On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. The Lawsuit, filed by the American Farm Bureau Federation, was one of hundreds the high court declined to consider. A federal appeals court last year ruled restrictions on fertilizer runoff, wastewater discharges, and other bay pollutants are valid, and that decision will stand. The Baltimore Sun reports nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from farmland into the bay fertilize algae blooms that, when they decompose, create dead zones in the bay. The EPA in 2010 set what is known as a “total maximum daily load” of nutrients and sediment permitted to wash into the Chesapeake Bay. A Pennsylvania Farm Bureau spokesperson said, “The economic viability of local farmers could be in jeopardy because of this plan.” He says the plan allows the EPA to do “whatever they want, whenever they want” and that the ruling is “a major disappointment for farmers.”
Source: NAFB News Service
