Report: Chesapeake cleanup misrepresented

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- A multibillion-dollar Chesapeake Bay cleanup has been marked by failure but officials concealed the results to keep funding flowing, The Washington Post said.

Efforts to misrepresent the failure included issuing reports that overstated progress toward cleaning up the Chesapeake, North America's largest estuary, the Post reported Saturday, citing former officials.

The cleanup program, begun 25 years ago, appears set to miss its second formal deadline for major pollution reductions by 2010, the newspaper said.

The Chesapeake Bay Program Office began in 1983 with a group of federal state and local bodies working under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to try to control runoff from almost 5 million acres of farmland. The campaign was also intended to upgrade more than 400 sewage plants and regulate catches for more than 11,000 licensed watermen, the Post said.

However, the effort was not effective and two former officials now say the agencies issued reports overstating its success -- in an effort to preserve government appropriations.

William Matuszeski, who directed the program from 1991 to 2001, said the office issued reports exaggerating its success. His successor, Rebecca W. Hanmer, said regional officials instructed her in 2002 not to acknowledge the likelihood that the program would meet its 2010 goals.

"To protect appropriations you were getting, you had to show progress," Matuszeski said. "So I think we had to overstate our progress."

A coalition of environmentalists and scientists is urging that the program be replaced with a regulatory approach on agriculture, sewage plants and development, the Post said.