Thank you, Mr. Chairman.   It is a privilege to testify before this subcommittee on a topic as important as Chesapeake Bay.  I also want to thank my colleague from Maryland, Wayne Gilchrest, for introducing H.R. 4126, the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Enhancement Act.  I joined every member of the Maryland Congressional Delegation as an original cosponsor of this critical legislation.  
 
Chesapeake Bay is the geographic, cultural and economic center of this entire region.  Next year will mark the 400th anniversary of Captain John Smith’s sail up the Chesapeake, and the subsequent settlement and economic development that founded our nation.   As a main artery for commerce and a resource for sustenance the Bay has continued to be the centerpiece of this region.  Economists have estimated the value of the Bay to the nation’s economy to be over one trillion dollars every year.

The Bay is a beautiful and vibrant resource that is used and enjoyed by millions.  In just a few days the Bay will be the site of the restart of the around the world Volvo Ocean Race.  This will be taking place while thousands of boats are out fishing for trophy rockfish, pleasure boats will fill the Bay with sails, and scores of commercial vessels will be plying the Bay to two of the East Coast’s busiest ports – Baltimore and Norfolk.   It will be one in a long list of conflicts on a Bay that is prized by an incredible diversity of users.

But this national treasure is in trouble.  As everyone has been made aware over the past few years, the Bay is not doing very well.  The “Dead Zone” – the areas of the Bay with little or no oxygen – has been a growing problem the past few years.  My constituents on the South River have found many Brown Bullheads with new cancerous tumors this spring.  And, increasing numbers of rockfish, or striped bass as they’re known outside of Maryland, are appearing with lesions and a sometimes fatal disease. 

The bay is not simply a local issue for the people of Maryland, Virginia or the District of Columbia.  As one example, 80-90% of all the striped bass that swim along the Atlantic seaboard are born in Chesapeake Bay.  The odds are that a diseased fish from Chesapeake Bay will be caught in a few months by an angler or a commercial fisherman in New Jersey or Long Island.  Preservation of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem presents a national challenge for us all.

Nutrient and sediment pollution that enters the Bay far exceeds the Bay’s ability to absorb it, and progress is lagging on meeting the pollution reduction goals that have been set.  The amount of underwater bay grasses are at less than half (39%) of the acreage that is needed to provide adequate habitat and filtering capacity for the long-term health of the Bay.  We have a native oyster population that is on the brink of extinction, and provides virtually no filtering benefits as it did even just twenty years ago. 

But none of this is new to the Members of this Subcommittee, nor to those who are trying to help the Chesapeake.  I am here today not to talk about what is wrong with the Bay, but what Congress can do to help make it better.  Enacting H.R. 4126, the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Enhancement Act, will not be the silver bullet of Bay restoration – but it is a critical piece of the puzzle that we need to make progress in our ultimate goal of a clean and healthy Chesapeake Bay. 
 
H.R. 4126 increases the authorization level for the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program to $50 million per year.  This annual investment in a threatened resource worth over a trillion dollars seems like a wise financial strategy.  The EPA’s Bay Program, created by this Committee, plays the central role in coordinating and driving the intergovernmental Bay restoration effort.  Its role and resources need to be enhanced.

At the same time we need to maximize all of our resources that go into Bay restoration – such as restoring funding to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund that the President’s budget has cut nearly in half from only three years ago.  There will be a number of national reauthorization bills that Congress will be considering that will have the potential to provide much more money for Bay restoration than this bill – such as the Farm Bill, the Water Resources Development Act and even the Highway Bill.  Those bills are for another day.

Today I’d like to focus on one specific, important part of H.R. 4126, and something that I think is vital to the future of this region for both the health of the Bay and for the well being of the 16 million people who live in its watershed.  This bill, for the first time, recognizes the critical role that local governments play in the decisions and actions that will ultimately decide the fate of the Bay.  And this bill does not try to put additional burdens on local governments – to the contrary, its intent is to provide local governments a greater role in the decisions that will impact them, and to provide additional resources.

There is a vast disparity on the types of local governments throughout this region – there are over 1,650 local governments in just the MD, PA, DC and VA portion of the Bay watershed.  And there is a tremendous diversity on types and sizes of local governments – I live in Baltimore County which has a population of about 775,000 people.  My colleague from Maryland, Mr. Gilchrest from Kennedyville in Kent County lives in a county that has about 20,000.  But our local governments face a lot of the same problems and challenges.  There is a lot of growth and development that these counties must manage, and the citizens of both counties want to do what is best for the Bay. 

These problems exist throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  We have a region that over the past decade has seen its population grow by about 8 percent, but the increase in impervious surfaces (streets, parking lots, buildings, etc.) has gone up 41 percent during the same timeframe.  H.R. 4126 was drafted with the intent of addressing some of the special problems and challenges facing local governments in the Bay watershed.  The bill seeks to better integrate the needs and opportunities of local government into the Chesapeake Bay Program and to provide some increased funding and technical assistance to help those jurisdictions on the frontlines of Bay restoration.

A centerpiece of the proposed efforts to assist local governments is the separate authorization of $10 million specifically for the Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants Program, and an assurance that at least 40% of that money goes directly to local governments for real, on-the-ground projects.  This highly successful program, which was funded at $2 million for the past few years provides real and measurable results.  From 1999 through 2005 this program awarded $15 million in Federal money as funds from NOAA, USDA and US Fish & Wildlife Service supplemented EPA dollars to support 443 projects throughout the watershed.  These funds leveraged $43 million in ADDITIONAL non-Federal funds.  The environmental results and benefits were direct.  Collectively, these grants have protected 34,500 acres of wildlife habitat, restored 4,500 acres of wetlands, created or restored 104 acres of oyster reefs, restored or enhanced 269 miles of riparian buffers, and restored 162 miles of streams and rivers. 

The program also serves to support and engage local community groups seeking ways to participate in the Bay restoration.  I have helped school children plant underwater bay grasses grown in their classrooms, neighborhood groups clean-up riversides, and non-profits build alternative storm water control systems, among other projects.  H.R. 4126 will increase these on-the-ground and in-the-water results by at least fivefold.  That is progress worth supporting.

Even in communities far from the Bay -- in central Pennsylvania, in the Southern Tier of New York, the West Virginia Panhandle – local governments are facing increasingly difficult land use decisions about growth and development.  And these decisions have the greatest impacts in those communities, on local water quality, on traffic congestion, on a host of quality of life matters for their citizens.  These decisions ultimately affect the Bay, and that is something that I care about, but the biggest beneficiaries, or victims, of local government action or inaction, will be its citizens.  H.R. 4126 takes a large step in the right direction and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.