Feds say this time they'll clean the Chesapeake

"The federal government said Thursday that it would seek an unprecedented role as the environmental police of the Chesapeake Bay -- enforcing new rules on farmers and keeping a closer eye on state-level bureaucrats -- in an effort to halt the estuary's long decline," David Farenthold reports for The Washington Post.

Cleaning up the bay will be a huge job that will affect agriculture, especially poultry farmers, over a 64,000-square-mile watershed (map) that is larger than most states. The Environmental Protection Agency says this effort will be more effective than those in the past.

"In 1983, 1987 and again in 2000, government leaders promised to clean up the Chesapeake by reducing the sewage and manure that wash downstream and help create 'dead zones- in its waters," Farenthold notes. "Every time, they failed: 25 years into the government-led cleanup effort, only about 58 percent of the required anti-pollution measures are complete. On their watch, the numbers of bay oysters and blue crabs fell into abyssal declines, devastating a centuries-old watermen's culture." (Read more)