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Environmental groups to ask U.S. to crack down on state enforcements
Environmental groups plan to ask the federal government to crack down on state environmental regulators, accusing them of going easy on water pollution discharged from businesses, sewage plants, farms and developments.
The state's Waterkeepers - a network of environmental watchdogs - are expected to file a petition today with the Environmental Protection Agency charging the state Department of the Environment with "systemic failure" to carry out its legal responsibility to ride herd on water pollution piped into Maryland's rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. They say they've been driven to take such an unusual legal step out of frustration with the way the state is handling its duties to safeguard water quality.
"The bay's in trouble, and they don't seem to have the capacity to really deal with these problems diligently," said Fred Tutman, the Patuxent Riverkeeper. "What we're asking for is better oversight to help the [state] find the willpower, the spine, the ownership of the regulatory problems it's facing."