I sure wish Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania had been able to get something done -- anything -- to show that we can turn around the slow suffocating death of our Chesapeake Bay. If we had made any real progress at all in the last 25 years, we would now be able to build on that success in ways that protect our local constituencies (i.e. farmers, citizens, municipalities, and even developers).
Instead, we now have the Federal government stepping in like a bull in a china shop. I can hear the complaining already: Its socialism! It's fascism! It's a conspiracy! It's __(insert ignorant, ugly and false claim here)______!
I don't care what your politics, no one wants the Feds coming in and splitting our baby in half.
None of this is new -- we saw it coming a long time ago. In fact, did you know it was President Reagan who essentially created the Chesapeake Bay Program with funds committed in his State of the Union address in 1984?
We saw how that worked out -- no one wanted to make any hard decisions. Every constituency protected itself and waited. Farmers lost ground every step of the way because their run-off was an easy and obvious target and they were busy trying to justify not selling their land and retiring semi-rich to somewhere else. Developers made a bundle of cash. People -- native and immigrant -- were able to buy plenty of cheap houses for cheap. Municipalities collected more and more taxes (which allowed them to defer other hard choices which are showing up now). The States -- also flush with tax income -- pointed fat fingers at each other.
The Bay kept dying.
I hate that we can now look forward to the Environmental Protection Agency deciding who does what and when. I hate it. But I hate the death of the Chesapeake Bay more.
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