A group of Bay scientists, activists, former governors and other policy makers plans to stage an amphibious landing this morning in Annapolis to press for stronger cleanup efforts than the Chesapeake restoration's current leaders have embraced so far.
The "save the bay" boat flotilla expected to tie up at City Dock comes on the eve of a meeting Thursday in Baltimore of restoration leaders, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. Officials from Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Delaware, New York and West Virginia also are expected to show up for the annual gathering of the Bay Program's "executive council," which this year is to take place at the Living Classrooms Foundation campus in the Inner Harbor. (Good location - the only tributary of the Chesapeake that received an utterly failing "F" in the University of Maryland's latest annual report card on the bay's health.)
The Annapolis rally is the latest effort of the coalition of more than 50 bay "leaders" to press for more radical cleanup efforts than the federal and state governments have signed onto thus far, including more regulation of farming, retrofitting useless urban and suburban storm-water controls, and even curbing residential lawn fertilizing. They first came out in late 2008 with a call for the restoration effort to abandon its longstanding reliance on voluntary, cooperative measures, which they faulted for the serial failure over the last 25 years to achieve cleanup goals.
Since then, the state officials have pledged greater effort and accountability, and the Obama administration has vowed greater federal leadership, releasing its restoration strategy last month - an ambitious plan, though well short of the actions recommended by this group. Thursday will be the first chance to hear exactly how much progress has been made toward the short-term cleanup "milestones" officials had set for themselves last year, to be reached by the end of 2011. They'll lunch at Living Classrooms, then step outside to meet with some students and then make public statements and answer questions.
(AP Photo)