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With a background that includes working with nuclear submarine reactors, solid waste management, developing mercury control programs, regulating animal feedlots and removing a dam to restore a historic shad run, no one can say that Nicholas DiPasquale has lacked variety in the issues he has dealt with.
Recently named the fourth Bay Program director in the last decade, he may well need that versatility and experience as he seeks to lead six states, the District of Columbia, 11 federal agencies and hundreds of local governments and organizations in the effort to clean up the Bay's water and restore a healthy, biologically diverse ecosystem.
DiPasquale, 59, who left a job as a senior consultant with a private engineering firm to take the post, arrives at a time when the 28-year-old partnership is under more scrutiny, and criticism, than ever.
In the last year, Bay cleanup efforts have come under attack by Congress, and the EPA has been sued over its total maximum daily load, or pollution diet, which sets legally binding limits on the amount of nutrients and sediment that can enter the Chesapeake.
Internally, many longtime Bay restoration participants grumble that the program has become focused on water quality to the point that other natural resource issues have been bumped to the background.
Still, DiPasquale said, "it is the perfect time to be here if you really want to make a difference and get something done."
Indeed, the new scrutiny in part reflects the program's heightened level of activity. The Chesapeake Bay TMDL, finalized in December, is the largest, most complex cleanup plan written for any water body in the country. It was developed with the intent of accelerating action after two decades of largely voluntary efforts repeatedly failed to meet cleanup objectives.
Meanwhile, an executive order signed by President Obama in 2009 led to a detailed federal Bay strategy objectives to not only restore water quality, but also bring back populations of critical fish and wildlife populations, restore their habitats and protect the region's landscape.
At the same time, restoration efforts - always daunting - have become even more challenging as state and federal environmental funding dries up.
"That's definitely going to be an issue," DiPasquale acknowledged. "And earthquakes, hurricanes and raging rainstorms aren't helping any."
Indeed, Mother Nature hasn't cooperated, dumping huge amounts of rain on the watershed and creating some of the worst water quality conditions on record. She even threw in a good Earth shaking.
DiPasquale's background includes a blend of regulations and natural resource management. He started his career dealing with solid waste at the state level in Missouri, implementing the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which he called "hardcore regulations - you either comply with them or you are going to get slapped." In other positions, and in other states, he has overseen water and air regulatory programs.
But in Delaware, as secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, he not only headed environmental enforcement efforts, but also natural resource programs, overseeing state parks and fish and wildlife management. In that capacity, he negotiated the state's largest settlement of an enforcement case against a petroleum refinery, resulting in a $4.25 million penalty and a $120 million pollution control upgrade. He also launched the state's Biodiversity Conservation Partnership and Green Infrastructure Initiatives to identify and protect important ecological functions and values throughout the state.
DiPasquale was so intrigued with the biodiversity work that when he was later named deputy secretary for the Office of Air, Recycling & Radiation Protection in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, he asked to be a representative on the state's Biodiversity Conservation Initiative, even though it had little to do with his job.
"I've always felt that if you are going to look at the environment, you need to look at it on an ecosystem basis," he said. "It doesn't make any sense to pick the pieces out and look at them as independent entities because they are all connected."
That's part of the attraction of the Bay Program position, he said. "This is an ecosystem approach; it brings all the parties together, pretty much under one roof."
DiPasquale wants to maintain emphasis on implementing the TMDL while bringing renewed attention to natural resources issues.
As part of the TMDL, the EPA is requiring states to submit planning milestones that lay out their nutrient reduction goals for milestones in two-year increments.
One of DiPasquale's tasks is to get federal agencies to develop meaningful milestones, not only for nutrient reductions, but for the other actions laid out in the federal Chesapeake Bay restoration strategy released last year - the goals for habitat, fish and wildlife, and protecting lands.
"I don't think we can ask the states to make all these commitments and agree to milestones and be held accountable if we aren't doing the same thing ourselves," he said.
With the addition of DiPasquale, the two most senior EPA positions at the Bay Program are filled by men with extensive state backgrounds. Earlier this year, Jeff Corbin, who was Virginia's assistant secretary of natural resources in the administration of former Gov. Tim Kaine, was named senior adviser for the Chesapeake Bay and Anacostia River to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, a position sometimes dubbed the "Bay czar."
For Dipasquale, it's been quite a journey for a boy who grew up within walking distance of Lake Ontario in Syracuse, NY. He later served in the Navy, where he was a nuclear power plant reactor operator on a ballistic missile submarine.
In 1970, he graduated with a degree in public administration from the State University of New York at Brockport, and in 1981 received a master's degree in energy and environmental policy from Washington University in St. Louis.
He worked as a research analyst in the Missouri House of Representatives and later for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, where he variously headed waste management and water pollution control programs.
In 1993, he moved east to head the Division of Air and Water Management for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. In 1999, he was promoted to cabinet secretary overseeing the entire 800-employee department.
After leaving that position in 2002, he served as director of the Brandywine Conservancy's Environmental Management Center in Pennsylvania, and was deputy secretary for air programs in the Pennsylvania DEP. For the last six years, he has been an environmental consultant, working on issues ranging from offshore wind energy to concentrated animal feeding operation regulations.
DiPasquale sees his new job as a capstone to his diverse career. Yet he still remains within walking distance to the local waterway, Spa Creek in Annapolis, where the EPA Bay Program Office is located. But, he said, "I could probably kayak there even faster."
This article credits Bay Journal News Service
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