RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — A group of states and environmentalists said Monday they will sue the Environmental Protection Agency based on claims that a long-running plan to tackle pollution in Chesapeake Bay is not being enforced well enough to meet its 2025 goals.
Two notice of intent to sue letters issued by the attorneys general of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation give the EPA 60 days to address a failure “to ensure that the bay jurisdictions will meet their pollution reduction commitments” or face a lawsuit.
The letters ask the agency to enforce the so-called Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, a plan that aims to limit the total maximum daily loads, or TMDLs, of pollution being dumped into the bay.
“The failure of the administrator to comply with federal law and the interstate agreement designed to achieve and maintain essential water quality goals for the bay will lead to the failure of the bay jurisdictions and EPA to meet their water quality commitments by 2025 and leave the bay impaired,” the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s letter states. “With less than five years until the deadline, it is time for the administrator to honor his commitment to the citizens of the United States.”
Both states and the federal government have used TMDL limits to aid in watershed cleanups since the early 1990s, but their increased use in Chesapeake Bay stems from a dispute that started in 2006 when the EPA allegedly failed to enforce milestones set by an earlier plan created in 2000.
After former President Barack Obama took office, he declared the bay a national treasure and issued an executive order for firmer goals to be set in the new 15-year plan. These goals included a range of efforts — from nutrient management and animal waste control to soil conservation and forest buffers — all with the aim of reducing pollution in the bay.
But the plan was met with pushback. Shortly after it was authorized in 2010, farm groups, led by the American Farm Bureau Federation, filed a federal lawsuit questioning the EPA’s authority to enforce the rules. The case worked its way up to the Third Circuit, which ruled in 2015 that the agency’s plan is consistent with federal law.
The farm groups’ appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected, keeping the EPA’s restoration plan intact.
Since then, and particularly under the Trump administration, enforcement of the plan has waned, according to the attorneys general and Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
The foundation’s letter points to watershed implementation plans, or WIPs — two-year milestones that surrounding states are supposed to meet — and claims they are not being upheld in Pennsylvania and New York, whose rivers run through rural parts and bring agricultural, industrial and human pollution downstream into the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
“EPA did not utilize any of its enforcement tools in the Phase III WIP evaluation to ensure that either Pennsylvania or New York would meet their respective 2025 pollution reduction commitments,” the letter states. “By failing to undertake any significant backstop actions or ‘consequences’ relative to Pennsylvania’s and New York’s facial deficient Phase III WIPs, EPA has violated the Clean Water Act and acted arbitrarily and capriciously with respect to its obligations under the Bay TMDL accountability framework.”
The environmental group also notes that the Third Circuit’s opinion said the agency cannot “blindly accept” a state’s plan to limit pollution. Instead, the court held the EPA must use “reasoned judgment” in “determining whether the WIP would actually implement the applicable water quality standards for the receiving water.”
Despite earlier threats from Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to sue Pennsylvania for its alleged failures, the three attorneys general who filed a notice to sue letter Monday said in a digital press conference that the effort was directed at the Trump administration’s EPA and not the states individually.
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