copied from baltimoresun.com

Key vote on Chesapeake Bay cleanup

The Maryland House appropriations committee is set to vote tomorrow (Thursday, March 13) on a proposal to cut by half a new $50 million Chesapeake Bay cleanup fund.

The Chesapeake Bay 2010 Trust Fund (formerly called the "Green Fund") was created during the General Assembly's special session last fall to pay for programs to reduce polluted runoff from farms and urban stormwater drains. This runoff pollution is one of the bay's biggest problems, because it contains fertilizer that feeds algae, which then dies and creates fish-killing low-oxygen dead zones.

Last year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other environmental groups proposed a $100 to $150 annual fund to pay for runoff control programs through a new fee on blacktop and sprawl. But then that was pared back this fall to a more modest $50 million fund, drawn from car rental and gas taxes.

Recently state Sen. Ulysses Currie, chairman of the senate budget and taxation committee and a Democrat from Prince George's County, and other lawmakers amended the proposal to cut it back again to $25 million. The House appropriations committee will discuss the idea tomorrow among other proposed state budget cuts. Despite recent tax increases by the O'Malley administration, the economic downturn has made it tough for the state, with a lot of programs and state agencies facing trims.

Kim Coble, Maryland Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, is urging lawmakers to stand firm in their support of the full $50 million annual fund. "We are simply once again urging compromising the health of the bay, and we've been doing it for decades," Coble said. "When is cleaning up the bay going to be a top priority for Maryland?"

On Tuesday, Coble joined with Michael Phipps, president of the Maryland Farm Bureau, and John Kortecamp, CEO of the Maryland Home Builders Association, environmentalists and more than 20 others in writing to House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Mike Miller urging them not to cut the new cleanup fund. "Please, do not reverse Maryland's long overdue pledge to funding healthy water and clean air. While we understand the need to address our fiscal deficit, Maryland's ecological deficit has been overlooked for far too long," the letter says.