Saving America from a Clean Chesapeake

Recovery of the estuary that provides 75 percent of the Atlantic striped bass population is being fought by 21 states, only one of which is in the watershed.

In February 2014, Florida joined a lawsuit to stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s belated effort to render Chesapeake Bay clean enough to be taken off the EPA’s “impaired waters” list by 2025. If this action seems inexplicable, rest assured that it is not. Columnist and novelist Carl Hiaasen has unearthed the answer: Because Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Florida Governor Rick Scott are “complete tools” and “pimping” for polluters.

Florida has no monopoly on tools and pimps. They abound in 20 other states whose attorneys general signed on to the same action. The amici curiae brief was filed to seek judicial relief from alleged hardships a clean Chesapeake would inflict on people who live not just in Florida but also Alaska, Kansas, Arkansas, Utah, Wyoming, Michigan, Montana, Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina and West Virginia. Only one of these states—West Virginia—is (partly) in the Chesapeake watershed.

As Hiaasen notes, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

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This excerpt is from the article “Saving America from a Clean Chesapeake” By, Ted Williams