Pennsylvania is imposing new monitoring requirements for 190 sewage and industrial dischargers as part of the state's Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy, Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty announced.

The Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy is a wide-ranging water quality initiative designed to clean up the state's rivers and streams, enhance the health of families and preserve the rural character and farming economy of Pennsylvania.

The watersheds of the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers in Pennsylvania suffer from nutrient and sediment pollution. The tributary strategy is expected to improve water quality in the 13 sub-basins that make up these two watersheds.

"This is an important step toward restoring impaired waters in Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake Bay—requiring 190 significant sewage and industrial dischargers to reduce their nutrient loads," McGinty said. "Monitoring nutrient loads is critical to documenting our progress in the Bay restoration effort and helps to identify steps each discharger may need to undertake to achieve any future nutrient load reductions."

As part of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement among Bay states and partners in the restoration effort, Pennsylvania agreed to develop a tributary strategy to reduce total nitrogen and phosphorus to the Bay by about 40 percent from both point and nonpoint sources by 2010.

This reduction is projected to prevent localized impairment and improve water quality in the Bay, allowing it to be removed from the impaired waters list.

As part of the point source part of Pennsylvania's strategy, DEP is amending National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for 190 facilities identified to be significant contributors of nutrients. Permits will be amended to require the monitoring and reporting of total nitrogen and phosphorus. This is the first component of the point source implementation strategy.

Point source discharges contribute about 11% of the total nitrogen and about 18% of the total phosphorus to the Chesapeake Bay from Pennsylvania waters based on 2002 estimates.

Full implementation of the point source control program will achieve an estimated reduction of 3.1 million pounds of nitrogen and 745,000 lb of phosphorus per year.

The state's tributary strategy is Pennsylvania's official plan to meet the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement goals for nutrient and sediment reduction in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

The strategy embraces a suite of best management practices for nonpoint and point sources—agriculture, wastewater treatment plants, urban storm water and septic systems—to meet Pennsylvania's nutrient and sediment reduction goals.

More than half of Pennsylvania is within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Source: CBTS