By RUSTY DENNEN

A tough new "pollution diet" for the Chesapeake Bay will hit Virginia farmers in the pocketbook.

And a representative of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation said yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency, which is preparing the rules, should not be telling Virginians how to achieve bay water-quality improvements.

Speaking before the Potomac Watershed Roundtable meeting at Westmoreland State Park, Wilmer Stoneman said the plan will place unnecessary new regulations and costs on farmers already hit hard by the economic downturn.

"We think the EPA is certainly asking the state to regulate agriculture, and I mean all of agriculture," said Stoneman, who serves on the Farm Bureau's government relations staff.

He said the pollution diet, known as a total maximum daily load, or TMDL, was best described in a sign a Culpeper farmer recently carried at a meeting on the topic in Fredericksburg: "Taking Mom, Dad's Land."

Stoneman said one component of the plan would have farmers fence off streams to cut pollutants from manure.

A Shenandoah Valley farmer, he said, estimated that cost to be about $40,000 for a farm with 30 to 60 animals.

"Multiply that by farms in the bay watershed and you get $800 million."

Stoneman said EPA computer models that came up with the TMDLs for the six states that border the bay don't fully reflect pollution controls farmers are already doing.

"Virginians can address water quality. We don't need the EPA in the mix. Give us some self-determination," Stoneman said.

Environmental groups, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Friends of the Rappahannock, say that's a big part of the problem--that the state is not doing enough.

As part of the EPA initiative, Virginia prepared a watershed implementation plan allocating pollution loads for pollutants, and ways to achieve them.

Critics say that plan is short on specifics, particularly where the money will come from. The EPA has said elements of the watershed implementation plan controlling farm and stormwater runoff need improvement.

Virginia officials argue that billions of dollars have been spent on bay cleanup to date, that funding options are limited in a down economy, some groups would bear a disproportionate share of the cost, and that pollution models used in the analyses are flawed.