Optimism Over Saving the Bay Bonded Local Jurisdictions

The government-led campaign to clean the Chesapeake Bay began 25 years ago this month, when three governors, the District mayor and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator signed a pact at George Mason University in Fairfax.

This first "Chesapeake Bay Agreement" was just a few paragraphs long, and its central promise was vague: "coordinated plans to improve and protect the water quality and living resources of the Chesapeake Bay estuarine systems."

But even that seemed like great progress, activists and officials say -- after decades of hand-wringing and scientific studies that had produced little action for the Chesapeake.

"There was a great deal of optimism at the time, that we would achieve the goals," said W. Tayloe Murphy Jr. , a Virginia Democratic state delegate at the time, and later the state's secretary of natural resources. "I don't think that we fully realized, perhaps, the extent of the problem."

The idea of a depleted Chesapeake was already old in 1983: as far back as 1933, local officials had gathered in Baltimore to ponder ideas for protecting the blue crab. But several events had combined to focus new attention on the estuary.

First, Hurricane Agnes inundated the bay with freshwater runoff in 1972, killing underwater grasses and oysters that depended on brackish conditions. Then came a series of multi-year government studies, laying out the basics of the Chesapeake's problems with manure, fertilizer, and other pollutants that feed algal blooms.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did two, in 1973 and 1977. Then the EPA did another, finishing it only in 1983.

In Annapolis that year, Maryland Gov. Harry R. Hughes (D) said he'd seen enough.

"I decided, 'Let's not put it on the shelf,'" he recalled recently. "Let's do something about it."

Hughes' staff began holding special meetings on the bay on Wye Island, at a state park on the Eastern Shore. He lobbied the governors of Virginia, which shares the bay with Maryland, and Pennsylvania, from which the Susquehanna River brings down a huge amount of the Chesapeake's pollution.

The end result was the conference at George Mason, called Choices for the Chesapeake: An Action Agenda. Sponsors had planned for 500 people, but 700 officials and activists registered, and 400 more had to be turned away.

At the end of three days, the agreement was signed by Hughes, Virginia Gov. Charles S. Robb (R), Pennsylvania Gov. Richard Thornburgh (R), D.C. Mayor Marion S. Barry (D) and EPA Administrator William Ruckleshaus.

Observers said that even its modest promises -- an EPA office for the Chesapeake Bay, a council of regional leaders to guide the cleanup -- gave new structure to an effort that had none before.

"It was the first time that there was a collective action to restore the bay, that there was any formality," said Gerald W. Winegrad, a Maryland Democratic state senator at the time. "We had a definitive document telling us what was wrong," he said, so the thinking was that "there couldn't be any excuses now."

"I don't think there was a person there," Winegrad said, "that didn't think . . . that we were going to turn it around."

At the time of the signing, some environmentalists were skeptical that enough money had been allocated to the cause, or that the federal government was committed enough. At the conference, Ruckelshaus made a point that the states would have "primary responsibility" for the cleanup.

Hughes said he remembers telling people at the time that patience was needed. But even he said he was surprised at how slowly the cleanup has moved.

"I thought we were going to get results better than what we've gotten," said Hughes, who left office in 1987, sitting in the living room of a home that overlooks the Choptank River outside Denton, Md. "I thought, within 10 years, that we were going to get significant results."