Algae by the Bay; Nutrients From Sewage Plants, Farmland Blamed for Rise in Chesapeake Pollution

But Diener and Pennsylvania officials question Brown's money figures. "That's about twice as high as anything I've heard," said William Cook, a special assistant in Pennsylvania's Environmental Resources Department. Added Diener, "I would be very surprised if at the end of 10 years we could count up to $1 billion."

In the scientific community there is fear that despite the pressing nature of EPA findings, the states, when faced with spending local tax money, will propose what Carl Osborne of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation calls "Band-aid solutions" to massive bay problems.

The issue of money and who is willing to spend it arises now that EPA has issued the final section of its study, the "management plan." In it, the federal agency calls for spending $335 million immediately to reduce phosphorus and nitrogen output from sewage treatment plants along the Patuxent River and in the upper bay and its tributaries.

The report also seeks long-range phosphorus and nitrogen reductions from other treatment plants that eventually could cost "in the billions," according to project manager Virginia Tippie. And it seeks outlays of $10 million a year each in the three states to reduce phosphorus and nitrogen coming off farm fields and from other sources.

Nutrient reduction, EPA's top priority, is exactly the course taken in cleaning up the Potomac at Washington.

In 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a Potomac restoration, the river was plagued by summer algae blooms that blocked sunlight from aquatic plants, gobbled oxygen needed by fish and other animal life and looked and smelled foul.