In the good news, the Virginia General Assembly acted this year to reduce the amount of phosphorus based lawn fertilizer pouring into the Chesapeake Bay.

In the bad news, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a budget amendment by Virginia Rep. Robert Goodlatte stripping federal money for enforcement of newly-designated "total maximum daily loads" of nutrients entering the bay.

Our own Del. Harvey Morgan, in a widely-distributed letter, admonished Goodlatte for pushing this measure, noting a University of Virginia student found that "every public dollar spent on implementing agriculture best management practices would produce $1.56 in new economic activity for the locality." Meaning this would be money well invested for the economy as well as for the bay.

He continued, noting that due to the degraded condition of the bay, "Oyster shucking and picking houses have gone the way of the dinosaur. The number of jobs lost in the commercial fishing industr...