Environmentalists are looking to the House of Delegates to move forward with an ambitions plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 90 percent. The Senate is working through an emission reducing bill, but it has been stripped down to take some authority away from the Maryland Department of the Environment. The MDE would oversee the reduction plan.

Business and industrial groups have warned that mandatory reduction could cripple Maryland’s economy, especially if Maryland has tougher emissions limits than competing states.

Monday morning, The Alliance for Global Warming Solutions, a group made up of Maryland environmental organizations advocating for the bill, got creative in punctuating their point. They drew a chalk line across the center of Main Street in Annapolis, which they said illustrates the potential reach of the Chesapeake Bay if there was a sea level rise around 20 feet.

It was a striking visual, a thick blue line that nearly reached Chick & Ruth’s Delly, a popular State House dining destination. Anne Arundel County police hovered nearby to make sure the line got washed off the historic brick street when the demonstration was done.

The bill could come to a final vote in the Senate late Monday. I’ll keep you posted.

Above: Claire Douglass, the Maryland Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, painted a blue line in chalk across Main street in downtown Annapolis to illustrate a projected 20 foot rise in sea level and the future waterline of the Chesapeake Bay if the Greenland ice sheet melts. (AP Photo/Jamie C. Horton)