An American bald eagle, along the cliffs over the Potomac River leading to the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia: Glynn Wilson

By Glynn Wilson –

The Trump administration’s blatant disregard for protecting the environment has landed in court again.

Attorneys general for Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, asserting the executive branch federal agency neglected to enforce a decade-old agreement to reduce water pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. The lawsuit comes after years of negotiations between the states and the EPA over failures to meet pollution reduction goals by New York and Pennsylvania.

“The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure,” Maryland Attorney General Frosh said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Restoring the health of the bay will take a coordinated, comprehensive effort by each of the watershed states. EPA has walked away from its responsibility to regulate and manage the efforts of the bay states. We are asking the court to force EPA to do its job.”

An agreement was reached in 2010 with the Obama administration and the Chesapeake Watershed Agreement was signed by six states in 2014. The Obama EPA then pledged to take federal action if states did not demonstrate that they would meet the 2025 deadline for pollution reduction.

But under the Trump administration, the EPA has “done nothing” after it became obvious in August 2019 that New York and Pennsylvania were each on track to fall short of their 2025 targets by at least 25 percent.

“The Chesapeake Bay is one of Virginia’s most important natural treasures and we all have a role to play in protecting and restoring it,” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said.  “The EPA must hold every partner equally accountable and make sure they uphold their portion of the Agreement, but Trump’s EPA shirked that responsibility and simply rubber stamped inadequate plans. I will not stand by and allow the EPA to ignore its enforcement obligations and erase decades of progress we have made to reduce pollution and restore the Chesapeake Bay.” 

Frosh was joined by the Attorneys General of Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia in filing the lawsuit against the EPA for its failure to require Pennsylvania and New York to develop and implement plans to achieve 2025 Chesapeake Bay restoration goals. The suit asserts that EPA has abandoned its responsibility to ensure that certain states uphold their obligations under the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement to reduce pollution levels to restore local waters and the bay in the allotted timeframe.

“EPA’s actions threaten the future restoration and health of the bay, and the livelihoods of the millions who use the bay as a multi-purpose resource,” Frosh said in the statement.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has filed a similar lawsuit, alleging that under the Clean Water Act, EPA has a non-discretionary duty to “ensure that management plans are developed and implementation is begun by signatories to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement to achieve and maintain a Total Maximum Daily Load of pollution,” placing limits on nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment. 

“This is the moment in time for the Chesapeake Bay. If EPA fails to hold Pennsylvania accountable, the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint will be yet another in a series of failures for Bay restoration,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William Baker said in a statement. “It doesn’t have to be this way.  Under the blueprint we have seen progress. But unless pressure is brought to bear on Pennsylvania, we will never get to the finish line.”

The EPA’s recent final evaluation of each bay state’s Watershed Improvement Plan concluded that Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia will all attain their respective necessary load reductions by 2025, but concluded that the plans submitted by Pennsylvania and New York were deficient, falling short of nutrient reduction goals and lacking in sufficient funding.

Yet the EPA has “done nothing” as required by law to require Pennsylvania or New York to develop or implement plans that fully meet the pollution reduction goals, according to the complaint, which asserts that EPA’s failure “comes at a particularly crucial point.”

“With the conclusion of the process, there is no further statutory or regulatory mechanism to ensure that the bay states will achieve and maintain those reductions,” according to the complaint. The states also say that the EPA’s failure “represents an about-face from its prior guidance and action taken to improve deficient [plans]”.

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, home to thousands of plant and animal species, and is an invaluable cultural and economic resource for Maryland, Virginia and the surrounding region.

“We cannot allow the EPA to abdicate its legal duty to ensure states are reducing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay,” District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said. “We filed this lawsuit to force the EPA to do its job, protect decades of environmental work and billions of dollars invested, and ensure all the watershed states work together to meet pollution reduction goals. Safeguarding the health of the bay — and all of our interconnected rivers and streams — is impossible without everyone doing their part.” 

Protecting the bay’s watershed, which spans 64,000 square miles and crosses Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, presents unique challenges because water from each of those states flows into the bay, bringing significant amounts of pollution with it. Over the decades, the bay’s water quality and productivity have diminished, primarily because of pollution. Because of these problems that pollution posed, the watershed states and the federal government have long worked together to both restore the health of the bay and protect it from further damage.

The bay’s water quality has gradually improved since the 2010 agreement, stimulating a resurgence of the natural reproduction of oysters, for example. But for its progress to continue, regional leaders and environmentalists say, all states must meet the goals outlined in their pollution reduction plans.

“The bay is healthier than it has been in decades,” Herring said at a virtual news conference on Thursday. “But we cannot let the progress stagnate or, worse, backslide.”

Baker expressed concern over growing algal blooms in Virginia’s waters, which tend to degrade water quality as they decompose.

“We saw the state of the bay begin to slip and that is what gives us such concern,” he said at the news conference.

Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan has pressed for a lawsuit from day one if EPA and states in the Susquehanna River watershed failed to honor their Chesapeake commitments under the Clean Water Act, according to Maryland Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles. 

“Our lawsuit is now absolutely necessary to get EPA and our partners upstream and upwind to do their fair share to protect our beloved Bay,” Grumbles said.

The levels of pollution in New York and Pennsylvania are particularly frustrating to leaders in the Washington region, who have invested millions of dollars in cleaning up the bay. Without full cooperation from the states upstream, the bay’s water quality will remain substandard, the lawsuit asserts. Over time, they said, that could further damage the environmental and financial health of the region, which depends on the bay for tourism, real estate, fishing and recreational revenue.