The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the EPA’s “pollution diet” for Chesapeake Bay, which is intended to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff, reports the Baltimore Sun. “The decision could strengthen efforts to impose similar water quality improvement plans across the country,” said the Sun.
A federal district judge and U.S. appellate court upheld the “pollution diet” in earlier rulings. The American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farm group, and business groups including home builders said the plan being implemented by the six states in the watershed was unfair to landowners and abrogated state and local control over their land.
While environmental groups celebrated, farm groups said the limits on runoff would prevent use of fertilizer. “This could have a major impact on farming in the watershed,” said the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
The EPA targets on “total maximum daily load” of runoff into the bay “sets goals of reducing nitrogen runoff by 25 percent, phosphorus by 24 percent and sediment by 20 percent by 2025, with an interim goal of achieving 60 percent of the reductions by next year,” said the Sun. It cited an environmental group that says Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and West Virginia are on track to meet the interim target but Pennsylvania and New York State are not.
“The case was among hundreds the high court declined to hear as it moves forward as an eight-member body without Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Feb. 13,” said the Sun. “Rena Steinzor, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a contributor to the Center for Progressive Reform, said Scalia’s death could have played a role in the outcome.”