Posted under Chesapeake Bay
Maryland, Virginia and the EPA are preparing to set a new deadline to complete the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay: 2025. The last two deadlines 2000 and 2010 were missed. That experiences illustrates that it’s more important to put in place policies that will improve the health of the Bay than to set deadlines.
More from the Sun:
After failing repeatedly over the last 25 years to meet self-imposed deadlines for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, state and federal officials appear ready to set a new-drop dead date — 16 years from now. But they say what really matters is what they pledge to do in the next two years.
Top aides to the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia and other officials involved in the cleanup effort have recommended that 2025 be set as the ultimate “end date” for reducing pollution so that the water is fit again for the fish, crabs and oysters that used to teem in America’s largest estuary, according to officials involved in the decision. Officials said they did not want to be quoted, upstaging decisions to be announced on Tuesday.
Gov. Martin O’Malley, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and officials from the District of Columbia and four other states plan to gather Tuesday at Mount Vernon in Virginia to chart what they have vowed will be a more aggressive and more accountable course for restoring the bay. In addition to a new cleanup deadline, the leaders are expected to announce steps they plan to take in the next two years to accelerate the cleanup and achieve interim goals, or “milestones.” And in an acknowledgment that past cleanup pledges have not been met, they will agree to have an independent body of experts track their progress.
You can read the full article here.
Comments Off
