Bay bill would track activities

Waterman Ken Smith of Heathsville was blunt yesterday about the state of the Chesapeake Bay.

"I've got a dirty workplace," said Smith, president of the Virginia State Waterman's Association.

He was at the General Assembly to support a bill by U.S. Rep. Robert J. Wittman, R-1st, that is designed to bring better accounting and more flexible management to efforts to restore the bay.

Wittman, an environmental scientist who was elected to Congress in 2007, introduced the bill Friday.

"We are at a tipping point," Wittman said at a news conference. "We risk losing the bay if we don't do something about the pollution."

He estimated that about $6 billion has been spent in trying to clean up the bay and said there is little to show for it.

The Wittman bill would create a so-called "crosscut" budget that would allow Chesapeake Bay restorers to track the activities of multiple agencies involved in the cleanup. Now, they all have their own budgets, he said.

It would allow 10 federal agencies, six states and thousands of localities to monitor the restorative efforts, he said. The bay currently lacks a single coherent reporting system, he added.

Wittman was joined by state legislators from areas bordering the bay, watermen, representatives of Ducks Unlimited, and other advocates of cleaning up the bay.

Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or .