Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts would be dealt a blow under President Bush’s proposal to slash $23 million from the fiscal 2009 funding, advocates said.
“If you cut those funds, you completely lose your edge, and the promise of clean water is erased,” said Ann Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, a tri-state legislative group.
Bush’s updated fiscal 2009 budget request sent to Congress last week included cuts that would offset plans to spend $172 million on staff and computer modernization at the Farm Service Agency.
Among the cuts was the elimination of funding for the new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Program enacted as part of the 2008 Farm Bill. Other funding, such as money for the regional Environmental Quality Incentives Program for farmers’ erosion control and conservation initiatives, also would be trimmed.
“The hit is actually even larger than the $23 million,” Swanson said.
“It’s not just a cut, it’s a gash.”
In the budget amendment, federal officials said existing, funded conservation programs already address the needs of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Program.
The six-state watershed has received between $66 million and $72 million a year in the past four years, so the new funding was a boon for the Bay, Swanson said.
The dedicated Bay funding, which was in addition to related funding in the Farm Bill, would be distributed through existing programs, said Mark Dubin, agricultural technical coordinator at the University of Maryland who works with the regional Chesapeake Bay Program.
“If additional funding was not forthcoming, it would mean we would be delayed on expanding financial systems for landowners,” he said.
The 87,000 farms in the watershed contribute 39 percent of the nitrogen and 42 percent of the phosphorus polluting the Bay, according to Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who vowed to work to restore that funding.
“He is wrong on the science, wrong on our farmers’ needs and wrong if he thinks the Congress will go along with this proposal,” Cardin said of Bush in a statement.
Congress must approve the president’s supplemental budget proposal.
Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said agricultural runoff is the cheapest form of nitrogen pollution to reduce, compared with reductions from sewage treatment plants.
“[The funding] was a great boost for the environment,” he said, “and a great boost for the farmer, and the president sought to undercut it.”
