Chesapeake Bay Foundation files suit to force EPA to clean up bay
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group, filed a lawsuit today to require the federal Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the bay.
The EPA and bay states first agreed in 1983 to clean the polluted estuary.
"CBF believes that after 25 years of failed policies the only way to ensure that EPA does its job is to have a court order requiring it," the bay group's president, William C. Baker, said in a statement.
The group filed the suit in federal court in Washington. Others joining in the suit include watermen in Virginia and Maryland.
Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water, responded in a statement: "EPA wants a cleaner and healthier Bay and is committed to holding polluters accountable . . . That means using innovative and sustainable tools and focusing on environmental cooperation, not just legal confrontation."
-- Rex Springston
Reader Reactions
All they can do is try to get things cleaned up. I hope it helps. Our Blue Crabs are becoming a failure story. Here is a link to the west coast’s Dungeness Crabs success story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98788991
Hmmm, I wonder what the difference of success vs failure is? If we think real hard, maybe we can figure out the difference :p
While the intentions of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are laudable, the lawsuit that was filed seems to me to be ill-conceived. See, http://taberlaw.wordpress.com for a legal analysis of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s lawsuit. Unfortunately, The Clean Water Act simply does not require the EPA Administrator to meet the goals set in the Chesapeake Agreements.
Should the EPA Administrator take action to improve the water quality in Chesapeake Bay? Yes! Will this lawsuit succeed in doing that? Probably not.
Well, action is good. Better late than never? Maybe not. Is this the first time CBF has thought to file a lawsuit against the EPA? If so, why did it take 25 years? The Bay has been polluted for 25 years and now the economic usefulness of it is seriously diminishing. How about some pro-active activism instead of re-active activism? Watermen in Virginia wouldn’t be losing their livelihood if the lawsuit had been filed sooner? What’s the history of CBF’s legal activism to save the Bay?
Advertisement