House lawmakers who are allied with the agriculture industry in opposition to U.S. EPA's sweeping plan to clean up Chesapeake Bay will examine the strategy and its national implications during a hearing Wednesday.

Criticism of the plan ran hot from Reps. Tim Holden (D-Pa.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) during a hearing last week before the full House Agriculture Committee, in which EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson defended the agency's effort (E&ENews PM, March 10).

That tone likely will continue during Wednesday's hearing before the panel's Conservation, Energy and Forestry Subcommittee.

EPA imposed a "pollution diet" on the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed at the end of last year that sets goals for how much phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment -- found in the runoff of farms and urban areas -- can be allowed to flow into the bay (Greenwire, Jan. 3).

The subpanel will also examine the plan's "implications on national watersheds," a nod to suspicions among many Republican and Democratic EPA critics that the cleanup plans for the Chesapeake watershed -- which spans the District of Columbia and the states of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia -- would be exported to the sprawling Mississippi River watershed, which covers 41 percent of the continental United States, including the Corn Belt.

Holden, the subcommittee's ranking member, blasted EPA last week for moving forward with the cleanup, launched by President Obama's May 2009 executive order, before lawmakers had a chance to implement $500 million in conservation and pollution controls authorized in the last farm bill.

"Agriculture wanted to be part of the solution to the bay problem," Holden told Jackson during last week's hearing. "The ink is not dry on the farm bill. USDA had not had time at all to implement any of these programs. And we get hit with this executive order. I think you understand the frustration that Mr. Goodlatte, myself and the producers feel."

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, March 16, at 10 a.m. in 1300 Longworth.

Witnesses: TBA.