Who Will Clean Up the Bay? You!

 
After years – decades -- of big-picture debate about what it will take to restore the Chesapeake Bay, the cleanup effort finally is getting down to the local level where it counts most.

Localities across the Bay watershed, including more than 90 in Virginia, are wrestling with the challenge of reducing their local water pollution to the levels scientists and policymakers have agreed are necessary to return the Bay and its rivers to good health. 

That means very soon citizens like YOU will become engaged in efforts to clean up your neighborhood creek or stream. One glance at this map of the Chesapeake Bay watershed shows that the Bay is really the culmination of hundreds of smaller rivers, streams, and creeks, most of which are many miles from the Bay. But by cleaning up these small, neighborhood waterways, citizens will achieve a double benefit: clean water in their own backyard waterways and, ipso facto, clean water in the Chesapeake Bay.

That’s why local governments across the region, in partnership with EPA and the Bay states, are now devising detailed plans identifying precisely who must do what over the next 14 years to adhere to the Bay’s “pollution diet,” the regimen of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution limits necessary for safe, healthy waters.  

The local cleanup plans won’t be completed until next year, but work already is under way. Statewide and regional government groups are assembling information and providing guidance to their member localities. EPA and the Bay states are assisting with benchmarks, the latest pollution and monitoring data, funding, and other key help. And nonprofit groups such as Choose Clean Water, a coalition of conservation groups including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), are helping educate local citizens about the process and why it’s important for everyone to participate to ensure their communities have the clean water they deserve.

So far in Virginia, localities are taking varied approaches. Some are working together with regional partners. Others are convening town hall meetings and work sessions with citizens and key stakeholders.

Loudoun County is exploring giving tax breaks to residents who voluntarily maintain vegetative riparian buffers on their properties as a way to reduce runoff pollution going into local streams. Leaders there estimate such buffers could cut sediment runoff by 75 percent and nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 40 percent.

Lynchburg held an interactive television workshop for residents this week to explore the best way to reduce runoff pollution in that city. Under discussion is a fee that would be charged to residents based upon the amount of hard-surface areas on their property. It could cost the average homeowner about $3 a month.

“Everyone is going to gripe about cost, especially in these hard economic times, but the reality is that it’s going to cost less now than it will to clean it up later,” Keith Petrie, a self-employed landscaper, told the News and Advance newspaper. “And everyone has to do their fair part.”

Richmond already charges its residents such a fee but provides up to 50 percent discounts as an incentive for businesses and homeowners to voluntarily reduce runoff from their properties by planting rain gardens, using rain barrels, and installing water-permeable pavers in driveways and patios.

That cleaning up our local rivers and streams is going to cost all of us more money is not a matter of debate. It is. And while none of us likes paying more in fees or taxes, we’re really paying to clean up our own pollution, the mess we ourselves have made of our local streams and rivers. We have no one but ourselves to blame for local water pollution – we all contribute to it in large and small ways, from flushing toilets to driving cars to using electricity to overfertilizing lawns – and we should not ignore or reject doing our part to make it right, for the animals and plants that live in the creeks and for all the people who live downstream.

Two other points:
• It will never be cheaper to invest in clean water, only more expensive over time; the sooner we do it, the less costly it will be.
• Whatever we invest now to restore our streams, rivers, and the Bay will produce benefits greater by orders of magnitude in jobs, revenue, and quality of life.

A recent nonpartisan poll by Christopher Newport University found overwhelming majorities of Virginians think the environment is important, and more than 60 percent said they are willing to pay more in fees to clean up the Bay.

Do you want clean water in your community? Are you willing to pay your fair share? If so, call your local government office and ask what local officials are doing to prepare bay cleanup plans. Ask how you can share your thoughts about what should be done.  Let them know you care – and expect them to as well.

Chuck Epes
Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Comments

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I like businesses and homeowners on a voluntary basis to reduce runoff from properties by planting rain gardens, using rain barrels, and the installation of permeable paving for driveways and patios.