Broken Promises on the Bay

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So the program published statistics, drawn from computer models, that showed pollution reductions that might occur in the future. They were not a snapshot of the bay as it really was -- in fact, Matuszeski said, the EPA did not know exactly how clean the bay really was, because it lacked adequate monitoring equipment.

But, he said, it was clear that the model's version of the Chesapeake was healthier than the real one.

"We had results that promised us future effects," Matuszeski said. But publicly, he said, "They were presented as 'effects,' and the assumption was that they were real-time."

Others within the cleanup's leadership had different opinions about what these numbers represented. Richard Batiuk, the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program Office's current associate director for science, said there was no intent to exaggerate: "Did we inaccurately apply that model? No."

Three governors who served during that period -- George Allen and James S. Gilmore III (R) from Virginia and Parris N. Glendening (D) of Maryland -- said they were unaware that the EPA's data had exaggerated its success. "That's disturbing to hear that," Allen said. "All indications we had were that progress is being made."

Within the Chesapeake Bay Commission, executive director Swanson said she knew EPA was "telling the happy side of the story." But, she added, "I don't think people were intentionally misleading."

W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., who in 1997 was a Virginia state legislator and the bay commission's chairman, said he could understand why officials would overstate their success.

"To keep what funding you've got, you don't want to say that you just failed. So I think, from time to time, there was a little rosier picture painted," he said. "We never came out and said that the bay program office is painting too rosy a picture. . . . We probably gave some slack to EPA, because we didn't blame them for the lack of progress."

During this period, the EPA bay program's funding hovered between $19.9 and $22.5 million a year. But, when 2000 came, the deadline was missed. The cleanup had succeeded in reducing phosphorus only by 25 percent and nitrogen only by 13 percent, according to today's EPA estimates.

In response, the group of state and federal leaders made an even bolder promise: the "Chesapeake 2000 Agreement." They would cut pollution more than they had pledged in 1987 and have the Chesapeake removed from an EPA list of "impaired waters" by 2010.

The 2000s

In the years after the agreement, Maryland passed a "flush tax," which used fees on sewage and septic users to fund anti-pollution measures. Virginia's legislature borrowed $250 million to work on sewage plants. In Pennsylvania, new tax-credit programs funneled money to make improvements on farms.

But overall, the cleanup was still in low gear.