DailyPress Online - Leaders at three institutions of higher learning, including the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, are defending the computer models used by federal regulators to create a Chesapeake Bay "pollution diet." In an Oct. 8 letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, the academics wrote the "consensus of the scientific community" is that the models are "both useful and adequate" in guiding policy decisions for the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed. The letter is signed by John Wells, (pictured above) dean and director at VIMS, Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Denice Wardrop, chair of Pennsylvania State University's scientific and technical advisory committee. All three institutions have contributed research to the EPA-led effort. Source: DailyPress online
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
EPA to evaluate five plans to clean up Chesapeake
Washington Post Online – The Environmental Protection Agency will take a month to evaluate plans from four states and the District that show how they'll aggressively reduce pollution that flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Plans of Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and the District, which filed on time Nov. 29, 2010. The states were required to show in detail what they will do to aggressively reduce wastewater runoff in the next 15 years. The EPA will decide on the adequacy of the Watershed Implementation Plans by Dec. 31. The EPA has threatened to recommend sanctions against the states if their plans are inadequate. The sanctions include redirecting federal funds for other state projects to water quality programs and opposing state permits to developers. Pennsylvania's plan would hire workers who would show farmers how to limit runoff, something the foundation likes. But they didn't commit enough funding for their plan. The plan also doesn't commit enough resources to limiting wastewater runoff from Marcellus shale drilling into the Susquehanna River. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, said the plan commits $15 million a year to cleaning the bay. The state wants to focus its resources on the source of more than 80 percent of its bay pollution – agriculture. Storm water is just 6 percent of the problem. We could spend all our resources on storm water and get very little in terms of total pollution reduction.
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