Comment Period Opens for WIP III Clean-up Plan

On Friday, April 5th 2019 the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), released the Draft Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP III) for meeting the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load for public review and comment. The comment period is now open and will end June 7, 2019. The WIP III in final form is due to the U.S. EPA on August 9th. The WIP III will need to account for population growth in our region and climate change in our plans to meet the EPA mandated sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus targets. This will result in the WIP III having significant impact on our personal costs to maintain our homes and gardens, land use rights, costs for property taxes, water and sewer, and the development of our communities.

Virginia achieved the 2017 reduction targets for nitrogen and phosphorus under the Phase I and Phase II WIPs through two major programs: expansion and improvements in our waste water treatment plants and a successful program to install exclusion fencing for agricultural livestock especially on large agricultural operations. Progress having individuals and small property owners adopt “best management practices” for their lawns, septic and small agricultural properties was sporadic. Yet, to meet the goals set for the Commonwealth by the U.S. EPA, our share of restoring the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries, will require significant action by all stakeholders- our state and local governments utilizing smart planning, wastewater utilities like AlexRenew resolving the combined sewer problem in Alexandria (at a cost of almost half a billion dollars to rate payers), farmers and the agriculture and forestry industries, landowners and homeowners, lawn care companies, the general public.

The WIP III Draft is 180 pages long. John Kennedy from the DEQ’s Office of Ecology came to the April 12th meeting of the Potomac Watershed Roundtable to share with the group some highlights from the WIP. You might want to take a look at the entire report and see how it is going to impact your life and your property rights. The WIP III Draft can be found at this link.
The entire Chesapeake Bay watershed is under a federal mandate to reduce sediment and fertilizer runoff into the bay in order to improve water quality. Excess nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment from waste water treatment plants, agriculture, urban and suburban runoff, pet waste, septic systems, air pollution and other sources have impaired the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal waters. These pollutants cause algae blooms that consume oxygen and create dead zones where fish and shellfish cannot survive, block sunlight that is needed for underwater grasses, and smother aquatic life on the bottom.

The EPA set a limit for release of nutrients into the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This limit is called a TMDL and under their recently revised model is of 201,413,934 pounds of nitrogen, 14,174,003 pounds of phosphorus and 6.45 billion pounds of sediment per year which was about 25% reduction in nitrogen, 24% reduction in phosphorus and 20 % reduction in sediment from the 2011 levels. The pollution limits were then partitioned to the various states and river basins based on the Chesapeake Bay computer modeling tools and monitoring data. Each year, Virginia, as well as the other Bay jurisdictions, reports information about implemented practices to the EPA, which takes the information and runs it through the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Model. The results estimate the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that would make it to the Bay under average conditions. By comparing the model results across a period of time, EPA can see the expected collective impact of our actions under the WIP III; and will use it to evaluate our WIP III.

Pollution can be from either a point source or a non-point source. Point source pollution is from an identifiable source, such as a waste water treatment plant. Non-point source pollution is more diffuse and harder to track, as runoff from lawns, farmlands and paved surfaces carry pollutants into streams draining to the Chesapeake Bay. Even seemingly harmless activities, such as washing your car, or not cleaning up your dog’s waste in your yard can contribute to nutrient pollution. A growing human population and increased development adds stress to forests and natural areas, which function as filtration and surface and groundwater recharge areas. Within my lifetime the population in the Washington Metropolitan area has more than doubled to 18.2 million. We and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed are under a federal mandate to reduce sediment and fertilizer runoff into the bay in order to improve water quality.

The new WIP III targets to a large extent the non-point source pollution. These are  the hundreds of small reductions in sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus released from our homes that each of us will have to make and keep making every years as well as reductions from our communities, schools, public buildings, parks, roads that will all need local action. Some of the programs and areas targeted in the WIP II In our urban/ suburban -developed sector include:

• Better storm water management especially from the unregulated urbanized lands.
• Stream and shoreline restorations on both private and public lands. Homeowners will need to restore the streambanks and shoreline on their properties.
• Increase DEQ’s Stormwater Local Assistance Fund (SLAF);
• Expand use of the Virginia Conservation Assistance Program (VCAP) to increase adoption of urban/ suburban best management practices to private property owners;
• Expand the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act to cover all the area east of highway 95;
• Enhance promotion of living shoreline techniques to address shoreline erosion; grass and forest buffers need to increase significantly
• Expand septic pump out and other maintenance programs statewide-requiring homeowners to pump their tanks more frequently, improve their septic systems and verifying these actions. The nitrogen load from the onsite sector continues to rise with new construction in area that do not have sewer impacting groundwater and baseflow in rivers and streams.
• The Soil and Water Conservation Districts will have to expand the reach of their programs to properties that have horses even those for recreational use. These will have to include horse pasture management; manure management, and promoting adequate land area for horses.

To increase the reductions from farmers the state Cost Share Program needs to be modified to:

• Remove or increase annual participant caps for cost share
• Bundle BMPs into single cost share contracts to increase reporting of BMPs;
• Increase maximum tax credits for BMPs and conservation equipment;
• Modify practice specifications for cover crops, animal waste and stream protection, forest buffers and nutrient management; and
• Move towards requiring nutrient management plans for all crop lands.