A Revitalized Chesapeake May Be Decades Away

"If you draw that line out there," Batiuk said, pointing to the slow upward trend in their population, "you're at about 2040 for the grasses to come back."

One major reason for the shortfall, Batiuk said, was rapid population growth in the bay's watershed, which stretches 64,000 square miles from southern Virginia to Cooperstown, N.Y. An additional 800,000 people moved in between 2000 and 2005, bringing more neighborhoods, more cars, more lawns -- all sources of bay pollutants -- and canceling out improvements, he said.

But environmentalists have also blamed local governments, and the bay program itself, for not being more aggressive.

They have said the past six years have been consumed by research efforts and voluntary pollution-reduction programs, when new laws or stringent enforcement might have accomplished more.

One advocate of a more confrontational approach was sworn in as Maryland's attorney general Tuesday: Douglas F. Gansler (D), who has pledged an "all-out assault" on bay polluters. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has also pushed the Maryland legislature to do more in the new session, calling for a "green fund" of up to $50 million a year for pollution-reduction projects.

Batiuk's talk yesterday reflects a serious shift in rhetoric for the EPA's bay program. For years, program officials had maintained that the 2010 goal was still within reach.

But last year, bay program Associate Director Mike Burke said, officials were asked to submit goals for an EPA-wide strategic plan. Employees would be evaluated on their progress toward the goals, Burke said.

If the 2010 deadline is not met, officials said, state governments could be made to compile a "pollution budget" for the bay, listing what is coming downstream now, where it comes from and by how much it needs to be reduced.

In the meantime, a new Chesapeake agreement, with another deadline, could also be worked out.

But the past two decades have soured some people on agreements. Bernie Fowler, a former Maryland state senator who has been an outspoken voice for the Patuxent River and the bay, said he was tired of people making promises that the bay would be fixed soon.

"A lot of those very people have left the planet and haven't seen it done," said Fowler, who is 82. "I don't want that to happen to me."