Officials Postpone Setting Milestones for Bay Cleanup
Chesapeake Bay advocates are disappointed that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state officials failed to set a firm deadline for reducing nutrient pollution in the 64,000-sq-mile Chesapeake Bay watershed at last month’s annual meeting of federal and state leaders overseeing the cleanup effort. Bay advocates are threatening legal action to force officials to commit to cleaning up the bay.
“They didn’t commit to anything that is going to reduce pollution,” says Roy Hoagland, vice president for environ-mental protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He says efforts to clean up the bay have been unsuccessful, even though billions of dollars have been spent since governors within the watershed and the mayor of the District of Columbia signed an agreement in 2000 to reduce nutrient loads by at least 110 million pounds over 10 years, to 175 million pounds per year or less by 2010.