Wicomico Agrees To Pay $25K Fee To Join Coalition

SALISBURY – The Wicomico County Council reached an agreement last week to move forward with a recommendation to become a member of the Clean Chesapeake Coalition.
Upon County Executive Rick Pollitt’s request, last Tuesday morning the Wicomico County Council sat down with Ernie Crofoot and Chip McLeod of the Clean Chesapeake Coalition. The council was in consensus to pay the annual $25,000 annual Clean Chesapeake Coalition membership fee to join the organization and support its efforts.
According to Director of Administration Wayne Strausburg, the Clean Chesapeake Coalition features counties working together to strengthen the collective voice of the counties in Annapolis and on a federal level. The objective is to pursue improvements to the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. Current county members include Allegany, Caroline, Carroll, Cecil, Dorchester, Frederick and Kent.
The mission of the Clean Chesapeake Coalition is to “advocate, raise awareness and take action in order to improve the poor water quality of the Chesapeake Bay in the most effective and fiscally responsible manner possible.”
According to the Coalition, “despite significant efforts by federal, state, and local governments and other interested parties, pollution in the Chesapeake Bay prevents the attainment of existing water quality standards.  The pollutants that are largely responsible for impairment of the Bay are nutrients, in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus, and sediment, much of which comes directly from the reservoir of the Conowingo Dam located on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.”
In the Clean Chesapeake Coalition, participating Maryland local elected officials are joining forces on behalf of the jurisdictions and taxpayers they represent, to collectively scrutinize and analyze the scientific justification, costs and efficacy of the current Chesapeake Bay clean-up agenda being driven by The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with its Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) plan. Also known as the “pollution diet,” the TMDL is being aggressively enforced by the state by way of its own Watershed Implementation Plans (WIP) and other costly mandates.
Through comprehensive research and analysis of publicly available data and other resources, the coalition works to identify, advocate, and take action to develop and implement the most cost-effective policies, programs and practices that will measurably improve water quality.