A Penny For Your Thoughts

As the 2010 deadline for de-listing the Chesapeake Bay from the nation’s impaired waters list approaches, more attention is being focused on what will have to be done to achieve that goal. Earlier this month, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich announced creation of a Watershed Restoration Fund to upgrade that state’s 66 largest wastewater treatment plants to achieve state-of-the-art nutrient removal. Nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, are byproducts of the sewage treatment process, and affect Bay water quality. These nutrients also are in untreated run-off, called non-point source pollution, but Governor Ehrlich’s fund addresses only the sewage treatment plants, or point sources. (Point sources are those that can be identified, such as a particular plant or location; non-point sources are those that cannot be attributed to a specific location, such as agricultural or stormwater run-off.)

Governor Ehrlich’s effort would be financed by a so-called “flush tax” of $2.50 per household per month. Businesses would be assessed on the amount of wastewater they generate each day, and public/government buildings would be assessed as well. The funds collected would support state revenue bonds of up to $1 billion needed to complete the necessary upgrades. In a presentation last Friday to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s Chesapeake Bay Policy Committee, spokesmen for the Governor were careful to call the proposed fee an “environmental surcharge” rather than a tax. They also said the state would pay the full costs of the upgrades. Typically, upgrades are funded by a combination of public funds and private dollars, usually from ratepayers.

An important, and probably difficult to reach, goal of the Maryland plan is to upgrade to “enhanced nutrient removal” (ENR) or 3 mg per liter. Many wastewater treatment plants on the Virginia side of the Potomac River upgraded to “biological nutrient removal” (BNR), or 8 mg per liter, in the mid-1980s, when the original Chesapeake Bay Agreement called for a 4 percent reduction of nitrogen. Currently, Virginia is proposing a design standard of 5 mg per liter, expensive to reach but probably achievable. The ENR proposal of 3 mg per liter is near the limits of the current technology, and very expensive, thus the surcharge proposal by Governor Ehrlich.

One of the complicating factors in the proposal is the Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant on the District of Columbia side of the Potomac River, just north of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Although Blue Plains is located in Washington, its huge capacity is shared by jurisdictions in both Maryland and Virginia, including Fairfax County. Blue Plains is one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in the eastern United States, and one of the plants most in need of upgrading. The question is, who will pay for the expensive Blue Plains upgrade? Maryland’s surcharge may take care of the Maryland share of the work, but funding still will be needed for the Virginia and District of Columbia shares.

It will be interesting to see how Governor Ehrlich’s bill fares in the Maryland General Assembly. The cost for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay is high, $19 billion or so at the last count, but the cost for not cleaning it up may be even higher.