Farmers, EPA clash over Chesapeake Bay regulations

Lloyd McPherson bought his farm in the Shenandoah Valley, along the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay, more than 20 years ago. Back then, the Chesapeake was far from sight and mind. But now, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launches a new effort to clean up the bay, Mr. McPherson and his farming neighbors find themselves swept up in the largest and most ambitious water-restoration project ever attempted in the United States. In late December, the EPA set limits for nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment pollution in each of the bay's major tributary rivers. These limits are part of a TMDL, or total maximum daily load – a regulatory mechanism created by the Clean Water Act. While thousands of TMDLs have been created over the past several decades, none has been attempted on such an enormous scale. The bay's 64,000-square-mile watershed stretches across parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Del­a­ware, Virginia, and West Virginia, plus Wash­ington, D.C. It is home to almost 17 million people, as well as nearly 500 large public and industrial waste-water treatment plants. "This isn't your mother's TMDL," says Roy Hoagland, the Chesa­peake Bay Foundation's vice president for environmental protection and restoration. "This is something significantly different in the arena of restoration of waters in this nation." But for many farmers, the TMDL is hardly the best thing since the combine. The EPA has identified the watershed's nearly 88,000 farms as the largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution entering the bay. Many in the agricultural industry fear that the cost of increased pollution controls will place onerous financial burdens on them. So on Jan. 10, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau filed suit in federal court to block the TMDL. "We're very concerned that ... [the TMDL is] going to push agriculture out of the watershed," says Don Parrish, AFBF senior director of regulatory relations...more