Alarming ‘dead zone’ grows in the Chesapeake

The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, a freshwater nursery for many species of fish that grow and venture out to the Atlantic Ocean where larger marine animals rely on them for prey.

In December, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a “pollution diet” to dramatically reduce the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that states can allow in the bay from municipalities and farms.

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The plan is more aggressive than its predecessors in past years that were criticized as ineffective. Under the plan, Chesapeake Bay watershed states — Virginia, Maryland, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania — and the District were required to draft and submit strategies to the EPA for reducing nutrient pollution.

The final plans will cost billions to improve municipal water treatment plants that contributed to nitrogen runoff, and to improve conservation efforts by farmers, particularly large animal-feed organizations where phosphorus runs into the bay when rain washes away manure.

But the plan is being challenged by two powerful lobbies and other groups that are seeking a court order to block it. The American Farm Bureau Federation argued that costly conservation requirements could drive farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed out of business, and that states — not the EPA — should determine pollution limits.

The group’s lawsuit in a federal district court in Harrisburg, Pa., asks a judge to stop the plan from going forward. The National Association of Home Builders recently joined the suit.

The aim of the farm lobby’s lawsuit is not the Chesapeake Bay region. Bob Stallman, its president, said the EPA’s cleanup plan could be a harbinger for far-reaching requirements in the Mississippi River basin, where industrial farms are responsible for chemical runoff that lead to huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

Housing developments with paved driveways, streets and roofs without greenery are another source of nitrogen runoff because they send more rain across lawns than can be absorbed, washing lawn fertilizer into the watershed. Environmentalists say builders have resisted calls to create greener communities with permeable stone and grassy areas that soak up rain.

A spokesman for the National Association of Home Builders could not be reached for comment.

“If we had met our nutrient [pollution] reduction goals in the past, we would have a much smaller dead zone,” said Donald Boesch, president of the Center for Environmental Science at the University of Maryland. “Because the pollution is so high, every year is a bad year. You really have to get the bay in better health so it can clean itself.”

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, part of a coalition that sued the EPA in 2009 after decades of weaker anti-pollution measures failed to clean the bay, lambasted the farm bureau’s suit to stop the EPA’s plan.

“Farmers, the chicken council, fertilizer institute, hog people, turkey people . . . these are big Washington lobbying associations,” said Will Baker, the foundation’s president. “They’re not mom-and-pop farmers. If you look at the amount of money they’ve given to candidates and lobbying, it’s in the hundreds of millions.”

Baker said the size of this summer’s dead zone “is clear evidence that the bay is still in trouble” and that the EPA’s get-tougher approach to lowering pollution is the best way forward.

“What the litigants are asking is for those of us who enjoy clean water to sacrifice for their profit motive,” Baker said.

A farm bureau official said its lawsuit is not about the quality of the water. “Farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed take a back seat to no one in their commitment to helping clean up the bay,” said Paul Schlegel, director of environment and energy policy for the bureau.

“The lawsuit is . . . about what EPA can and cannot do based on the law Congress has written,” Schlegel said.