Mark Warner - U.S. Senate

The Commonwealth can claim some of our nation’s most pristine outdoor areas, from the mountains of the Southwest Virginia to the beaches of Tidewater. But at the beginning of the Warner Administration Virginia ranked last among the states in per capita spending on natural resource protection, and lagged behind its neighbors in the regional effort to protect the Chesapeake Bay.

During the Governor’s term, Virginia increased spending on natural resources by 34%, took a leadership role in protecting the Chesapeake Bay, and set new records for open space protection. By the end of his term, Virginians could be proud not only of their state’s natural beauty, but of their governments’ efforts to protect the environment as well.

Protecting the Chesapeake Bay

The nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay, has long been the pillar of the culture and the economy of many tidal communities in Virginia and neighboring states.

Governor Warner recognized that Virginia had not taken the steps necessary to protect this shared national treasure in the face of growing development. He set out to impose tougher regulations on discharges from wastewater treatment plants, while increasing the funding available to help meet the new requirements. On both fronts, with bipartisan help, Virginia was successful.

The Nation’s Toughest Nutrient Regulations

Excess amounts of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus degrade the Bay’s water quality and create “dead zones” within the Bay, where there is too little oxygen to support a healthy ecosystem. In fact, the federal Environmental Protection Agency included the Bay on its “Dirty Waters” list largely because of high amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Governor Warner took decisive action to reduce these nutrients and get the Bay off of EPA’s list by promoting more stringent regulations on discharges of nitrogen and phosphorous from wastewater treatment plants in the Bay watershed.

In December 2005, the Warner Administration announced final adoption of the most comprehensive nutrient reduction standards in the nation. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the most respected advocate for a healthy Bay, congratulated the Warner administration “for the far-reaching actions taken today and over the course of the past year. These regulations and their resulting nutrient limits will result in dramatic pollution reductions, cleaner rivers and a healthier Chesapeake Bay.”

More action is required, and Governor Warner is committed to continue working with our federal and Bay state partners.

Record Investment

Governor Warner didn’t simply impose new regulations without providing the funding to make compliance a reality. In his final budget, he proposed record investments in statewide water quality programs.

His proposals included $200 million for the Virginia Water Quality Improvement Fund to accelerate improvements to 92 wastewater treatment plants in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. That funding also allowed upgrades to reduce nitrogen loads by about 2.6 million pounds per year, almost two-thirds of the state’s 2010 Chesapeake Bay Agreement requirement, and helped reduce sewer bills for customers in affected communities. The Governor’s 2005 proposal came on top of $70 million dedicated to the Water Quality Improvement Fund in 2004.

Removing the “Ghost Fleet”

In 2002, Governor Warner tackled a problem ignored by his predecessors when he called for removal of the federal government’s James River Reserve Fleet. This “Ghost Fleet” was a collection of about 100 aging, decommissioned ships owned by the Navy, the Army and other government agencies, anchored in the middle of the James River. Some of the ships were rusting and many contained oil, asbestos and cancer-causing toxins that could be released into Virginia’s waters if they sank during a storm.

Governor Warner recognized the potential environmental disaster posed by the presence of the “Ghost Fleet,” and worked in a bipartisan way with Virginia’s congressional delegation to convince the federal government to begin removing the ships that posed the greatest danger. By March of 2006, approximately 50 of the ships had been removed, with more scheduled over the coming years. Preserving Virginia’s Water Supply

In the summer and fall of 2002, Virginia recorded one of the worst droughts in state history, a drought that had been developing over three exceptionally dry years. Governor Warner seized the moment to tackle a problem that no one before him had been able to solve – the lack of regional planning for water emergencies in Virginia.

With his leadership the Virginia State Water Control Board created a statewide water supply planning process – the first-ever comprehensive plan to ensure that localities have adequate water supply for 30 to 50 years into the future for all of their needs, including droughts or other emergencies.

Governor Warner also directed the creation of Virginia’s first-ever drought management plan. This plan establishes a workable plan for mitigating the effects of drought on municipalities and industry.

Clean Streams

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality monitors the Commonwealth’s rivers, streams and tidal waters to determine whether they are suitable for swimming, fishing and drinking. When pollutant levels are too high, those waters are designated “impaired.”

In 2003, Governor Warner called for a strategy to ensure that 450 additional impaired streams were cleaned to meet water quality standards by 2010. By the end of his term, 260 impaired water bodies had been removed from the EPA list.

During Governor Warner’s term, there were 17 water bodies across the state designated as “outstanding national resource waters.” This designation, also called “exceptional waters,” provided an additional level of monitoring and protection. These waters include one of Virginia’s two natural lakes, and included more than a dozen streams and estuaries. During the decade prior to Governor Warner’s term, only one body of water in Virginia had received this designation.

Safe Drinking Water

During his campaign, the Governor learned first-hand that thousands of Virginians in rural parts of the state still lacked access to safe, clean drinking water. In December 2002, he issued an Executive Order creating the Virginia Water Supply Initiative and ordered state agencies to use existing funds to connect 25,000 more Virginians with clean and reliable public water within five years. Virginia far exceeded that goal: during his term, almost 70,000 Virginians obtained access to clean public water for the first time.

Tougher Environmental Enforcement

When the Governor took office, Virginia’s environmental agencies were hamstrung in enforcing environmental laws because they could not impose penalties on violators of the state’s air and water laws without pursuing costly litigation. In 2005, the Governor proposed, and the General Assembly passed, groundbreaking legislation giving Virginia’s environmental agencies new authority to pursue and punish those who flagrantly and repeatedly violated Virginia’s environmental laws.

Under Governor Warner’s direction, the permit for one of Virginia’s solid waste landfills was revoked because of chronic violations, and an old coal-fired power plant closed temporarily because of severe violations of health-based air quality standards.

Conserving our Farms, Forests, Open Space and Historic Resources

At the beginning of his administration, Governor Warner placed a new emphasis on protecting Virginia’s parks, open spaces, and historic resources. With his leadership and support, Virginians overwhelmingly approved a bond referendum providing $119 million for state park acquisitions and improvements.

As a result, the state is now able to purchase land for three new state parks, 11 existing parks, 10 new natural area preserves and eight existing preserves. The bonds also provided funding for much-needed construction, improvement and repair projects throughout Virginia’s 34 existing state parks.

Governor Warner also petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2005 to provide additional protection to more than 380,000 acres of “roadless areas” in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Large, unfragmented blocks of forest are the most rapidly disappearing landscape nationwide, and Virginia has more roadless acreage in its national forests than any state in the East. The petition to the USDA that Governor Warner initiated was approved in June 2006, resulting in a special federal regulation being adopted to protect roadless areas in Virginia.

In addition to state- and federally-owned land, Governor Warner worked to increase protection for privately-owned property as well. The Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which recently celebrated its 250,000th acre under easement, accepted as many donations of conservation easements in the last five years as it did in its previous 35-year history.

Approximately 175,000 acres of family farms, forests, historic battlefields, and other open space were protected during the Warner administration, establishing Virginia as a national leader in open space conservation.

Reducing Air Pollution From Power Plants

Coal-fired power plants are among the largest emitters of air pollutants in the country – pollutants that cause acid rain and harm human health. June 2003, the Warner administration, along with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, and four other states entered into a settlement with Dominion Resources, the state’s largest electric utility, requiring Dominion to drastically reduce emissions from its power plants. At the time, it represented the largest settlement in the history of the Clean Air Act.