Part Two of Two
As many as a dozen federal regulatory agencies have some responsibility for the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Six states and the District of Columbia are responsible for the health of the Bay’s 64,000 sq. mi. watershed. I assume that none of the responsible bureaucracies are doing their job very well or one-third of the Bay would not have been declared "dead" in July of this year.
The usual suspects-light rainfall and agricultural runoff-were indicted in press releases. The EPA trumpeted that "new limits" agreed to by the states would further reduce nitrogen and phosphorous discharges in an effort to reduce dead zones. Then it was back to business as usual.
When you rub a dog’s nose in his own mess, he gets the message. When it comes to government, however, the lesson fails. In fact, the opposite happens. Regulators always respond with puppy dog faces; that they have neither the funds nor the manpower to fulfill their mandate. Whimpering gets them off the leash for another budget year.
Eventually, this do-nothing attitude will change because the people who draw their drinking water from the Potomac will begin to get jittery about intersex fish. As it is now, a dead crow in the Maryland suburbs creates hysteria about West Nile virus. Imagine the panic if a human health connection is made to endocrine-disrupting compounds in drinking water.
In a worst-case scenario, the Potomac watershed in eastern West Virginia is at risk of either being condemned in the public interest or declared a federal territory. Or perhaps, the federal courts would impose some form of environmental easement to accomplish the same. My belief that this could happen sounds far-fetched-hyperbole if you will. But in light of the recent Supreme Court decision on eminent domain, the rules of logic have changed.
The March 2002 issue of California Law Review contains the 100-page article "Is West Virginia Unconstitutional?" The last two sentences in the article read: "West Virginians may rest secure in the knowledge that their State is not unconstitutional. Probably."
If your lawyer wrote you a 100-page memo regarding your own legitimacy, how would you feel if he ended it by saying, "Probably."?
The authors also asked themselves, "Why would anyone care?…Given that…West Virginia is not…going to be absorbed back into old Virginia…" In other words, without a plaintiff with standing, nobody is going to force the issue of West Virginia’s statehood in court. I would like to see this article updated in light of Kelo vs. City of New London. For it appears to this non-lawyer that either the federal government or the municipal water districts of metropolitan Washington, DC have a unique opportunity to do exactly what New York City did to the Catskills--condemn a faraway watershed to provide drinking water.
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe.
West Virginia does have a window of opportunity to get out in front on the issue of intersex fish. But our attitude and response must be positive and inquisitive rather than the predictable role of regulators satisfied with assessing penalties and tinkering with discharge limits.
West Virginia is developing a promising biometrics industry through research and development. Thus, why can’t we use the R&D model to move to the forefront on stream and river research? The Potomac, more than any other river, ought to be a powerful magnet for federal research grants for our universities.
Thomas Jefferson was so inspired when he visited Harper’s Ferry that he wrote, "The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature." This is the same inspiration that we must embrace if we intend to clean up the river. But instead, we find ourselves living in an age when vandals have painted the very rock upon which Jefferson dipped his quill pen.
The Potomac River is under attack.
Dr. Robert E. Putz, Founder of the Freshwater Institute at Shepherdstown, WV contributed to this article.
