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Chesapeake Bay Compliance and Enforcement Strategy
provide critical habitat for hundreds of species of fish, birds, mammals and invertebrates.Chesapeake Bay Executive Order
On May 12, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order recognizing the Chesapeake Bay as a national treasure and calling on the federal government to lead a renewed effort to restore and protect the nation’s largest estuary and its watershed.
The Order established a Federal Leadership Committee to oversee the development and coordination of reporting, data management and other activities by agencies involved in Bay restoration. The committee includes the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, and Transportation, and is chaired by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Chesapeake Bay is North American’s largest and most biologically diverse estuary, home to more than 3,700 species of plants and animals. It is about 200 miles long, contains more than 11,000 miles of tidal shoreline, and is fed by 100,000 creeks, streams and rivers. The watershed spreads over 64,000 square miles and includes parts of six states – Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia – and all of the District of Columbia. As of 2007, approximately 17 million people lived within the Bay watershed. The Bay provides significant economic and recreational benefits, estimated to exceed $33 billion annually, to the watershed’s population.
The Bay’s waters are threatened by pollution from a variety of sources. In order to address non-compliance with federal environmental laws and associated environmental impacts to this watershed, EPA has developed a draft Chesapeake Bay Compliance and Enforcement Strategy (PDF) (13 pp, 320K About PDF). The draft Strategy guides the use of EPA’s compliance and enforcement tools to target sources of pollution impairing the Bay.
Chesapeake Bay Strategy
The draft Strategy is a multi-year, multi-state, multi-media strategy that addresses violations of federal environmental laws resulting in nutrient and sediment pollution in the Bay. The Strategy identifies industrial, municipal, and agricultural sources releasing significant amounts of nutrients, sediments and other pollutants in excess of the amounts allowed by the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and other applicable environmental laws.
The draft Strategy identifies nutrient and sediment impaired watersheds, as well as significant regulated sources discharging these pollutants and other pollutants. Regulated sources in non-compliance that are contributing to a watershed’s impairment will be systematically addressed in accordance with the draft Strategy.
The draft Strategy targets key regulated business sectors that, when in non-compliance with current applicable environmental regulations, contribute significant amounts of nutrients, sediment and other pollutants into the Bay’s impaired watersheds. The key regulated sectors are:
- Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs);
- Municipal and Industrial wastewater facilities;
- Storm Water National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) point sources, including Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4s) and stormwater discharges from construction sites and other regulated industrial facilities; and,
- Air deposition sources of nitrogen regulated under the Clean Air Act, including power plants.
EPA addresses several of these business sectors under the National Enforcement Priorities program. National Enforcement Priorities focus on the most widespread types of violations that also pose the most substantive health and environmental risks.
In addition, the draft Strategy identifies appropriate opportunities for compliance and enforcement activities related to the Clean Water Act Section 404 program, which regulates dredge and fill operations, as well as compliance and enforcement opportunities related to federal facilities, and Superfund sites, including remedial action and removal sites, and RCRA corrective action facilities.
Finally, the draft Strategy will examine opportunities for the use of imminent and substantial endangerment authorities to address significant pollution problems affecting the Bay.