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Chesapeake "Clean Water Blueprint" Passes Court Test

Earlier this week, The Environmental Protection Agency and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation celebrated a federal appeals court decision to uphold the legality of the CBF’s multistate cleanup effort. WMRA’s Kara Lofton reports on the ruling’s effect on Virginia.

For years since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the Chesapeake Bay failed to meet the standards necessary for it to be removed from the national “impaired waters” list.

So in 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency created the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, which was designed to be a joint federal/state effort to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution in the Bay by 20-25% by the year 2025. All six Bay states (including Virginia) and the District of Columbia ratified the blueprint and produced their own plans for cleanup.

But shortly after the blueprint was established, the American Farm Bureau Federation and several other groups sued the EPA for overstepping the boundaries established for the agency by the Clean Water Act. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation joined the EPA as a defendant.

This week a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the EPA, which means that clean up efforts will continue in all six Bay states and the District of Columbia. Virginia is currently on track to meet 2017 progress reduction goals. This is in large part due to the Commonwealth’s extensive subsidy programs available to help farmers fence their cattle away from streams and tributaries.

An elated Chesapeake Bay Foundation president William Baker spoke to the press on Monday via a phone conference.

BAKER: Bottom line: this is a great day for clean water. And it’s a great day for all 17 million people who live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed who have demonstrated over and over that clean water should be a right not a luxury that we have to fight for.

The Farm Bureau has 90 days to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kara Lofton is a photojournalist based in Harrisonburg, VA. She is a 2014 graduate of Eastern Mennonite University and has been published by EMU, Sojourners Magazine, and The Mennonite. Her reporting for WMRA is her radio debut.