When the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, they promised to restore the water quality of the Bay.
The Chesapeake 2000 Agreement objectives are not just a bunch of optional promises. If the Bay water quality does not improve and become "fishable and swimmable", the Clean Water Act requires EPA to list the Bay as "degraded waters." That will require the states and District of Columbia to craft a multi-jurisdictional limit on pollution through the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) process to protect the Bay's aquatic living resources.
How clean is clean? That will be measured by specific water quality criteria for dissolved oxygen, water clarity and Chlorophyll A. Chlorophyll A measures the amount of algae floating in the water, and indirectly measures the impact of nutrients, sediments, and toxics that are deposited in the Chesapeake Bay. Are we close to having "clean" water? You do the math:
| "To meet the dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll a goals, the Bay Program’s new Baywide nutrient reduction goals limit the amount of nitrogen entering the Chesapeake from the watershed to 175 million pounds a year, and phosphorus to 12.8 million pounds a year. The Bay Program estimates that 285 million pounds of nitrogen and 19.1 pounds of phosphorus currently enter the Bay annually."1 |
The water quality criteria being defined by EPA will drive nutrient and sediment loads (i.e., pollution reduction requirements) that each political jurisdiction will define for its own waters. Pennsylvania, for example, will determine the specific water quality standards and permit the individual discharges into the Susquehanna River, while Maryland will do the same for the Patuxent River. Technically, Maryland will also be obliged to define water quality standards for the Potomac River - and to prepare a TDML plan, if those standards are not expected to be achieved by 2010.