Maryland's congressional delegation intends to take another run at getting new federal legislation to strengthen the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, said this week, but he cautions that advocates may have to settle for smaller "short-term" gains in Congress instead of the controversial measure that died there last year.
Speaking to the Choose Clean Water conference in Washington on Tuesday night, Van Hollen, co-chairman of the congressional Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force , said, "We know it's going to be a big fight" and acknowledged that with Republicans seizing the majority in the House in the November elections, "the fight got a little harder."
The bay bill introduced by Maryland Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last summer. But despite compromises Cardin agreed to to win over Republican critics of expanding federal authority over water quality - changes that some environmentalists contended weakened the measure - farming lobbies continued to oppose it, and it never came to the Senate floor for a debate and vote. A similar House bill spearheaded by Baltimore Rep. Elijah E. Cummings never got out of committee.
Cardin has already said he intends to reintroduce the legislation and still hopes for its ultimate passage. But Van Hollen told activists at the clean-water conference that if resistance by Republicans and even some Democrats to last year's bay bill remains unabated, a "short-term" approach may be to push for some elements of the original measure, such as the portion meant to encourage farmers to participate in programs states are setting up to trade nutrient pollution credits.
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)