Bay cleanup comes under fire on Capitol Hill

The latest assessments by environmental groups depict a Chesapeake Bay that is gradually on the mend. And this progress must owe something to the federal-state partnership of the Chesapeake Bay Program, and also to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's mandating of pollution-reduction goals for bay watershed states.

Yet, just as these policies pay off, Maryland's representatives have to fight efforts to not only gut the Chesapeake Bay Program but to bar the EPA from enforcing the Clean Water Act. While it's unfortunate this effort is necessary at all, we're glad it's being made - not just by the congressional delegation but by Gov. Larry Hogan.

The governor now chairs the Chesapeake Executive Council, which includes the governors of the six bay watershed states. Last week he sent U.S. Senate leaders a letter asking them to drop from any budget deal a House amendment that would keep the EPA from enforcing the state-by-state pollution limits known as the pollution diet. The amendment comes from U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, a single-minded partisan of the notion that the EPA lacks legal authority to make states comply with pollution limits - a view that has been rejected in court.

If the amendment becomes law, Hogan wrote Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, it "will prohibit the use of ... (EPA) funds for enforcement policies and procedures that are necessary for achieving pollution reductions in the Chesapeake Bay watershed ... It would be unwise to effectively remove the ability of the Clean Water Act to function as designed."

For decades, officials tried to get the watershed states to meet voluntary bay cleanup targets. Little changed. As Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles told bayjournal.com, cleanup requires an "interstate umpire" - and as the other governors involved agree with Hogan, the Goodlatte amendment is an attempt at ideologically based congressional interference in efforts to clean up the bay.

Like the state's Democratic legislators, Hogan also opposes the Trump administration's proposal to cut the Chesapeake Bay Program budget by 90 percent, to $7.3 million. Actually, like last year's proposal to zero out the program's budget, this is mainly White House posturing. The real argument now is between the House, which approved $60 million for the program, and the Senate, which, like Hogan, wants to continue the funding at $73 million.

Yet even posturing tells you something: The budget proposals as a whole reflect alarming hostility not just to environmentalism but to anything - including programs by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - connected with earth science. But however that larger fight comes out, we're glad to see Hogan and the state's congressional delegation battling bad ideas that would set back the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay.