Coming into the Watershed

That’s the title of one of Gary Snyder’s books of poetry.  Snyder was a featured speaker at a political conference I attended years ago in Sacramento.  He advocated organizing political jurisdictions by watershed, pointing out that it made much more sense than drawing arbitrary lines on maps.  

For example, we could go from local government (Pohopoco Creek watershed) to regional government (Lehigh River watershed) to a state-sized entity (Delaware River watershed.)

The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S., is polluted.  Pennsylvania, by the way, is the largest contributor of pollutants.  The other five states with territory in the Bay’s watershed are Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, and New York.  In 2009 the Obama administration issued an executive order to restore the Chesapeake Bay.

Now a suit has been filed against the action by such groups as the Fertilizer Institute, National Pork Producers Council, the National Chicken Council, and 21 states, only one of which is in the Bay’s watershed, but 19 of which voted against Obama in the 2012 election.  The one in the watershed is West Virginia, and we now know how they treat their rivers.

The states are worried that the EPA might next take action against Mississippi River polluters, who have created an immense “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.  The suit points out that if the executive order is allowed to stand,”other watersheds, including the Mississippi River Basin, could be next.”  We should be so lucky.