Reaction from the public and press to the Obama Administration’s proposed new Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan has been, well… underwhelming.
A Bay Daily reader named “JB” expressed disgust that EPA is giving Bay area states first crack at writing regulations to control runoff pollution from farms and development… when the states, of course, have had plenty of first cracks to tackle these problems over the last quarter century or more.
“Change?... Ha, ha, ha!” JB cackled (well, I didn’t actually hear him cackle, but that’s what his e-mail comment sounded like to my eyes). “Everything is left to other agencies to do, which (is) the problem we already have.”
This is perhaps a bit unfair, JB. The federal government’s new draft strategy (which you can read by clicking here) calls for EPA to initiate the creation of new rules to control farm and urban runoff …but only put them into force if the states don’t create effective pollution controls on their own. So there is a new federal hammer, of a sort: the threat of future federal regulation.