Spitting In The Ocean
Waiting for Columbia
By all accounts, there is a new plan in tow for Chesapeake Bay restoration. The relationships between the partners have changed. The federal government is assuming authority to impose sanctions if the states do not reduce nutrient pollution loads as allocated. The sanctions are not so well defined, but the plan posted at the Bay Program's website says that the federal authorities will be willing to impose binding regulations to ensure that restoration goals are met.
Big changes, and yet… The effort still involves all the same parties and it is still predicated on the same data from the same sources, run through pretty much the same models. The same "parochial interests" that have kept the States from achieving Bay restoration goals during the last 25 years of "partnership" are still out there working to ensure that their ox doesn't get gored this time either. There is talk of additional funding, but it is not clear how the federal government can be expected to sustainably pay the costs of additional staff that the states need but think they can't afford.
What we gain from this power adjustment among the Chesapeake Bay partners will depend on what happens next. Will the federal agencies truly bind states with outcomes that are difficult to measure and which depend on reporting by the states? Will the states cooperate with the federal agencies more fully than they have in the past? Will the federal agencies be better able than the states to focus on the basic problem of excess nutrient loads in the Bay and its tributaries? In particular, will they eschew the "feel-good" projects that states seem so enamored with and instead use available funds to go after substantial nutrient load reductions?
Time will tell. But we don't have to wait until we get near the endpoint to know whether or not we are likely to get there, under this new approach. There are indicators that we can use to tell us whether success should be realistically expected or not. Adaptability is one such. Will the revised restoration set-up ensure more rapid uptake of new ideas as these develop? That is, will the federal Bay restoration effort be more readily adaptable than state efforts have been?
Back in the late 1980s, Russ Brinsfield and Ken Staver at the University of Maryland's Wye Agricultural Experiment Station published research showing the effectiveness of cover crops for reducing seasonal nitrate leaching in coastal plain farm fields. For a time, this idea percolated through the state agencies. The cover crop BMP was adopted under the original tributary strategies as a major source of planned nitrogen load reductions. However, no significant funding was provided until the pfiestria hysteria struck in the late 1990s.
Although phosphorous was identified as the most important factor in the pfiesteria problem, public concern about the whole idea of making river water unsafe to come in contact with encouraged politicians and agency staff to start funding this good idea - cover crops - along with more targeted nutrient load reduction efforts by poultry producers. From 1998 through 2005, cover crops were funded at an average annual level of $2 million. It was not until 2006 that Maryland started providing cover crop funding sufficient to achieve reductions nearer the BMP's full potential.
So, if it took the State of Maryland almost 20 years to fully adopt cover crops, is that pretty quick or pretty slow? More importantly, is there any reason to imagine that the federal agencies will be able to adapt any faster, when another good idea comes down the pike?
We will have to wait until a good idea develops, and see how quickly the new Bay restoration effort adopts it. The standard that they have to beat may not seem that challenging (20 years?) but maybe that is as good as it gets. The federal agencies have a very long supply train, and turning it around may not be any easier than redirecting state agencies. We should start the clock as soon as we see a good idea that requires some government initiative to be implemented. Then we will see how long it takes them to adopt the necessary policies and practices to get it done.