Va. Rep. Goodlatte Aims to Quash Bay Cleanup
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus)
As has been rumored for many months—yesterday Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would undercut the Clean Water Act and essentially quash the multi-state Chesapeake Bay “TMDL” pollution diet cleanup process. This would be devastating, as many Bay scientists and advocates are hopeful that the TMDL and each state’s Watershed Implementation Plans could finally provide a solution to making our waters, and the Bay, fishable and swimmable again. We’ll be watching this closely and, as CBF’s Doug Siglin says, strongly urge all members of Congress to “steer well clear” of this bad legislation.
If you disagree with this harmful legislation, tell Rep. Goodlatte how you feel by leaving him a message on his Facebook page, or
sending him a Tweet, to @repgoodlatte.
Let him know how you feel.
Hopeful scientists is not very encouraging. I am a scientist and I am quite confident that the same results can be achieved at a much cheaper cost. The States have rushed through the WIP Process with little stakeholder input (other than comments on already written plans)and have not looked closely enough at the cost per pound reductions achieved through trading and offsets.
The WIPS are prescriptive and will be expensive.
We can sequester and/or remove N and P, but we need to look at the system from a scientific standpoint, look at mass balance equations and find the best solutions not just any solution and then we need to make sure it is working.
We can’t keep spending billions of dollars and hope it will work.