Chesapeake Bay conservation groups release analysis of eight milestones Virginia set for itself

A network of conservation groups across the multiple states that the Chesapeake Bay Watershed traverses, the Choose Clean Water Coalition, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, one of the oldest and most respected Chesapeake Bay conservation groups, released  an analysis on Monday which pointed to successes and failures in the continuing effort to clean the bay.

The analysis reviewed eight goals and concluded that Virginia is meeting five of these goals including: improving sewage treatment plants, restoring urban streams, planting trees along streams, fencing cattle out of streams, and building traditional stormwater ponds.

However, the analysis also concluded that Virginia is lagging in the following goals: establishing buffers of grass along streams adjacent to farms (the buffers act as a barrier to runoff); using environmentally friendly agricultural practices like no-till farming (which limits fertilizer and soil runoff); and investing in modern stormwater practices like pavement and small wetlands that rain can seep through.

Rather than acknowledging that Virginia MAY be lagging in some of the interim goals (also called “milestones”) that it agreed to in 2009 as part of a short-term assessment of bay restoration efforts, the deputy Virginia secretary of natural resources for bay restoration, Anthony Moore, sounded a defensive response to the analysis.

In response, Moore stated that the analysis “represents a midterm review of a few chosen milestones instead of a full review of the milestones for this two-year period.” Moore went on, “Virginia is committed to improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay for future generations to cherish. ... And we are seeing huge improvements.”

I’m not certain how “huge improvements” can be measured, but neither of the conservation groups argued that Virginia has not made some improvements in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. What the analysis did reveal is that there is still a ways to go before all of Virginia’s 42 milestones can be reached. No one expected otherwise at this early stage, but it’s important to assess just where Virginia stands in meeting its Chesapeake Bay restoration milestones.

Virginia’s political leaders, in other words, must stop fretting over the political victories that can be claimed by reaching the commonwealth’s milestones and worry first and foremost about taking the steps necessary to meet every milestone the state set for itself.