Broken Promises on the Bay

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Voices of the Bay: A Fading Fleet

The decline of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay has resulted in fewer jobs for watermen and a shift in the local economy.

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In 2004, a Washington Post report revealed that the EPA was still using computer-modeling data to produce overly optimistic progress reports. A subsequent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the EPA program "downplays the deteriorated condition of the bay" by using modeling data instead of information from real-world water monitoring. The GAO did not say the numbers were exaggerated on purpose.

Hanmer said these numbers "had not been a focus of my personal attention" but that she was not aware of any attempts to deceive. After the GAO report, she said, the effort began using more data drawn from monitoring of the bay.

In January 2007, the EPA said the 2010 deadline wouldn't be met. At last count, total phosphorus had fallen 30 percent and nitrogen 22 percent -- still less than promised in the 1987 agreement.

Now

Last month, the current leaders of the cleanup -- the governors of Virginia and Maryland, the District mayor and the EPA administrator -- pledged to give the effort new urgency, setting short-term goals and creating consequences if they are missed.

The EPA also says it is time for a change. Current EPA bay program director Jeffrey L. Lape said the cleanup did not have enough money or legal muscle for its task.

"You lack the tools, programs and authorities to get the job done," Lape said. He was paraphrasing a July report from the EPA's inspector general: "I agree with that."

Despite that, EPA officials said they would not call the cleanup effort a failure.

They said that, in total, the cleanup had cut pollution from more than 150 sewage plants, reducing their output of one key pollutant by 60 percent. They have curtailed toxic dumping, restored 12,500 acres of wetlands and increased the number of the Chesapeake's beleaguered rockfish by 15 times.

"We would have said we'd failed if we'd done absolutely nothing, against the face of population" growth, Batiuk said. But 4.3 million residents have moved into the Chesapeake's watershed since 1980, a population increase of 34 percent. Each one brought pollution.

While the Chesapeake effort has struggled, other cleanups have made history. The Hudson River has more oxygen, Boston Harbor is less septic and Tampa Bay has seen its underwater grasses come back. These jobs were easier, of course: The Hudson's watershed is the biggest of the three, and it is still one-fifth the size of the Chesapeake's.

Today, leaders around the Chesapeake are grappling with square-one questions, including: How badly does the public really want this?

"There's a difference between the idea of 'I want to have a clean bay,' and what it might require me to change [about] the way I have to live my life," said Frank W. Dawson III, who oversees bay restoration for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "We collectively, as a society, may not be able to understand . . . the sacrifices necessary to get there."

The bay's last crab harvest was about 39 million pounds, about 60 percent less than in 1983.

Its last oyster harvest was about 470,000 pounds, or 96 percent less.

This summer, about 17 percent of its water had lowered oxygen levels.

That was the cheeriest indicator of the three: After a quarter-century of work, the bay was just about as dead.