Governor Kaine, Governor Rendell, Mayor Fenty
Chesapeake Bay Executive Council
December 5, 2007
And those are the three things that we want to champion. I also want to apologize, I have to be at a meeting in Washington and Mayor Fenty advises me that I will likely run into traffic. (Laughter.) So I probably have to leave, but my experience with Chesapeake Bay Council meetings, and this is my fifth, is that most of the press wants to talk to Virginia and Maryland. (Laughter). But if anybody wants to talk to Pennsylvania, Deputy Secretary of Environmental Protection Cathy Myers is there and my Deputy Chief of Staff Roy Kienitz is in the second row and they will answer your questions.
I wish us good luck and I want to reiterate what I said, I think all three of the Governors involved, we would step up and try to convince our legislators to appropriate significant funds to match a renewed and additional Federal commitment towards achieving these goals. And with that, Happy Holidays.
Governor O’Malley: Thank you, Governor. Let me point out the other alignment we have here. You know, three of us who are Governors all used to be Mayors and that’s the first time I think that’s ever happened on the Executive Council. And, of course, the next speaker is someone who still does the greatest job in American politics and he is the Mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty.
Mayor Fenty: Thank you, Governor, and Governor Rendell on the way out, and to Governor Kaine, it’s a real honor to partner with the three of you, as well as our Federal partners on this high priority.
The District is a little bit different, obviously, we’re a local government, but we are a signatory jurisdiction and for good reason. Although the District doesn’t have the large scale agricultural or expansive forest, we obviously have a tremendous amount to do with what happens in the Potomac, the Anacostia, and then relevant today, the Chesapeake Bay.
We, like all of our other partners, have a high percentage of impervious surface that inevitably leads to polluted run-off, nutrient loads and trash getting into our rivers. And I just want to state that I think one of the great discussions that we had prior to coming here, was about what to do about Blue Plains, which is in the District of Columbia, and where all of our predecessors and Federal Government predecessors have known that if you do not put in the amount of money necessary to reduce the amount of nutrients going into the Potomac and then into the Bay, that you’re really just ignoring one of the biggest contributors towards the pollution.
So I think I just want to thank all of the parties here, especially Governor O’Malley and Governor Kaine, for committing both local dollars and then committing to lobbying the Federal Government, both Houses of Congress, on dollars not just to eradicate the pollution coming out of Blue Plains, but also the combined sewer overflow problem, which is related and which needs to be fixed and which is probably going to cost in excess of $2 billion. So we’ve got a lot of work to do in that regard. And I think the District will finally make progress by having all four jurisdictions lobbying Congress for the dollars.
On the local level I think our commitment is to focus most on stormwater run-off on developed lands. That’s where the District of Columbia, I think, runs into the Chesapeake Bay most directly.
We have committed to a couple things. One that we are going to aggressively promote and then enforce is low impact development in the District of Columbia. We have to have stormwater friendly practices; they’re not only aesthetically pleasing, they not only reduce the urban island effect, provide shading, provide energy savings, but, again, are a way to proactively make sure that we are keeping our water clean by preventing substances from coming into it.
One of the most exciting things that’s happened in Washington, D.C. in a long time, with regards to the environment, happened just yesterday, where we partnered with the EPA on newly revised stormwater permits that the City will use for LID practices and vegetative landscapes as stormwater management in all new building construction and then designed for retrofitting older structures. We believe, I think the EPA can speak to this, that this will probably be one of the most advanced stormwater permitting processes in the nation. And, hopefully, this region can continue to lead with things of that nature.
We made a good start, but we have a long way to go to reduce the stormwater run-off. We want to not only have a great stormwater permitting process, but look towards incentives. Look towards incentives for developers to incorporate stormwater control structures into the design on the building. We want to have incentives for residential homeowners to convert impervious areas to better manage stormwater.
In the District of Columbia, just like in most cities, those areas comprise the single largest land use and we know that so much of the run-off from residential lots is ending up in the Anacostia, the Potomac and into the Bay.
We think incentive programs are the way to go in that regard as well.
Just a couple other things that the District is doing. We’ve developed an aggressive Anacostia Restoration Plan. Our new stormwater regulations will require stringent stormwater pollution prevention controls -- again, on new development and redevelopment. The Federal partnerships are increasing and getting stronger. The Federal Government is agreeing on most occasions to retrofit their vast properties and in the District of Columbia, specifically along the Anacostia, there are a number of properties that are owned by the Federal Government.
And in State partnerships, as the Anacostia and Potomac both flow down from Maryland and then into Virginia, it’s important to collaborate early and often, and I think we’ve already started that in both the Kaine and O’Malley administrations and in my administration and we’ll continue to do that.
We look to our neighboring partners to join in more innovative ways to make sure that the City on the Anacostia and Potomac is doing the best we can to contribute to keeping this entire region clean.
So I just want to again thank the Governors, you have our continued support. Glad to be joined here by our Director of the Department of the Environment, George Hawkins, who is going to continue to work with all of the cabinet officials from the other jurisdictions to make sure we meet our goals as quickly as possible.
