By Dan Menefee
For MarylandReporter.com
A new report from the Maryland Public Policy Institute warns that Maryland’s $14.4 billion plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay will not satisfy an EPA mandate—because the plan ignores the Conowingo Dam as the single largest source of sediment and nutrient pollution in the Bay.
The report laments that the lion’s share of the $14.4 billion burden, $13.5 billion, is disproportionately targeted to mitigate nitrogen pollution from sewage plants, stormwater, and septic systems, which only account for 7% of all the pollution into the Bay–and will only reduce nitrogen by a negligible 2% by 2025. The mandate was established in 2010 to meet Clean Water Act standards by 2025.
“The EPA, Maryland Department of the Environment and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation got together and decided we needed to get rid of nitrogen, that nitrogen was the villain,” said James Simpson, who presented “A Better Way To Restore the Chesapeake Bay” at a forum at Washington College Tuesday. The event was sponsored by the Maryland Public Policy Institute and the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, free-market think tanks.
Leave a Reply