The Latest News

SELC Stands with EPA to Protect the Chesapeake Bay

added 4.21.11

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has completed the most sophisticated water quality restoration plan ever assembled for the Chesapeake Bay. Known as a TMDL (for total maximum daily load), the plan calculates how much pollution the bay can withstand and how much pollution must be reduced from sources such as sewage treatment plants, urban and suburban runoff, air emissions, and farms and livestock operations.

SELC is part of a legal team defending the plan from a lawsuit brought by the Farm Bureau in federal district court in Pennsylvania. Although farming is largely exempt from Clean Water Act regulation, agricultural runoff is a major contributor to nutrient and sediment pollution in the bay. The momentum behind the bay clean-up effort has never been greater, and SELC and other groups committed to restoring this ecosystem are standing with EPA to maintain its progress.

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Previous Case Activity

SELC Will Help Put the Bay on a ‘Pollution Diet’ Set by EPA

added 3.17.11

On December 29, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a new Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay. This is a complex calculation of how much pollution the bay can withstand and how much pollution must be reduced from various sources in the estuary’s 64,000-square-mile watershed, including sewage treatment plants, urban and suburban runoff, construction sites, auto and power plant emissions, and farms and livestock operations.

SELC’s water experts helped shape this “pollution diet” as it was being developed over the past two years, encouraging EPA to set limits that will succeed in bringing the bay back to health. SELC is committed to ensuring that Virginia and other states in the Chesapeake watershed live up to agreements to reach the pollution-reduction targets, through strategies known as “watershed implementation plans”. We will also help stave off attempts by special interests to impede the bay restoration process.

The TMDL calls for a 25 percent reduction in nitrogen, a 24 percent reduction in phosphorous, and a 20 percent reduction in sediment reaching the bay. The goal is to achieve full implementation of the restoration plan by 2025 and to have at least 60 percent of the implementation in place by 2017. Even with full implementation of the plan, it will take years more, perhaps even decades, for the bay to recover completely.

Attorney Named Conservationist of the Year

added 10.20.10

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation named recently retired senior attorney Kay Slaughter the 2010 Virginia Conservationist of the Year, its highest honor. CBF recognized Kay’s career of service, including her role in blocking the King William Reservoir.

Visit the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's website for more information.

Photo: Courtesy Chesapeake Bay Foundation/Robbi Savage, Rivanna Conservation Society.

Fish waste discharge in Bay going under the radar

added 10.22.09

In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency sent October 20, SELC revealed a potentially significant source of nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay that has apparently gone under the regulatory radar at the state and federal level for several decades. SELC is urging the EPA to thoroughly investigate the discharge of fish waste and take appropriate action.

According to SELC's review of various documents, it appears that Omega Protein Corporation in Reedville has been discharging 13,000 pounds or more of organic waste into the middle of the bay every day during fishing season (May to December) for many years without specific authorization. The discharge of "bailing water"—thick with fish blood and waste—is not included in the company's environmental permits.

In excessive amounts, organic compounds such as those in fish waste, and other sources like agricultural runoff, use up oxygen in the bay and starve aquatic life. The revelation comes as the EPA is developing the first-ever bay-wide plan to limit the "total maximum daily load" (TMDL) of nutrients and other pollutants that have brought the bay nearly to the brink of collapse.

Read the press release.

SELC Takes Aim at Construction Site Runoff

added 9.2.09

SELC is pressing for stronger local, state, and federal controls on muddy runoff from denuded construction sites, one of the chief threats to water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Eroded soils smother habitat for fish and other wildlife, block sunlight needed by aquatic plants, and increase nutrient pollution that leads to oxygen-starved dead zones. Sediments also build up in public water supplies and reduce their capacity over time.

In Virginia, SELC is using legal action and other strategies to press regulators to put more teeth in state controls. One of our targets is a general permit for construction projects recently issued by the state that would fail to keep pollution out of waters already suffering from high levels of sediment. “Additional sediment-laden runoff can tip a teetering system over the edge,” explains SELC water quality expert Rick Parrish. “Without this protection, we will never be able to restore impaired waters in the state, including the bay.”

In a related development, the Board of Supervisors in Albemarle County, Virginia, voted unanimously in favor of a proposal we introduced to limit the time that inactive construction sites can remain stripped of all vegetation. This new measure in the county’s water protection ordinance will help reduce the amount of dirt that washes off construction sites into local waterways, which are part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. It was a key recommendation in a pair of reports we produced last year on how the county and neighboring Charlottesville can curb polluted runoff.

At the same time, we are encouraging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take action at the federal level. EPA is studying options for strengthening construction runoff requirements to protect the Chesapeake Bay and other U.S. waters in distress.

Choose Clean Water Campaign

added 5.21.09

SELC has joined more than 60 organizations in a coalition to spur the Bay’s recovery. On May 20, the coalition launched the Choose Clean Water Campaign, calling for federal leadership to help communities clean up and protect their local waterways. For 2009, the campaign focuses on three specific areas:

Ensuring that all sources of pollution to the Bay are reduced to no more than the Bay can sustain.
Securing changes to federal transportation policy that will reduce pollution from highway runoff and encourage less consumption of land for new development.
Winning passage of strong climate change legislation to address the strain of global warming on our already impaired and stressed waterways.

www.choosecleanwater.org