The EPA’s new Chesapeake Bay cleanup czar, Chuck Fox, recently praised the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s decision to sue his own agency in January for failing to keep its promises to reduce pollution. The lawsuit was filed before he was hired as the EPA’s senior advisor to the Chesapeake Bay Program. Lawsuits may be good for your health. Or at least the Bay’s health. So go ahead. Sue me.
“I certainly understand the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s frustrations with the actions of the past administration,” Fox told WYPR 88.1 FM public radio host Sheilah Kast on her Maryland Morning program yesterday. “I am not sure I would have recommended that they do anything less than that…I view this action on their part as a good step. It’s one that helps us all have a constructive dialogue as to what is the best way forward to save the bay.”
To hear the whole interview, click here and listen to the March 23 program “Wading Into Troubled Waters.”
Fox laughed when asked about the lawsuit, perhaps because he has been on both sides of the fence when it comes to the parties now in court. He’s a former vice president at CBF and as a former top EPA water program official in the Clinton administration. But he also admitted he’s feeling some anxieties about how he should change a federal Bay cleanup program that has had a “problem of producing results,” as he put it.
“I must admit I’ve already had some sleepless nights,” Fox said. “ In fact, I do feel a personal obligation to do my best to make this program work. It’s a program that has been under increased scrutiny and criticisms over the last three to five years. There have been a number of congressional investigations into the performance of the Bay program. And there is no question that we have a lot of challenges ahead of us.”
Fox added that he’s optimistic, however, because all of the Bay area states and activist groups want change. He seemed to suggest that he’s considering significant revisions to the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program, which now has a cooperative structure in which the Bay area governors and the EPA administrator all sit on a committee.
Kast asked pointedly whether this cooperative model, which doesn’t seem to be working, should be thrown out and replaced with a more top-down structure in which the EPA orders the states to take steps to clean up the Bay.
“It’s a very good question,” Fox replied. “And it’s among the issues that we are looking at as we speak. I think it is very clear that we do need more EPA leadership. That is a message that we have received very loudly from the governors. It is a message we have received from the watermen, and from some of the Chesapeake interest groups. And you can trust that we will provide that leadership.”
EPA recently issued a revised national permit regulation to require large poultry growing operations that discharge to rivers and streams to obtain federal pollution control permits and follow federal rules for preventing manure runoff.
Fox dodged a question when Kast asked him whether the cost of complying with this new permit regulation should be shouldered by the family farms that raise chickens on contract. She asked whether the expense should be borne instead by the large poultry businesses like Perdue that own the chickens but have long maintained they are not responsible for the manure.
“We are really all in this together,” was how Fox replied. “The truth is that the scientists are telling us is we have to reduce pollution from all sources.”
What’s your take on all this, Bay Daily readers?
My family would be willing to pay a higher price to Perdue for their chicken products if they stated the reason for the price increase on the package as a cost passed on to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. I think most consumers would agree as well.
Posted by: Joe Stover | 03/26/2009 at 12:22 PM