Chester River Association Executive Director Heather Forsyth said she feels more secure that local cleanup efforts for the Chester River will not be stymied by a coalition of counties that have mounted a challenge to the state’s federally mandated Bay cleanup plan.
The TMDL Coalition is challenging the state’s Watershed Implementation Plan on the grounds it does not adequately address the volume of sediment and nutrient pollution flowing through Conowingo Dam from the Susquehanna River.
Forsyth said she received reassurances in a recent meeting with Funk & Bolton, the firm representing the coalition, that the focus of the coalition’s effort is to force a remedy at the Conowingo Dam, and not to delay implementation of local cleanup plans that require communities to reduce the Total Maximum Daily Load of nutrients into local waterways.
“We [originally] felt as if the effort was really going to…create a giant distraction from the TMDL and WIP processes, the blueprint for cleaning up the Bay,” Forsyth told Chestertown Council on Monday. “I have had some assurances from them that their efforts are really not to dismantle the blueprint, but that they are really just focusing hard on the Conowingo Dam.”
In the four minute video below, Forsyth explains the future relationship between conservation groups and the TMDL Coalition.
Kent recently joined the TMDL Coalition because of the Conowingo Dam’s history of adverse affects on the local watermen industry.
Maryland’s WIP plan requires the state to achieve nutrient reduction levels that comply with the Clean Water Act standards by 2025, and the costs will largely rest on local governments that will have to pay for implementation with new revenues.
The cleanup plan was required under the terms of a 2010 lawsuit that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation won against the EPA — requiring the agency to enforce the 1972 Clean Water Act.
Environmental groups originally thought the coalition’s motives were a distraction to delay the high costs of implementing local cleanup plans, but Forsyth now believes that local cleanup efforts, along with the action to force a remedy at Conowingo, could be “complimentary” in achieving pollution reduction goals for the Bay.
She said the coalition’s urgency to force a remedy is in part because the Conowingo’s operator, Exelon Corporation, is up for relicensing during 2013.
“If we are going to influence that licensing process, so that environmental controls will be part of the license, then the time to do that is now,” Forsyth said. “Once the license is issued, it’s almost impossible to go back after the fact and” and ask for environmental mitigation.
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