Iowa has had excess agricultural nitrogen problems for many years. Their groundwater and surface waters have been affected. Des Moines made the right move to remove more N and try for compensation from the polluters. In the Chesapeake Bay with its huge watershed,  all of the wastewater plants have spent billions for greatly improved sewage treatment, so the wastewater discharges have done their jobs at significant cost. The farmers and poultry producers are by far the greatest source of nutrient input, but the politics protects them from tight controls. So, the municipalities are stuck with constantly increasing controls with marginal benefits, if any. As the  result of coercive  legal consent decrees, Washington DC is spending billions to dig storage tunnels to prevent the very occasional small but treated overflows from their combined sewers during high flow  wet weather, when there is the least or probably no adverse environmental effect, The real problem -agriculture- is not being addressed.

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Iowa has had excess agricultural nitrogen problems for many years. Their groundwater and surface waters have been affected. Des Moines made the right move to remove more N and try for compensation from the polluters. In the Chesapeake Bay with its huge watershed,  all of the wastewater plants have spent billions for greatly improved sewage treatment, so the wastewater discharges have done their jobs at significant cost. The farmers and poultry producers are by far the greatest source of nutrient input, but the politics protects them from tight controls. So, the municipalities are stuck with constantly increasing controls with marginal benefits, if any. As the  result of coercive  legal consent decrees, Washington DC is spending billions to dig storage tunnels to prevent the very occasional small but treated overflows from their combined sewers during high flow  wet weather, when there is the least or probably no adverse environmental effect, The real problem -agriculture- is not being addressed.