Chesapeake Bay in the Crosshairs as EPA Strips Federal Water Protections

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation on Thursday condemned the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) most recent sweeping deregulatory actions, calling them an existential threat to the Chesapeake Bay’s restoration and a blatant abandonment of environmental protections. The EPA’s latest moves, critics say, will eviscerate decades of progress and undermine efforts to combat climate change.

On Wednesday, the agency further revealed plans to redefine which wetlands and waterways fall under the Clean Water Act. The move could strip federal protections from critical wetlands, leaving them exposed to destruction. There are over one million acres of wetlands in Virginia, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at William & Mary, and the state has lost nearly 800,000 acres of wetlands since the pre-colonial era.

“This barrage of deregulatory declarations essentially removes the word ‘protection’ from the Environmental Protection Agency and undermines the federal-state effort to save the Bay,” said Hilary Harp Falk, the foundation’s president and CEO.

“Rolling back federal protections for wetlands and waterways removes accountability for water pollution crossing state lines while further jeopardizing restoration efforts.”

Calling it the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the changes in a series of press releases and public statements, framing them as a necessary shift to reduce regulatory burdens.

Among the 31 measures announced by the agency is a reassessment of the “social cost of carbon.” Zeldin criticized the previous administration’s use of this metric, arguing it was employed to “advance their climate agenda in a way that imposed major costs.”

The concept of the “social cost of carbon,” or SC-CO2, was first introduced by the EPA in 2010 under then-President Barack Obama. This metric is designed to quantify, in dollar terms, the long-term economic harm caused by carbon dioxide emissions each year.

Essentially, it estimates the financial impact of climate change, factoring in elements such as shifts in agricultural productivity, public health effects, property damage from increased flood risks, fluctuations in energy costs, and other related consequences.

Zeldin characterized the moves as an aggressive effort to dismantle what he called “climate change religion.”

In a statement on the EPA’s website, he wrote, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down the cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”

Environmental advocates warn that the ramifications will be dire, particularly for the Chesapeake Bay, where multi-state restoration efforts rely on federal enforcement of clean water protections.

The rollback follows a series of blows to federal support for Bay cleanup, including deep cuts to the EPA budget, termination of $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants and layoffs that threaten essential restoration projects.

“These policies endanger not just the health of our waterways, but the health of the people who rely on them,” Falk said. “Clean air and clean water are rights that cannot be taken for granted. We must stand up for the wellbeing of our region’s people, the Chesapeake Bay, and its rivers and streams.”

The deregulations come as the Chesapeake Bay Program, a regional partnership that includes the EPA, struggles to meet its pollution reduction targets outlined in the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, particularly concerning nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from agriculture and urban areas.

With federal commitments wavering, advocates fear that progress made toward cleaning up the Bay could stall — or worse, be undone entirely.

by Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.