After Trump order targeted Chesapeake Bay cleanup, feds say they remain committed

Federal environmental regulators aren’t backing out of efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, despite a recent order from President Donald Trump that sparked concern among many bay champions, according to a key administration official.

Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey, administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic region, recently told The Banner that Trump’s repeal of an Obama-era directive does not signal that the federal government is abandoning the effort.

“We are not pulling back from the bay,” she said. “We’re not pulling back from funding.”

The administrator’s assurance came in October, about a month after Trump directed federal agencies to steer funds away from programs that the administration believes “do not create measurable progress” toward cleanup goals. But many in the bay region are still scratching their heads over the consequences for the nation’s largest estuary.

On this, Van Blarcom-Lackey offered little clarity. She said her agency is still reviewing the order’s impacts.

Trump’s decree repealed an executive order, signed by former President Barack Obama in 2009, that was seen as a landmark step in the federal government’s leadership of the Chesapeake Bay’s restoration. States in the watershed have pledged to clean up the bay for over four decades, but the Obama order overhauled the federal government’s involvement in state efforts to curb stormwater, farmland runoff and climate impacts in the Chesapeake.

The repeal drew broad condemnation from advocates and lawmakers: Maryland’s entire congressional delegation — including Republican Rep. Andy Harris — called it “shortsighted and harmful.” The head of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a leading bay advocacy organization, decried the president’s attempt to “destroy the bay restoration by executive order.”

In his previous term, the president tried to slash federal funding for the bay in all four of his proposed budgets. Congress blocked him each time, and while the bay had largely stayed out of his sights this term, advocates worried that the executive order could suggest an ominous shift.

At a University System of Maryland board of regents meeting in September, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science President Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm expressed surprise at the inclusion of research from his institution in the order.

“We were caught cold,” he said. “No one called us to say, ‘You’re going to be named in an executive order.’”

The university system expected that the order would result in further cuts to scientific research, Miralles-Wilhelm said.

While the order directed federal agencies to reprioritize money, it remains to be seen whether it will come with the kinds of cuts the university president feared.

The order told agencies to redirect federal bay funding from inefficient causes to “on-the-ground” projects — an odd instruction, said Jon Mueller, director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic, since “they’re all on the ground.”

Mueller, formerly the Bay Foundation’s litigation chief, said he’s still watching to see whether the order will mark a legitimate policy change. He’s particularly concerned it could preview a shift in the federal government’s attention from the bay’s big waters — plagued for decades by oxygen-deprived “dead zones” — to shallower areas along shorelines and in tributaries, an approach Mueller sees as misguided.

“I do worry that there is some room in the executive order for a backtracking because it is so vague,” he said.

Also confusing to some was the order’s criticism of the “rain tax,” the nickname coined by former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan for fees adopted by municipalities to pay for stormwater management efforts such as street sweeping and rain gardens to capture runoff. The Hogan administration ended a Maryland requirement for these fees, but jurisdictions in the state must still report how they plan to pay for stormwater infrastructure.

Most of the largest counties in Maryland still impose stormwater fees, but in northeast Pennsylvania this year, the policy became a campaign issue.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr. railed against the “rain tax” as he defended his seat against the Democratic mayor of Scranton. He stood alongside Trump as the president signed the executive order in September and afterward claimed credit in a campaign ad for ending what he called a burdensome directive on local governments.

Bresnahan lost reelection, and his campaign did not respond to a request for comment on his role in the executive order.

A spokesperson for the White House did not directly address questions about the intended policy changes in the Trump order or the administration’s commitment to funding the bay restoration effort.

In a statement, spokesperson Taylor Rogers criticized “burdensome and costly ‘rain taxes’” and said the administration remains committed to “consolidating and cutting unnecessary administrative costs” while improving work toward restoring the bay. She did not provide examples of those unnecessary costs.

Maryland Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz said state attorneys have reviewed the order and assured him that it won’t force any change in the state’s approach to stormwater management.

So far, Kurtz said he’s seen no indication of a pullback from federal agencies as a result of the executive order. Though Obama’s order played an important role, he said, many of its foundational elements are baked into the culture today.

If the Trump administration does harbor plans for cuts to the bay restoration, the pathway to that agenda on Capitol Hill has gotten harder. Democrats reclaimed the Senate in this month’s midterm elections and are on track for their largest majority in the House of Representatives since 2008.

Banner reporter Ellie Wolfe contributed to this story.