States and advocacy organizations, individuals, and a county filed two separate lawsuits on Thursday in the District of Columbia District Court against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its administrators claiming that the organizations did not take sufficient steps to keep the Chesapeake Bay free from pollution and enforce the Chesapeake Bay Agreement.
Andrew Wheeler in his capacity as administrator of the EPA and Cosmo Servidio as regional administrator of the EPA for the Mid-Atlantic region were listed as defendants in the lawsuit filed by Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
The state’s complaint said it is the EPA’s duty to ensure that all states which signed the Chesapeake Bay Agreement develop and implement plans to reach certain pollution goals. They brought the lawsuit based on the Administrative Procedure Act claiming that the EPA’s “arbitrary and capricious approval” of plans submitted by New York and Pennsylvania was a breach of its duties.
Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia sent the EPA a notice of intent to sue in May claiming that the organization did not keep Pennsylvania and New York accountable to plans created to reduce the bay’s pollution levels agreed to by themselves and other states near the Chesapeake Bay.
The lawsuit claimed the EPA is not adequately enforcing the Clean Water Act (CWA) because it approved New York and Pennsylvania’s proposals for Total Daily Maximum Load (TDML) limits for pollutants entering the bay. Under the CWA, the EPA should establish a TDML for the waterbody if it finds the proposals insufficient. They also claim the EPA has not adequately enforced other aspects of the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, and have not required action from some states while the plaintiffs have made financial and policy decisions to meet their commitments to reach specific water quality goals by 2025.
The complaint stated “for decades, pollution in the form of excess nutrients and sediment entering the Bay from tributaries severely degraded the Bay and surrounding ecosystem,” it claims this created murky water, algae blooms, and “dangerously low oxygen levels for aquatic life.”
The two administrators and the EPA are named in the other lawsuit, on behalf of the United States of America, as defendants. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, represented by Jon A. Mueller with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, include the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc.; Maryland Watermen’s Association, Inc.; Anne Arundel County, Maryland; and farm operators Robert Whitescarver and Jeanne Hoffman.
The lawsuit alleged that the EPA and its administrators did not perform “obligatory duties” and that the failure to comply with the Chesapeake Bay Agreements and the CWA will further harm the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality. They claim the current decreased water quality is detrimental to “the cultural, economic, and quality of life interests of all Chesapeake Bay watermen and their families,” and harms aesthetic, educational, and recreational interests of the plaintiffs and those associated with them.
