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Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said this week that he sees the Environmental Protection Agency as a partner in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

That was not always the case.

Gansler took office in 2007 saying that he intended to use the bully pulpit to clean up the Bay by prosecuting polluters under the federal Clean Water Act. But in his first years in office, he found his staff filing lawsuits against the EPA under President George W. Bush, including joining other states in calling for tighter federal limits on mercury emissions from power plants.

"I don't see us having to do that under this current EPA," Gansler (D) said after a speech Monday at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville to the Committee for Montgomery, a coalition of business, civic, labor, education and community-based organization leaders.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation recently announced that it was dropping a lawsuit against the EPA for failure to enforce the Clean Water Act. The foundation cited steps the agency has made under President Barack Obama (D) to refocus federal efforts at Bay cleanup.

J. Charles "Chuck" Fox, who is leading the federal Bay cleanup efforts as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's senior adviser on the Bay and the Anacostia River, served as Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources under Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D).

Fox also was a member of an environmental council convened by Gansler and continues to work closely with the Attorney General's Office, Gansler said.

"That said, I never put my faith in the federal government to be effective in wholesale environmental cleanup," Gansler said. "They tend to focus, as maybe they should, on the bigger issues, the bigger projects, and they let the smaller projects and smaller violations accumulate for the states to tackle."

In the 3 ½ years since he took office, Gansler has led enforcement actions against polluters across the state and focused on using the law to take a new approach to Bay cleanup, he told the Montgomery County leaders.

One idea that Gansler has promoted would find a new use for one of the Bay's biggest polluters: chicken manure.

"I think we're making great strides toward what I consider to be one of the biggest projects that we can do for the Chesapeake Bay in 50 years, which is to convert half of the chicken manure that's produced in Maryland each year into 45 megawatts of power," Gansler said.

After nearly three years, including efforts to successfully push for legislation that reclassifies chicken manure as a renewable energy resource and to bring farmers on board, "we're on the threshold of accomplishing it," Gansler said.

"We have everything in place except for a buyer to purchase the power," he said.

Gansler is seeking re-election this year. Neither he nor any challenger has yet to file. Last week, MarylandReporter.com reported that Alison Asti, the former executive director of the Maryland Stadium Authority, is considering a run for attorney general as a Republican.

Gansler spent about a half-hour addressing the group of county leaders, including answering questions about an Arizona immigration law and about a controversial opinion he issued in March on same-sex marriage.

In the opinion, Gansler said Maryland courts would likely recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Maryland is one of six states that prohibit same-sex marriages but is silent about how it handles same-sex marriages performed in other states.

"Clearly [the ban] is a violation of equal protection," Gansler said. "But it also is a violation, in my opinion, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And who cares?"

Gansler said he expects the issue to be decided by state courts and not by the legislature.

Maryland recognizes out-of-state marriages on other grounds, including common law, Gansler said.

Licenses issued in other states are also recognized by Maryland.

"[The opinion] has a lot less to do with gay marriage actually than with full faith and credit under the law and full faith and credit of states' rights," he said. "Substitute marriage license with driver's license."

Asked what role his office could play in the controversy over an Arizona law requiring people stopped by police to prove their citizenship, Gansler said, "We have no role in it, because it's unconstitutional."

"There is no issue that's more federal than the notion of people coming from another country into our country," he said. "That's the onus of the federal government. The local government, even if we wanted to, [has] no jurisdiction on immigration issues."

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler speaks at the Committee for Montgomery meeting in Rockville on Monday. He discussed Chesapeake Bay cleanup and the role of the EPA in enforcement actions against polluters.