Chesapeake Bay TMDL Resources

There has been a great deal of discussion about the Bay TMDL and what it means for the Eastern Shore.  Unfortunately it seems that a great deal of this discussion is driven by misinformation and suspicion of regulations in general. 

If you are interested in learning more about the Bay TMDL, below you will find some links to PDFs and websites that contain a great deal of information about the process and the need for a comprehensive approach to reducing the amount of pollution we dump in to the Bay every day.

The EPA’s Bay TMDL home page can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/chesapeakebaytmdl/

It contains a lot of information, and I’d suggest checking out the following two links from their page in particular.

How does it work? Ensuring results - http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/tmdl/ChesapeakeBay/EnsuringResults.html

& Fact Sheets & Key Documents - http://www.epa.gov/reg3wapd/tmdl/ChesapeakeBay/ResourceLibrary.html#keydocs

In particular you may want to look at the Virginia Planning Targets, the Our Waters Our Towns document, and the Driving Actions to Clean Local Waters Fact Sheet.

You can see the State’s TMDL page here: http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/vabaytmdl/index.shtml

It should be noted that the current administration seems to favor less stringent guidelines, nutrient trading (allowing folks to pollute one creek if they pay someone else to clean up another) and other policies that do not fall in line with the EPA’s vision of the TMDL.  That being said, you will still see that their policies include making significant strides toward cleaning up the Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay Program has a good article about the establishment of the TMDL here: http://www.chesapeakebay.net/news_finaltmdl.aspx?menuitem=55465 with links to a couple of other pieces they have put together.

For non-governmental sources, you can see what the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has to say about the Bay TMDL here: http://cbf.org/page.aspx?pid=2518, or  a history of the process that brought us to where we are today here: http://cbf.org/page.aspx?pid=2527 (If you read our ad in the Eastern Shore News you saw a similar timeline.)

There are a ton of other resources out there on the internet, and you can find opinions from people who think that we should get to work today to clean the Bay as well as those who believe that we should wait a few more years, keep polluting, and study the issue some more.   There is nobody who will tell you that they have a plan to stop Bay pollution at no cost, or that it will be easy.  This is a difficult job and there’s no way around it.  At some point we will have to step up and take responsibility for our actions.  I guess the question we have to ask is “are we ready to commit to a clean Chesapeake Bay, or do we think we can wait a while and let the next generation clean up the mess?”