Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley inspects a floating wetlands prototype before the press conference at the Inner Harbor Maritime Institute. News21 photo by Jason Lenhart

BALTIMORE — The governors of Maryland and Virginia yesterday joined D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty in renewing calls for interstate cooperation in efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay.

“There may be political borders that divide that watershed, but nature doesn’t recognize those borders,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, after the annual meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council.

Representatives from West Virginia, New York and Delaware also attended, though the three bay watershed states have no members on the Executive Council, which was created in the 1983 Chesapeake Bay Agreement between Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.

“When it comes to our waters, we all know, from the governor of Virginia on up, that there are no borders,” said Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who welcomed the group. “The water runs from north to south, east to west, without consideration for jurisdiction or neighborhood or municipal border.”

But though the flags of all six states plus the nation’s capital fluttered in the breeze behind the politicians, no one from Pennsylvania was present. Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a member of the Executive Council, was meeting with the Pennsylvania Legislature about the state’s budget.

And EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the council chair, was also absent. She was in Louisiana dealing with the Gulf oil spill.

Though EPA Deputy Administrator Robert Perciasepe called increased transparency a hallmark of discussion during the meeting, the meeting itself was closed to the public.

And the speakers were reluctant to discuss the consequences and sanctions that could come for failing to meet cleanup milestones next year. Each state in the Chesapeake watershed has set goals to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus, the bay’s biggest pollutants, by December 2011. Recently, federal agencies said they would establish their own two-year milestones to complement state efforts.

The leaders focused at the press conference on the successes of their governments and agencies.

O’Malley and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell highlighted their state’s restrictions on harvests of blue crabs that helped cause a 60 percent rebound in the crab population from last year to this one.

O’Malley and Perciasepe spoke of the strides made in combining forces and sharing information with the public, especially the unveiling of ChesapeakeStat, a one-stop website for progress reports on restoration efforts across the expansive watershed. ChesapeakeStat is based on BayStat, started three years ago by Maryland’s government.

“I think we are entering an era of action in holding ourselves accountable for real, measurable results,” Perciasepe said. “The bay is an emotionally and culturally connected water body to the entire region, and it is vitally important to the 17 million people who live in this watershed that this multi-agency, multi-state process continue as strongly as possible.”

The level of progress toward cleanup goals has varied. Maryland has already reached its goal of maintaining 150,000 acres of no-till farming but has made no movement on its promise to transport 10,000 tons of manure out of the watershed area. But O’Malley remained optimistic even about the failures.

“There is a rhyme and a reason for picking those two-year milestones,” O’Malley said. “It’s so that all of us know where we’re succeeding and where we’re falling short, so that all of us hopefully can contribute to making sure that we hit those goals and the long-term goal of a much healthier bay.”

– by Kate Yanchulis