Why? Well, the drugmaker goofed back in 2000, when the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality set new requirements that go into effect in 2011 and require Merck to reduce nutrient discharges from its Stonewall wastewater treatment plant by 80 percent. Merck engineers miscalculated its ability to meet the limits and the drugmaker petitioned the DEQ for an exception, which worries environmentalists.

“We’re being asked to do more than our requirements,” Barbara Wunder, the plant’s director of safety and environment, tells The Daily News Record of Harrisonburg, Va. “The technology isn’t there to bring us down to that level.” Merck found its mistake too late, explains, and so missed its chance to comment on the original state limits.

Nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, used to treat wastewater, are pollutants at high levels that create algae blooms and endanger fish and other animals. And conservationists say allowing Merck to discharge more of the material into the river in the future will endanger the state’s efforts to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay, the paper writes.

If the DEQ gives Merck a break, says Mike Gerel, a scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the DEQ needs to make additional cuts elsewhere. “Whether it’s another treatment plant, agriculture or from urban land, they’re going to have to [make cuts] somewhere else,” he frets to the paper. “Adding more [pollution] from these plants concerns us.”

The DEQ has made exceptions for plants that can’t meet the limits, according to John Kennedy, the DEQ’s Chesapeake Bay program manager. And now the department is looking into whether Merck can meet the limits with state-of-the-art technology. “Merck is evaluating different technologies they can use at their facility to provide the best performance they can,” Kennedy tells the paper.

But Gerel is concerned that the DEQ is bowing to pressure from companies like Merck, and endangering efforts to clean up the Bay. The DEQ, he says, needs to come up with a process that balances the concerns of companies like Merck with the need to protect the Bay with beefed up environmental regulations. And if exceptions are made, the state must eliminate pollution runoff from other sources, including farms, industrial plants and urban land.

“Why are we going to give more to Merck when we haven’t even figured out how to stay within our limits?” he wonders.