Brook Masters, a reporter
assigned to the Post's Metropolitan desk, wondered whether the
federal government had developed a consistent plan for enforcing
the environmental laws for the Chesapeake Bay, a fragile inland
sea threatened on all sides by rapid development. There was good
anecdotal evidence -- at least at the state level -- that the
politicians of Virginia were a lot less worried about the state
of the bay than their colleagues in Maryland. But was there authoritative
data that would show whether the political mindset of Virginia
had in fact influenced the enforcement of environmental laws in
regard to the Chesapeake? On June 19, 1998, the Post published
an investigative article by Masters showing that while the federal
prosecution of environmental criminals had tripled in Maryland
from 1992 to 1996, the number of such cases in Virginia had declined
by more than 60 percent.
