Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a series of
articles on the poor health of the Chesapeake Bay and its
tributaries. Cleaning up the bay, which has been in serious
trouble since the early 1980s is especially complicated since
its tributaries pass through multiple jurisdictions; New York,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia,
Virginia, and West Virginia all contain part of the watershed,
which is fed by two major rivers (the Potomac and Susquehanna)
and numerous smaller tributaries. That means that cleanup
strategies have to be coordinated among the various
stakeholders, which then have to fight their own internal
battles over funding and enforcement priorities. In the
meantime, work is being left undone. Maryland, Virginia and
Pennsylvania all pledged that their farmers would put up fences
along streambanks to keep cows out. But they didn't make it a
legal requirement: Officials feared this kind of regulation
would be a burden on farmers and would be difficult to
enforce...