EPA meetings target Chesapeake Bay pollution
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The EPA is seeking input from residents in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to determine future actions to clean up the region waterways. |
November 2, 2009 ·
In the next few years the US Environmental Protection Agency will mandate what states, including West Virginia, must do to achieve a cleaner Chesapeake Bay now that 25 years of voluntary efforts have failed.
Between now and Christmas
the EPA will host 15 meetings in six states to
discuss what needs to be done to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
“What we’re doing is
reaching out to the 17 million people that live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed
to start to both explain and invite them to participate in essentially
developing a large nutrient and sediment pollution diet for the Chesapeake Bay
and its rivers,” Rich Batuik, EPA Associate Director for Science, said.
The first two meetings take
place this week in West
Virginia and
will help EPA create a written plan for cleaning the Bay and determine how much
each state must do to help with that effort.
Alana Hartman is the Potomac
Basic coordinator for the West Virginia Department of Environmental
Protection.
“We may find that we just
need to do better with say voluntary fixing of septic tanks,” Alana Hartman,
West Virginia Department of Environment Protection Potomac Basin coordinator,
said.
“Or it may be that a
recommendation would come out of it that each county should seriously consider
protecting buffer zones along creeks of a certain size.”
Hartman said DEP wasn’t able
to make those kinds of strong recommendations before but this new document may allow
the agency to do that.
The first meeting takes
place Wednesday from 6-8 p.m. at the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center in Martinsburg and will include a webinar to allow
people who can’t attend to participate.
A second meeting is
scheduled on Thursday from 6-8 p.m. in Moorefield.