Chesapeake Bay Program Reevaluation Technical Workgroup Conference Call July 17, 2008 SUMMARY OF DECISIONS, ACTIONS AND ISSUES Chesapeake Bay Land Change Model Update Peter Claggett, USGS, updated the group on the status of the Chesapeake Bay Land Change Model. See Attachment A. ¦ The Land Change Model Team has developed growth projections and projections of forestland and farmland loss due to the urban growth. o Population projections are used as the base for how much growth will occur in the Bay watershed. ¦ STAC has reviewed the model for management purposes. ¦ There is an Ad-hoc Steering Committee that is working with the Land Change Model Team to review and provide feedback on the model. ¦ The briefing paper outlines some of the STAC and Ad-hoc Steering Committee findings. ¦ The Land Change Model Team will be working with the Ad-Hoc Steering Committee to develop alternative future land use scenarios. o STAC fully supports the development of these future scenarios. o The scenarios will be used as benchmark scenarios in the Vortex. ¦ The Water Quality Steering Committee will be asked to approve the model and the management questions as outlined in Attachment A. ¦ Wastewater treatment plant loading will be addressed in an alternative future land use scenario. o The current trend scenario does not include the cap. o Pennsylvania is allowing no future growth in point source loads and would like caps to be included in the model's base trend scenario. Pennsylvania believes 2010 is the most important scenario. o Peter said he would need information on how close each wastewater treatment plant is to capacity. That can then be used to model how growth would be affected. o The land change model should also help to predict to what degree trading will be in demand based on wastewater treatment plant caps and projected growth. ¦ Kenn Pattison, PA DEP, would like to know the exact definition of 'urban land' that the Bay Program is using. o Lewis Linker said that Section 4 of the Phase 5 Watershed Model documentation on the web has the definitions of land use. ¦ Pat Buckley stated that Pennsylvania is not comfortable with the management questions so will not recommend that their Water Quality Steering Committee member approve them. Particularly with question 4, PA will not provide reasonable assurance for meeting allocations in 2010 and 2030. PA will provide reasonable 1 ------- assurance for a 2010 land use tributary strategy. The models are too gross and inaccurate to extend reasonable assurance to 2030. o Rich Batiuk asked Pat Buckley to provide further information to him in order to better prepare for the Water Quality Steering Committee conference call on Monday, July 21st. ¦ Pat Buckley asked that Peter share any comments that he receives from local governments in Pennsylvania. ¦ Ron Entringer, NY DEC, said that they are fine with the Land Change Model Team proceeding as they see fit. New York's piece of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed does not have much growth, making the Land Change Model irrelevant to the state. ¦ John Kennedy, VA DEQ, is particularly interested in how the current situations with caps and projected population growth will be captured by the Land Change Model. ¦ Bill Keeling raised concern about how MS4s will be analyzed. The new census will likely add more counties and jurisdictions. o The Ad-Hoc Steering Committee, Watershed Technical Workgroup, and Urban Stormwater Workgroup will be looking at the issue of MS4s. ¦ The Land Change Model does not account for farmland loss to forestland. ACTION: Lewis Linker will send the Workgroup the URL for Section 4 of the Phase 5 documentation that includes the definition of 'urban land' as used by the Chesapeake Bay Program. ACTION: Rich Batiuk and Pat Buckley will talk in advance of Monday's Water Quality Steering Committee conference call to discuss Pennsylvania's concerns with the management questions. ACTION: Peter Claggett will forward all comments received from Pennsylvania local governments to Pat Buckley. Allocation of Pollutant Loads to Permitted Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Jeff Sweeney discussed the efforts that are underway to try to account for concentrated animal feeding operations in the model. See Attachment B. ¦ The Bay Program knows animal populations by county. ¦ Animals are split between confined and unconfined operations. ¦ Unknowns include the location of the permitted CAFOs, animal types, confinement periods, manure storage, permit conditions, etc. ¦ Jeff will be working with state agencies that have information on their permitted CAFOs. The expectation is that most CAFOs are non-discharging. ¦ Jeff expects to put zero for the WLA. The rest of the manure and nutrients generated from the animals would be applied to the land and modeled as LAs that originate on cropland. ¦ Jeff is asking the Reevaluation Technical Workgroup to agree on his technical recommendation to: 2 ------- o Develop required data and methodology to separate and simulate CAFOs at the segment basin level, assigning a WLA for all permitted CAFOs within. Non-discharging CAFOs would have a WLA of zero. If permit allows nutrient discharges, they would be captured in LAs from the agricultural land where the manure would be applied. Jurisdictions and/or EPA would have to provide a list of permitted operations and descriptions of operations. ¦ Bill Keeling will work with his Watershed Technical Workgroup under the Nutrient Subcommittee to look at the technicalities of modeling 25-year storms. ¦ The Urban Stormwater Workgroup will work with the Watershed Technical Workgroup on stormwater issues. Their recommendations will be moved up to the Reevaluation Technical Workgroup and Water Quality Steering Committee for final approval. ¦ Pennsylvania does not agree with the recommendation for proceeding. DECISION: The