On August 13, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation released a new report on state progress in meeting the goals outlined in the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint and found promising signs of progress, but serious red flags that threaten to derail the restoration effort.

While Maryland and Virginia are on track today, achieving the 2025 pollution reduction goals will require both states to accelerate pollution reductions from agriculture and urban and suburban runoff.

Pennsylvania, however, is far off track. It accounts for the largest share of pollution in the watershed, has never met its nitrogen reduction targets, and has identified actions that achieve just three-quarters of the reductions necessary to meet its 2025 goal.

Together, the three major Bay states are responsible for roughly 90 percent of the pollution damaging the Chesapeake Bay.

“After 30 years of unfulfilled promises to restore this national treasure, the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint is our last, best chance to demonstrate that science can guide actions to save the Bay. We have seen some progress, but success is now in jeopardy,” said CBF President William C. Baker. “Maryland and Virginia have plans in place that will achieve their commitments, if implemented. Pennsylvania’s elected officials, however, have failed.  The commitments they have made will not get the job done, putting their neighbors downstream in jeopardy, and failing to clean up their own waters.”

The most recent assessment of Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams shows more than 25,800 miles of impaired waterways, a distance comparable to the circumference of the Earth. That’s an increase of 5,500 miles since 2016.  Read more here.

For each state, CBF assessed both the total pollution reductions made statewide, as well as the reductions made by each sector (i.e., agriculture, wastewater, etc.) to determine if current trends put them on track to meet the 2025 Blueprint goals.

This is an important distinction. While significant progress in one sector may put a state on track to meet its total 2025 goals today, without progress in all sectors, states risk becoming off track in the future.

CBF also looked at how well the states implemented the practices and programs outlined in their two-year milestone goals for the 2018-2019 period—in other words, the specific actions they committed to take to get the job done.

“Overall, the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint is showing water quality improvement.  Polluted runoff in many areas is decreasing along with summer dead zones in the Bay. But the road to finishing the job is steep. Climate change and federal regulatory rollbacks impede progress. Critically, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has failed to hold states accountable to their Blueprint commitments. This is the final and most important phase of the clean-up effort. The Bay jurisdictions and EPA must take action now if we are going to leave a legacy of clean water to future generations,” Baker added

Click Here for a copy of the report.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is not on track to achieve its 2025 goals. Despite success in reducing pollution from wastewater treatment plants, it is not enough to make up for the massive need to reduce pollution from agriculture, which accounts for roughly 93 percent of the total remaining nitrogen reduction necessary to meet the Commonwealth’s Blueprint goals.

Agriculture dominates much of Pennsylvania’s land in the Bay watershed and efforts to reduce pollution from farms continue to be significantly off track.

The Commonwealth requires farms to create plans to control pollution from erosion, manure, and fertilizers. However, many farms require financial and technical assistance to establish the practices outlined in the plans, and a pilot project to assess if farms are fully implementing their plans has been delayed.

While farmers and conservation districts have made some progress, state lawmakers need to establish a dedicated, stable, state agricultural cost-share program to help farmers invest in conservation practices.

Many of Pennsylvania’s local stormwater systems, large and small, have undersized and aging infrastructure. As more land is developed, polluted runoff is increasing.  And existing developed areas in urbanized communities continue to contribute polluted runoff to streams and rivers.

The Department of Environmental Protection required roughly 360 municipal stormwater systems to produce Pollutant Reduction Plans that address water-quality problems in local streams and the Bay—a substantial step toward meeting Blueprint goals.

By the end of 2019, DEP had completed the initial review of all the submitted plans. However, the agency considers many of the plans to be deficient and is awaiting updates from the municipalities. 

The Commonwealth must not only ensure the plans are sound, but also ensure they are implemented. 

The loss of forests and farmland to development, additional livestock and poultry farming, and increased vehicle emissions all add pollution to Pennsylvania’s local streams and the Bay.

Pennsylvania did not establish a stand-alone milestone to account for growth. Although the state has a nationally recognized farmland preservation program, managing growth and land use is especially challenging because these decisions are made by the more than 1,100 municipal governments in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Bay watershed.

Streamside forested buffers, with native trees and shrubs planted along waterways, are one of the most cost-effective practices for reducing nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollution in both rural and urban landscapes.

Pennsylvania committed to plant 95,000 acres of forested buffers by 2025. To reach this ambitious goal, CBF is coordinating the Keystone 10 Million Tree Partnership, which galvanizes the expertise, experience, and muscle of national, regional, state, and local agencies; conservation organizations; outdoor enthusiasts; businesses; and citizens committed to improving Pennsylvania's communities, economy, and ecology.

Climate change will make the difficult job of restoring the Commonwealth’s rivers and streams and meeting its pollution reduction commitments for the Bay even harder.

Climate change in Pennsylvania likely will increase and intensify precipitation and runoff, and warm waterways.  Read more here.

In its final Blueprint, the state projected approximately 4 million pounds of additional nitrogen and 140,000 pounds of additional phosphorus pollution from climate change, largely due to increased runoff.

Pennsylvania must complete the process for joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an interstate effort to reduce carbon emissions from power generation that contribute to climate change.

Additionally, updates to the state stormwater management manual, local ordinances, pollution reduction plans for permitted municipal stormwater systems, and county stormwater plans will need to reflect the impacts of climate change.

“Clean and abundant water is critical to Pennsylvania’s economy, the health and wellbeing of its citizens, its outdoor heritage, and quality of life. State and local agency leaders, farmers, sportsmen and women, conservation leaders, and local communities want to do more to protect Pennsylvania’s streams and rivers,” said CBF’s Pennsylvania Science Policy and Advocacy Director Harry Campbell. “But success will be achieved only if, and when, the state makes sufficient investments in clean water.  To date, that hasn’t happened.”

For more on Chesapeake Bay-related issues in Pennsylvania, visit the Chesapeake Bay Foundation-PA webpage.  Click Here to sign up for Pennsylvania updates (bottom of left column).  Click Here to support their work.

Also visit the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership to learn how you can help clean water grow on trees.

CBF has over 275,000 members in Bay Watershed.

[For more information on how Pennsylvania plans to meet its Chesapeake Bay cleanup obligations, visit DEP’s PA’s Phase 3 Watershed Implementation Plan webpage.       

[Click Here for a summary of the steps the Plan recommends.

[How Clean Is Your Stream?

[DEP’s Interactive Water Quality Report Viewer allows you to zoom in on your own stream or watershed to find out how clean your stream is or if it has impaired water quality using the latest information in the draft 2020 Water Quality Report.]

Related Articles This Week:

-- DEP Chesapeake Bay Office Newsletter Provides Update On PA Watershed Plan Implementation

-- DEP Invests $3.7 Million To Help Farmers Plan, Install Best Management Practices In Chesapeake Bay Watershed

-- EPA Accepting Applications For Over $3.6 Million In Grants To Reduce Nutrient Runoff From Farms In 38 Chesapeake Bay-Related PA Watersheds

-- DEP Invites Comments On Revised NPDES General Permit For Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations

Related Articles:

-- Bay Journal Forum: Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Is In Jeopardy, If EPA Is Unwilling To Act, We Will

-- EPA Finds PA Did Not Meet Targets For Reducing Water Pollution In Chesapeake Bay Watershed Area; Must Identify Funding Sources For 2020-21

-- Pennsylvania Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plan Team Virtual Meeting July 20 [Update on actions from January - June 2020]

-- CBF Blog: Why Is The Health Of Pennsylvania Streams Important For The Chesapeake Bay?

[Posted: August 13, 2020]

8/17/2020