THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 4, 1996 TAG: 9603040038
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER
STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
It seemed like a simple bill, passing the House of Delegates last month by a landslide vote of 100-0.
But the measure that today goes before a Senate committee has since stirred as big a fuss as any environmental proposal this year, drawing criticism from the governor, business groups, sewage plant operators and local governments.
Known as the tributary strategy bill, sponsored by Del. W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., D-Warsaw, the measure aims to put Virginia on a regimented schedule for fulfilling a key commitment to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup: reducing nutrient pollution 40 percent by 2000.
Along with Maryland and Pennsylvania, Virginia was to have completed a river-by-river blueprint for cutting nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the Bay and improving water quality. That plan was due in 1993.
All three states missed the deadline. And environmentalists and state lawmakers have begun whispering that reducing nutrient pollution, a central part of the vaunted Bay program, may be in jeopardy.
Murphy's bill would require that the state complete nutrient plans for the Potomac River by 1997; the Rappahannock, York and James rivers by 1998; and the Eastern and Western Shore coastal basins, including the Elizabeth River, by 1999.
But since breezing through the House, the bill has run into significant opposition from influential lobbyists who fear it is ``a back-door effort to push another unfunded mandate on them,'' as one legislative aide described it.
Among those who have opposed the bill are the Virginia Manufacturers Association, the Virginia Farm Bureau and the Virginia Municipal League.
The biggest obstacle seems to focus on one word: ``implementation.'' Throughout the bill, Murphy states that restoration plans will be ``developed and implemented'' - wording that many business interests have interpreted as a government order to comply by a certain deadline.
Indeed, the administration of Gov. George F. Allen, which prepared an analysis of the bill, estimated the costs for implementing the plans on a strict timetable at nearly $1 billion.
Environmental groups have charged that the estimate was not only wildly inflated to rouse opposition but also missed the bill's point.
Jean Watts, a staff scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, compared the bill to building a house.
``It's like, if you agreed to build a house and it never happened and your wife says, `OK, a year from now, you're going to show me your plans.' But it doesn't matter if the plans are for a 48-room house with a swimming pool or a two-room shack,'' Watts said. ``We just want to make sure something happens.''
Since 1993, Pennsylvania has completed its tributary plan, although it covers only one river, the Susquehanna, which supplies much of the Bay's freshwater. The plan shows about a 35 percent nutrient reduction.
Maryland has started working on 10 tributary plans, and has pledged matching grants to local governments to upgrade sewage plants that discharge too much nitrogen into the Bay.
Virginia, meanwhile, released its first draft plan this winter, for the Potomac River. It has come under harsh criticism from environmental groups and local governments for a lack of funding and state leadership. The plan calls for local governments and business interests along the Potomac to take the lead in devising strategies and finding money for improvements.
``Local government representatives have raised serious doubts that local governments are willing to pay millions of dollars of sewage treatment plant upgrades to meet state commitments to reduce nutrients,'' wrote Del. Robert S. Bloxom, an Eastern Shore Republican, who chairs the Virginia delegation to the Chesapeake Bay Partnership Council.
Bloxom wrote the letter on Jan. 12 to Becky Norton Dunlop, state secretary of natural resources, to express the council's concerns that Virginia is lagging in its cleanup efforts.
Dunlop responded that the Allen administration was the first to submit a plan and that Virginia still is discussing additional measures. Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder was the only other governor who could have responded between the time the Chesapeake Bay Agreements were signed in 1987 and the deadline for plans in 1993.
Michael McKenna, director of policy and planning for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said he hoped that opposition to the Murphy bill could be settled before today.
``This has been one of the more closely watched bills,'' McKenna said.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE BAY GENERAL ASSEMBLY POLLUTION by CNB