Revision as of 10:33, 21 May 2017

Summary

Natural, Historic, Economic, Regional, and Political Framework

The Conflict

The conflict has been over how to best restore the bay’s environmental conditions. Some have favored voluntary approaches, with others calling for stricter regulatory approaches. Given states’ reluctance towards additional regulation, especially with economic interests that favor minimal regulation, voluntary approaches have been the main approach to targeted bay restoration. The conflict resolution mechanism for those efforts has been multi-state agreements, coordinated by the Chesapeake Bay Program and EPA. Through those documents, states have agreed to joint restoration goals, with varying levels of specificity, but little or no particular commitment or accountability (Cannon, 2006). After several failed agreements and new versions of agreements, the states and EPA finally acknowledged the need for a TMDL, a regulatory approach for bay restoration with specific commitments, accountability, and backstops.

Geographic Background

The Chesapeake Bay is a tidal estuary, with a watershed area of 64,000 square miles in the states of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, as well as Washington D.C. The bay’s coastline stretches 11,864 miles, with 50 major tributaries including the Susquehanna, Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers. The bay’s watershed has a land to water ratio of 14:1, the largest such ratio of any coastal waterbody in the world. As a result, land use greatly influences the quality of the bay’s waters (CBP, 2017).

Over 17 million people live in the watershed (CBF, 2017), with a diversity of jurisdictions and land uses. In particular, the watershed includes 1,650 local governments, four large metropolitan areas in Baltimore, Maryland, Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C (Ernst, 2003, 39-40). In addition, the watershed includes rural areas and productive agricultural areas, such as Lancaster County in Pennsylvania and the Delmarva Peninsula (Brull, 2006, 2), which includes most of Delaware and the Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia.

The bay is home to over 3,600 species of plants and animals, including 348 finfish species and 173 shellfish species (CBF, 2017). The blue crab is perhaps the most famous and critical of these species. In fact, the name Chesapeake Bay comes from the Algonquin description “great shellfish bay.” The bay’s fish population was once so great that early English settlers were said to have tried to catch them with a frying pan. Famous Baltimore report H.L. Mencken once referred to the Chesapeake as “the immense protein factory” (Brull, 2006, 3). Today, the bay continues to support a fishing industry worth $1 billion (Ernst, 2003, 11).

Water Quality Issues

Despite this historic productivity, by the 19th century, the Chesapeake was severely degraded. In the 1850s, Baltimore, for example, was the third largest city in the United States, yet it lacked a modern sewage treatment system until the 1900s. Sewage from Baltimore’s 170,000 residents went directly to its harbor on the Chesapeake, leading one person to describe it as “among the greatest stenches of the world” (Ernst, 2003, 3).

Similar conditions were present throughout the watershed into the 20th century. In the 1950’s, the Potomac River, near Washington, D.C., was described as “malodorous…with gas bubbles from sewage sludge over wide expanses of the river…and coliform content estimated as equivalent to dilution of 1 part raw sewage to as little as 10 parts clean water” (US EPA, 2000, 8-5). Such degraded environmental conditions eventually led to great public concern.

Cases like the Potomac River and Baltimore Harbor inspired passage of the US Clean Water Act in 1972, which improved the environmental conditions of the nation’s waterways. In fact, by the 1980s, the Potomac frequently met bacteria standards for boating and swimming, except during wet weather conditions (US EPA, 2000, 8-12). Following the passage of the Clean Water Act, there were further water quality improvements in nutrients, biological oxygen demand, suspended sediments, dissolved oxygen, and ecological indicators of the Potomac (US EPA, 2000).

However, the bay was not fully restored to its pre-industrial and pre-urbanization condition. As in many waterbodies of the United States, nonpoint source pollution, largely unaddressed by the Clean Water Act, except for a few voluntary programs, remained and remains a major issue for the bay (Brull, 2006). Excess nutrients from agriculture, stormwater, and sewage continue to be the primary environmental concerns. Recently, the bay’s water quality has been described as still “very poor” (Klopman, 2013, 1) (Cohen, 2017).

Stakeholders and Interests

States

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed includes parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland. Delaware comprises 1% of the land area, West Virginia 6%, New York 10%, Maryland 14%, Virginia 34%, Pennsylvania 35%, and Washington, D.C. 0.1% (Ernst, 2003, 173). With Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania covering a combined 84% of the watershed and including many large urban and agricultural areas, those states have the biggest influences on the bay. Different areas in the states have different impacts on and interests in the bay, based on land uses, economic factors, and local politics. Above all, given competing interests in the states, especially economic interests that challenge regulations, the goal of many states – and sectors within states – is “little action and more delay” (Steinzor and Jones, 2013, 55). With these competing interests, superficial environmental goals without strict commitments that would threaten any interests tends to be the preferred approach (Cannon, 2006, 3). One large reason for this reluctance is related to Derek Parfit’s so-called contributor’s dilemma described as follows:

======It can be true of each person that, if he helps, he will add to the sum of the benefits or ======expected benefits. But only a very small portion of the benefit he adds will come back to him. ======Since his share of what he adds will be very small, it may not repay his contribution. It may ======thus be better for each if he does not contribute. This can be so whatever others do. But it will ======be worse for each if others contribute. And if none contribute this will be worse for each than if ======all do (Colburn, 2016, 2, 22).

Such is the case in the Chesapeake where sate efforts to control pollution would benefit the watershed as a whole, but each state’s benefits might be comparatively small, especially for upstream states not on the bay (Dukes, 2015, 4). Further, if states don’t contribute to restoring the bay, there is no incentive for others to, but continued environmental degradation leaves all states worse off. Nevertheless, the voluntary approach has persisted, as it accommodates all states without defined commitments. In addition, the powerful political-economic interests of many sectors, especially agriculture, limit states’ abilities to enact strict approaches to restoration, even if they do prioritize restoration (Cannon, 2006, 3). Above all, most state officials do not want their state to look bad, so they further promote nonbinding approaches. That condition is particularly problematic because state officials lead the establishment of the Chesapeake Bay restoration approaches and goals. Such a lack of commitment to specific binding requirements tends to lead to lowest common denominator agreements, without accountability (Steinzor and Jones, 2013, 57-8).

Issues and Stakeholders

The bay’s environmental quality, especially water quality, is degraded. How should those conditions be restored?

There are competing interests among and within jurisdictions. Voluntary, interstate agreements have been the primary approach, with minimal results. Eventually, those agreements led to a total maximum daily load (TMDL).

Stakeholders

• States (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York)
• Washington, D.C.
• Federal Government (United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA))
• Chesapeake Bay Commission
• Chesapeake Bay Foundation
• Interest Groups

Analysis, Synthesis, and Insight

No ASI articles have been added yet for this case

Key Questions

Transboundary Water Issues: What kinds of water treaties or agreements between countries can provide sufficient structure and stability to ensure enforceability but also be flexible and adaptable given future uncertainties?

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