Legal Niches

EPA Announces Settlement of Chesapeake Bay Lawsuit

By Jim Chen at al.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it reached settlement with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, four former Maryland, Virginia and Washington,D.C. elected officials, and organizations representing watermen and sports fishermen in resolving a lawsuit filed in January 2009 claiming that EPA had failed to take adequate measures to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay. The lawsuit, Fowler v. EPA, is pending in federal district court for the District of Columbia.

The settlement agreement, negotiated with groups and individuals with a long history of advocating protection and restoration of the bay, tracks much of the comprehensive suite of strong regulatory and other actions that EPA has initiated or pledged to take under the Obama administration to restore water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. These actions include establishing the stringent Chesapeake Bay total maximum daily load (TMDL), putting in place an effective implementation framework, expanding its review of Chesapeake Bay watershed permits, and initiating rulemaking for new regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations and urban and suburban stormwater. The agreement also includes a commitment to establish a publicly accessible tracking and accounting system to monitor progress in reducing pollution through the TMDL and two-year milestones.

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Full post as published by Agricultural Law on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).