Federal Office Overstates Progress, Minimizes Threats, Report Says

A Government Accountability Office review found that the Chesapeake Bay Program Office — an arm of the Environmental Protection Agency — has no coordinated, comprehensive plan for cutting pollution in the bay, even after nearly $6 billion in state and federal money has been devoted to the effort in the past decade.
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The criticism comes amid growing angst among policymakers and the public that an agreement reached five years ago for cleaning the bay by 2010 could fail without a big political and financial boost. In the agreement, known as Chesapeake 2000, the region’s political and environmental leaders proposed cutting the amount of major pollutants that enter the bay nearly in half over a decade.
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At a time when the Bush administration has recommended cuts in funding for such key bay cleanup proposals as sewage treatment plant upgrades, the problems at the Chesapeake Bay Program Office “are consistent with those policy choices,” said Roy Hoagland, vice president for environmental protection and restoration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a private nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.

The findings “reflect the fact that absent an increase in political will and a significant increase in funding,” Chesapeake 2000 goals won’t be met, he said. “We have the science and the solutions. All we need is the implementation and the dollars.”

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