Brace Yourself-- Bay Cleanup Could Cost Billions, Require Tax Hikes

The federal government's ambitious plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay could cost Virginia, Maryland and the District billions of dollars each and add hundreds of dollars to the annual property tax bill of local homeowners, state and local officials said.

A new study on the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to reduce pollution flowing to the Bay shows that it could cost each affected city and county between $259 million and $386 million a year for the next 15 years.

The study done by the Virginia Municipal Stormwater Association, a group of Virginia localities that operate storm sewer systems, represents the worst-case scenario for Virginia's cities and counties. But even states that are able to develop alternative cleanup plans of their own could still be forced to raise billions in tax dollars to pay the bill, officials said.

The notion of spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year to rebuild a storm water drainage system at a time when communities, states and the federal government are facing budget deficits could prove financially crippling, officials said.

"This cuts to the head of the line," Chris Pomeroy, an attorney for the storm water association, said of the EPA's plan. "These become must-do items in the category of a legal mandate. It's not an optional funding decision."

EPA spokesman David Sternberg said the agency has no "illusions that [its plan] is the most cost-effective way to do it." The agency would prefer that states come up with cheaper alternative plans as long as they still meet EPA's pollution reduction goals, he said.Read more