Reevaluation Technical Workgroup agreed with the Bay Program staff proceeding by working with all of the jurisdictions to identify their CAFOs. ACTION: Jeff Sweeney will provide the name of the person in Pennsylvania that Hank Zygmunt, EPA Region 3, will be working with to identify the state's CAFOs. Initial Scoping Scenarios for the Water Quality Sediment Transport Model's Assessment of the Claritv/SAV Water Quality Standard Lewis Linker reviewed the options for scoping scenarios that would provide information on the water clarity/SAV water quality standard. See Attachment C. ¦ The first set of scoping scenarios examines the extent of influence upstream states have on the water clarity/SAV standard. o The scoping scenarios would provide guidance on whether or not upstream states significantly influence the water clarity/SAV standard. They will help to determine the sediment features on the standard. ¦ The second set of scoping scenarios examines the extent various sediment loads from the watershed, shoreline erosion, and resuspension have on the water clarity/SAV standard. o These scenarios will individually turn off sediment loads from the ocean, resuspension, shoreline, watershed, and above fall line. ¦ The third set of scoping scenarios examines the extent that living resource management of filter feeders have on the water clarity/SAV standard. o The scenarios would look at multi-fold increases in oysters, no harvest, and historic oyster biomass. ¦ The Modeling Team may want to look at DO as an important touchstone. ¦ The Modeling Team would like 4-8 follow-up scenarios to run through the fall. Definite scoping scenarios include: 1. What do the Tributary Strategies look like in terms of DO? 2. E3 3 ------- 3. Needed load reductions to meet Bay water quality standards ¦ Lewis is asking the group for their opinions on which additional scoping scenarios to run. Lewis suggests running 10-fold and no-harvest mortality scoping scenarios as the 4th and 5th runs. Rich suggested the 6th scenario be the no above fall line scenario in order to determine the sediment influence of the headwater states. ¦ Jurisdictions would provide their best estimates of the status of their Tributary Strategy implementation. ¦ Bill Keeling said that the Watershed Technical Workgroup will need documentation of how Jeff Sweeney took Tributary Strategies from Phase 4.3 to Phase 5.0. ¦ Jeff said that in every jurisdiction, Tributary Strategies far exceed sediment cap load allocations. In 2003, each major tributary received a sediment cap load allocation. Then Tributary Strategies were developed, and every jurisdiction had gone way beyond their sediment cap load allocation. o Lewis thinks we should run the scenarios with the Tributary Strategies as given, with the BMPs. DECISION: The Reevaluation Technical Workgroup agreed with the Modeling Team running the following scoping scenarios in order, for presentation to the Water Quality Steering Committee in October: Tributary Strategies, E3, needed load reductions for meeting Bay water quality standards, 10-fold increase in filter feeder biomass, no-harvest mortality, and no above fall line. Daily Loads Calculations: Follow-up to June 19 Conference Call Jennifer Sincock reviewed the work that EPA has done since the last Workgroup discussion on options for presenting TMDLs as daily loads. See Attachment D. ¦ At the last discussion, the jurisdictions were split between favoring a 365 day-average and the multiplier method. ¦ Monir Chowdhury, DDOE, thinks there should be multiple options. o Tom Thornton confirmed that we can combine two methods and present both an average daily and a maximum daily. ¦ Maryland would prefer the statistical multiplier method but would consider a combination method with the 365-average. Maryland does not support the variable daily load method. ¦ Virginia favors the statistical multiplier method. ¦ DC favors using a combination method. ¦ WV favors using the 365 day-average. ¦ DE favors using the annual average. DE would need to see permit information before agreeing to a multiplier method. ACTION: The Water Quality Steering Committee will review the jurisdictions' opinions on choosing a daily loads methodology for final decision. Next Reevaluation Technical Workgroup Conference Call 4 ------- Thursday. July 31. 2008 10:00 to 11:30 AM Topic: Revise Bay TMDL Schedule Topic: Revise Bay TMDL Report Outline Topic: Addressing Stormwater in the Bay TMDL Topic: Reasonable Assurance Participants Jennifer Sincock EPA Region 3 sincock.i ennifer(a),epa. gov Rich Batiuk EPA/CBPO batiuk.richardfo), epa.gov Julie Winters EPA/CBPO winters.iuliefo),epa.gov Mark Dubin UMD/CBPO mdubinfo),chesaDeakebav.net Jeff Sweeney UMD/CBPO i sweenevfo),chesapeakebav.net Lewis Linker EPA/CBPO llinkerfo),chesaoeakebav.net Sara Parr CRC/CBPO sparr (a), chesapeakebav.net Olivia Devereux UMD/CBPO odevereux(a),che saoeakeb av. net Peter Claggett USGS/CBPO pclaggetfo),chesapeakebav.net Reggie Parrish EPA/CBPO Danish.reginaldfo),eoa.gov Chris Day EPA Region 3 Christopher. dav(S),epa. gov Ed Reilly NY DEC exreillv(S),gw.dec.state.nv.us Ron Entringer NY DEC raentrinfo), gw. dec. state. nv. us Pat Buckley PA DEP DbucklevfS),state.oa.us Kenn Pattison PA DEP kpattisonfo),state.pa.us Hassan Mirsajadi DEDNREC has san. mir sai adi (a), state. de. us Monir Chowdhury DDOE monir. chowdhurv(S),dc. gov John Kennedy VADEQ i mkennedv(S),dea .Virginia, gov Bill Keeling VADCR William, keeling®, dcr.virginia.gov Tom Thornton MDE tthornton(a),mde. state.md.us Dinorah Dalmasy MDE ddalmasv(3),mde. state, md. us Robin Pellicano MDE rDellicano(a),mde. state.md.us Tim Rule MDE trul e(a),mde. state .md.us Patsy Allen MDE Dallen(a),mde. state, md.us Jim Lane WV DEP ilanefo), wvdep.org Clint Boschen Tetra Tech clint.boschenfo), tetratech-ffx.com Andrew Parker Tetra Tech Andrew. parker(a),tetratech-ffx. com 5 ------- |