy director of EPA's bay program office, said the documents were still being finalized, particularly one report that focuses on restoring and maintaining the bay's "living resources," including bay grasses, oysters, crabs, fish and other wildlife.

State and federal governments would receive new enforcement powers and funds to clean up the Chesapeake Bay - but would also have to meet firm deadlines to act - under proposed legislation released Tuesday by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin. Cardin, chairman of a subcommittee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency's bay program, said the bill would give states more authority to regulate runoff and provide more than $1.5 billion in new funds to clean up urban and suburban storm water, a growing and costly source of pollution fouling the Chesapeake.

The latest round of state budget cuts is taking a couple of bites out of Maryland's efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay, trimming plans to tackle polluted runoff from city and suburban streets and curtailing monitoring of the bay's health. State officials are cutting $2 million from the Bay Trust Fund, a special pot of money lawmakers had agreed on three years ago to earmark for curbing polluted runoff - a growing and particularly difficult problem for the bay. Originally meant to accelerate the pace of bay cleanup, the fund has been shrinking since its inception.

A three-year, $100 million effort to cut levels of nutrients coming from Howard County's wastewater treatment plant in Savage got under way Thursday with a ceremonial groundbreaking. More than five years in the planning, the project will use waste from a nearby ice cream plant to help produce enough bacteria to sharply reduce the nitrogen being emitted with wastewater from 3,900 pounds a day now, to 830 pounds per day in 2012, when the work is completed. Reuse of some treated water will also help by diverting it from the Patuxent River.

A three-year, $100 million effort to cut levels of nutrients coming from Howard County's wastewater treatment plant in Savage got under way Thursday with a ceremonial groundbreaking. More than five years in the planning, the project will use waste from a nearby ice cream plant to help produce enough bacteria to sharply reduce the nitrogen being emitted with wastewater from 3,900 pounds a day now, to 830 pounds per day in 2012, when the work is completed. Reuse of some treated water will also help by diverting it from the Patuxent River.

A group of Chesapeake Bay scientists and advocates is calling for new, more aggressive efforts to restore the bay, saying that the current approach has not worked and that the troubled estuary is getting worse. The group - more than a dozen scientists, policy specialists and activists - presented its recommendations to the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's bay program office in Annapolis on the eve of today's 25th anniversary of the formal launch of the bay restoration effort.

Pointing to more than two decades of failure to restore the Chesapeake Bay, the region's largest environmental group is threatening to sue the federal government for shirking its legal responsibility to reduce water pollution in the troubled estuary. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation says it will formally notify the Environmental Protection Agency today that it intends to sue the agency for not living up to the latest in a series of bay restoration agreements.

Global climate change could undermine efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay by flooding coastal areas and washing more pollution into the water, a new scientific report warns. The report, issued yesterday by the federal bay program office in Annapolis, notes that scientists have detected significant increases in sea level and bay water temperature over the past century. Further changes are likely, the report says, especially if current emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated. Coastal flooding is likely if sea level rises 2 to 5 feet, as climate-change models project, the report says.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration wants to spend more than $56 billion to conserve farmland over the next decade, prompting an unprecedented push by Chesapeake Bay advocates to carve out a slice of the money for the imperiled estuary. Lawmakers and environmentalists say that negotiations on this year's wide-ranging farm bill - better known for the subsidies historically provided to corn and sugar growers, among others - offer the best chance yet to protect the threatened waterway from contaminants flushed in from fertilizer and manure.

Grass-roots environmental groups from five states and the District of Columbia are urging newly elected political leaders to take seriously the task of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay or risk losing it forever as a thriving ecosystem. River-protection advocates representing Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., have signed a Declaration for Our Watersheds, which calls on state and federal officials to honor cleanup commitments outlined in the Chesapeake 2000 agreement.