Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a senior member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today hailed an announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it will not hear a challenge to Chesapeake Bay pollution controls in the case of American Farm Bureau v. Environmental Protection Agency. The Supreme Court’s decision to let stand lower courts’ rulings that upheld the EPA restrictions on wastewater treatment and runoff from farms and construction sites allows the blueprint for Chesapeake Bay cleanup to remain intact. That agreement, reached in 2010 by Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and Washington, D.C., set a firm “Total Maximum Daily Load,” or TMDL, for nutrient and sediment pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
“I strongly applaud the Supreme Court’s rejection of this challenge to TMDLs in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and consider today’s announcement a significant victory for cooperative conservation,” said Senator Cardin. “For years I have advocated firm, watershed-wide pollution reductions, and my hope is that we can use the momentum generated by the Supreme Court’s decision to redouble our commitment to the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake is our nation’s largest estuary and an incredibly diverse and productive ecosystem. Today’s Supreme Court decision validates the partner-driven approach to the bay’s continued improvement and enables us to be better stewards of this irreplaceable national treasure.”
