The Potomac River provides a beautiful backdrop to so much of Northern Virginia, from the rugged areas of the Potomac Gorge from above Great Falls down into Arlington to the broad tidal Potomac from Alexandria, then meandering down to the Chesapeake Bay.

The river and the bay are an important part of our local identity, part of our local heritage and a remarkable environmental and recreational resource.

While over the past decade, federal and local governments plus environmental groups and activists have devoted much energy and attention to the health of the Chesapeake Bay, we have been losing ground. This is despite a clear understanding of the pollution problems and the exact limits that would be required to make the bay healthy. There are three major sources of pollution in the bay, sewage treatment plants, agriculture and stormwater runoff from roads, driveways and parking lots. The resulting growing influx of “nutrients” from these sources causes an unnatural growth of aquatic plants in the bay, absorbing oxygen and then dying off, creating massive, floating dead zones where no life can survive.

Now, new legislation, the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009, proposed in both the House and the Senate, has a chance to make all the difference for the bay — and also much of the Potomac River from Arlington and Alexandria on down.

While the bills would ensure that the six states in the bay watershed and the District of Columbia develop and implement detailed plans to reduce pollution sufficiently to achieve the Bay-wide reduction targets for nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment by 2025, it also has national implications as a blueprint for improving the health of other wetlands and waterways around the county.

U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, an original cosponsor of legislation to reauthorize the Chesapeake Bay program, successfully urged the inclusion of language that will limit runoff into the bay from impervious surfaces, the one source of pollution that has continued to grow dramatically along with population growth around the bay watershed. Connolly’s capacity to relate complex problems to solutions that would work in local government land use and stormwater regulation is invaluable in this. U.S. Rep. Jim Moran and U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen are also cosponsors of the bill in the House. U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) is author of the bill in the Senate; Virginia's U.S. Senators Mark Warner (D) and Jim Webb (D) should get on board as well.

The legislation proposed would connect the scientific understanding of the pollution levels with incentives, penalties (withholding of federal money if standards aren’t met) and flexibility (interstate nutrient trading provisions) to achieve the necessary levels.

While this legislation is aimed at the Chesapeake Bay, local streams and rivers will also benefit in the process.