Jim Edward Acting Director Chesapeake Bay Program Office May 23,2018 EPA’s Draft Final Phase III WIP Expectations

Overview The WIPs are a critical piece to restoring our local and Bay waters. They are intended to provide clear roadmaps for how state jurisdictions, in coordination with their local and federal partners, will meet their nutrient and sediment goals in the Bay TMDL.   The Phase III WIPs will set forth the actions jurisdictions will implement between 2018 and 2025 to have all practices and controls in place to achieve not only the Bay’s water quality standards but also address local water quality impairments.

Overview (cont) EPA provided expectations to the state jurisdictions previously to help guide development and implementation of their Phase I and Phase II WIPs, in 2009 and 2011, respectively.   EPA will release its final expectations for the Phase III WIPs to account for the next seven years of implementation of the 2010 Bay TMDL, as well as to factor in new science and information resulting from the Bay TMDL’s midpoint assessment.

General Phase III WIP Expectations Our expectations were developed to provide the jurisdictions with the opportunity to build off their earlier WIP strategies to:   Further optimize their choices of pollution reduction practices. Incorporate lessons learned and new science and information from the midpoint assessment. Develop comprehensive local and federal engagement strategies. Account for growth and climate change, and ensure new pollutant loads are offset. Build and sustain the necessary programmatic and funding capacity needed to achieve their 2025 goals. EPA expects the jurisdictions’ Phase III WIPs to lay the groundwork for implementation of the next generation of innovative practices and to continue to strengthen their respective policy, programmatic, legislative, and regulatory infrastructures necessary to achieve their Phase III WIP planning targets by 2025.

New Phase III WIP Expectations There are several new expectations since the Phase I and Phase II WIPs were released and implemented: Local engagement and participation is critical to the success of meeting our water quality goals, as much of the implementation occurs at the local level. The Partnership has embraced the use of local planning goals – essentially, translating the state-basin nutrient and sediment targets to a scale and measurable goal that local partners can relate to. The Partnership recently agreed to use 2025 forecasted conditions in their Phase III WIPs to account for growth, which includes changes in human and animal populations, shifting land use patterns, and housing density. These projections will be updated every two years to reflect the best available information and jurisdictions will use their two-year milestones to adapt their growth strategies accordingly. The Partnership has recently decided to address Conowingo Dam infill in a collaborative fashion, as opposed to assigning responsibility to individual jurisdictions. The plan is to develop a separate WIP specific to Conowingo that will encompass our collective implementation efforts and resources to reduce those additional nutrient and sediment loads as a result of the Dam’s loss of trapping capacity. This Conowingo WIP will also include a financing strategy that will lay out the funds necessary in order to sustain implementation of the plan through 2025.

New Phase III WIP Expectations (con’t.) The PSC also committed to addressing climate change impacts both programmatically and numerically and EPA supports this approach. Jurisdictions will document in their Phase III WIPs state and local actions planned and underway to address those impacts, and starting with the 2022-2023 milestones, jurisdictions will be expected to reduce the additional nutrient and sediment loads as a result of increased storm events, sea level rise, and temperature changes. Jurisdictions are also being encouraged to consider the co-benefits of nutrient and sediment pollutant reduction practices beyond water quality improvements during their planning and implementation efforts. The tidal jurisdictions (DE, DC, MD, VA) will also be expected to conduct a finer level of BMP targeting towards those segment-sheds that are significantly out of water quality standards attainment, given the proximity of those jurisdictions to tidal waters. EPA also has developed specific Phase III WIP expectations for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to help ensure Pennsylvania is on track for meeting their water quality goals under the Bay TMDL by 2025. EPA will be issuing federal agency expectations for the development of federal water quality milestones and the role federal agencies can play in the development and implementation of the jurisdictions’ Phase III WIPs.

CBP Partnership Role These Phase III WIP expectations went through thorough Partnership review prior to their interim release in January 2017, and the document was later updated to reflect recent policy decisions by the CBP Principals’ Staff Committee on how the Phase III WIPs should account for growth, climate change impacts, and Conowingo dam infill.   Although this document is being released by EPA, many of these expectations are Partnership driven and reflect Partnership priorities and PSC decisions. EPA recognizes that Phase III WIP commitments may need to be modified during the 2018-2025 timeframe, and EPA expects the jurisdictions to update those programmatic and/or numeric commitments, as appropriate, through their two-year water quality milestones.

Changes in Level of Effort for Phase III WIPS Since completion of the Phase II WIPs in 2012, the Partnership has undertaken a midpoint assessment of progress to determine if restoration efforts are working as intended. The TMDL midpoint assessment also incorporated the best available science and data into our collective decision-making and into the Phase 6 model and suite of decision support tools.   The results of the Bay TMDL’s midpoint assessment show that changes to levels of effort may be necessary for certain jurisdictions to meet their Phase III WIP planning targets. The drivers of these changes include improved state and local land use data, new methods to model and simulate agricultural data inputs (e.g., fertilizer sales data), “early” verification of BMP implementation and data reporting, and accounting for growth occurring across the urban and agricultural sectors.

Closing EPA continues to work with each of the seven Bay watershed jurisdictions to better understand the sources and drivers of these changes, and how adjusting for these changes may impact the final Phase III WIP planning targets. As a partnership, we need to recognize the good work and progress we’ve made in meeting our water quality commitments, while knowing that additional effort is needed to get us to the 2025 goals. We have a shared understanding of how much farther we need to go, what’s needed – both through regulatory and voluntary means – to get us there, and what resources are key to making a demonstrable difference at the state and local levels.   EPA looks forward to our continued collaboration with each of the seven Bay watershed jurisdictions as they develop and implement their Phase III WIPs, and EPA will continue to support these efforts through technical assistance, funding, facilitation services, and other resources.

Questions? Jim Edward edward.james@epa.gov