I was right again. The results are in, and our elected officials have failed to keep their promises to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. As we know, they banned dish detergent, a useless move that will make life more difficult, more expensive, and more primitive for working families statewide in 2009. Useless, because even environmentalists acknowledged that detergent accounts for no more than 3% of phosphorus in the Bay, even by the most extreme measurements. Meanwhile, medical waste continues to flow down from Pennsylvania, industrial and energy-based pollutants continue to be put into the air and ground water, and polluters continue to dump toxic waste into tributaries and the Bay itself. And because these culprits have paid off our officials with massive campaign contributions, those officials simply will not take action until we vote them out of office.

Examine the latest report, quite a contrast to the fiction we've heard from O'Malley, Bronrott, Lee, and Frosh:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report "shows that the mid-Atlantic region, including the Chesapeake Bay, has the greatest concentration of estuaries with moderate to high levels of nutrients - the largest contributor to pollution. And the bay is one of the worst estuaries in the nation when it comes to pollution that creates oxygen-starved 'dead zones.'"

"Nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen come from fertilizer and stormwater runoff as well as dirty air and outdated sewage treatment plants." - The Capital newspaper, Annapolis, MD

(Please note that they did not mention dish detergent as a source - as I just mentioned, it is not a significant source by any measurement.)

For shame, for shame.

In 2010, let's vote for real leadership for the Chesapeake Bay.