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Bay Journal: EPA Says PA’s Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Plan Falls Short, Again

By Karl Blankenship, Chesapeake Bay Journal

The third time did not prove to be the charm for Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan, at least as far as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is concerned.

Although the state this year committed significant additional funding to reduce Bay pollution, the EPA said its third cleanup plan in four years still falls short in funding and still fails to meet cleanup goals.

As a result, the agency says it will maintain ramped-up oversight of the state’s water quality programs. But it did not outline any new actions it would take to get the state on track.

“Our conclusion is that it still does not measure up,” said Adam Ortiz, administrator of the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region, which includes most of the Bay watershed. “The upshot of this is that we will maintain our enhanced enforcement posture with the state of Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future.”

It is the latest salvo in the long-running dispute between the agency and the state that sends the most water-fouling nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) to the Bay, which does not actually lie within its borders.

While other states have made progress, mostly by upgrading wastewater treatment plants, the nutrient pollution Pennsylvania sends to the Bay primarily comes from more than 30,000 farms, where reducing nutrients is more difficult.

The EPA and environmental advocacy groups contend that the state has long lacked adequate funding and programs to achieve needed improvements on those farms. Pennsylvania officials acknowledge that the state is behind but contend that the EPA is undercounting its actual progress.

The dispute has found its way into court. After the state submitted a plan in 2019 that failed to meet 2025 cleanup goals, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, along with the District of Columbia, Chesapeake Bay Foundation and others filed suit against the EPA for failing to press the state to make greater progress.

Of those jurisdictions, only the District of Columbia is on track to meet its own cleanup goals. Measured in pounds of nutrients, though, Pennsylvania is significantly further behind.

That suit is still pending.

Last December, Pennsylvania submitted a revised plan that again failed to meet goals. Citing that shortfall, the EPA in April announced it would ramp up inspections and enforcement of clean water regulations across the state.

In July, Pennsylvania submitted a third plan that outlined $154 million in additional spending.

But in an analysis publicly released Nov. 21, the EPA said its conclusion remains the same.

The new plan still achieves only 72% of the state’s nitrogen reduction goal, 99% of its phosphorus target and 93% of its sediment target — figures little changed from earlier plans — according to the EPA.

The agency said the state failed to provide adequate details about actions and timelines that would demonstrate ramped-up implementation of pollution control practices.

While the state has secured additional money, it came from federal COVID-relief funding with no commitment for additional state contributions when the federal money is exhausted after next year.

And the funding boost is still well short of closing the roughly $325 million-a-year gap that the state faces for its pollution-reduction needs.

“Without long-term dedicated funding and programmatic commitments, EPA lacks confidence that Pennsylvania will achieve its portion of the 2025 goal,” the agency said in its review. “EPA has confidence that Pennsylvania will continue to make incremental progress, but not at the accelerated rate needed to meet its portion of the 2025 goal.”

Because of its shortfall, the EPA said it would continue its increased oversight of water discharge permits, animal livestock operations and stormwater systems in the state that it began this summer.

It also said it would likely steer Bay-related federal grant funds away from state agencies to nonprofits, conservation districts and others in the hope of getting better results.

“We are disappointed that the [cleanup plan] does not see the amount of progress that we were hoping for,” Ortiz said. “So our policy of ‘tough love’ will continue.”

Alison Prost, Chesapeake Bay Foundation vice president for environmental protection and restoration, said in a statement that while the organization appreciates “EPA’s reinvigorated commitment” it was not enough to “get Pennsylvania across the finish line.”

Prost called for more “accountability,” which she hopes will result from the suit against the EPA. “We remain hopeful that negotiations in that case will result in the necessary actions and sustained funding needed to restore clean water, improve local economies and preserve Pennsylvania’s way of life,” she said.

Deborah Klenotic, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said the state remains committed to working with federal agencies and others on projects that “demonstrate real on-the-ground results” that would benefit from recent funding increases.

“Pennsylvania plans to continue the significant work that is now underway by many partners to improve our local water quality and thereby the health of the Bay,” she said. “We know through both modeled and monitored progress that what we’re doing is working, and we’re committed to sustaining and increasing our efforts.”

The state has long contended that the EPA’s accounting system fails to credit many pollution control practices that are in place on farms across the state, accounting for a significant portion of its nutrient reduction shortfall, and that water quality monitoring suggests greater progress is being made than indicated by the computer models used to assess progress.

Problems with counting and tracking pollution control practices such as cover crops, stream buffers and changes in tillage techniques have been recognized by others in the state-federal Bay Program partnership as well, but they have failed to unify around a strategy to resolve the issue.

The EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture recently established a task force to address the problem.

But EPA officials said they could not credit nutrient reductions from such efforts until there was agreement on how to do so. And even if changes reduce Pennsylvania’s shortfall, they said the state would remain far off track of its goals.

“We’re looking forward to figuring some of those things out,” Ortiz said. “But in the meantime, you know, we have to follow the policies that the partnership has established. And we have the same yardstick for all the states.”

[Visit DEP’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed webpage to learn more about cleaning up rivers and streams in Pennsylvania's portion of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Click Here to sign up for regular updates on Pennsylvania’s progress.

[How Clean Is Your Stream?

Check DEP’s 2022 Water Quality Report to find out how clean streams are near you.]

(Reprinted from the Chesapeake Bay Journal.)

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