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ANNAPOLIS — The federal government must use its bully pulpit to reverse pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, according to Bay advocates and scientists.

At a town hall meeting this week concerning the Bay, they said that state-set goals that have lacked federal oversight or penalties for failure have been set repeatedly for more than two decades — and have largely failed.

"Like it or not, [the federal government] is the only jurisdiction by law that can manage the Chesapeake Bay watershed as a single system," said Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

There are not examples of voluntary statewide efforts that have succeeded in reversing Bay pollution, said Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge, at the meeting, which was held Tuesday at St. Philip's Episcopal Church.

On the flip side, government bans on the chlorofluorocarbons found in hairspray that contribute to ozone depletion and on smoking in public places are effective, Boesch told the standing-room-only crowd of about 300.

The Bay needs "game-changing solutions," said Chuck Fox, the Environmental Protection Agency's senior adviser on the nation's largest and most prized estuary.

Changing the game means reducing the nitrogen pollution that feeds algae blooms and creates oxygen-deficient "dead zones" that are uninhabitable by the fish, crabs, oysters and plants that once thrived in the Bay, he said.

To "save the Bay," the nitrogen pollution must be reduced by 40 percent — from the current average of 320 million pounds that is dumped into the water each year to 175 million pounds, Fox said.

Under an executive order signed in May by President Obama (D), the EPA and other agencies have until Sept. 9 to draft plans to clean up the Bay.

"What goes into that plan will have a lot to do with what happens over the next decade," said Brad Heavner , state director of Environment Maryland and the moderator of Tuesday's discussion.

The federal order sets 2025 as an "end date" to put in place strategies for a Bay cleanup.

Advocates have called the order an unprecedented action by the federal government to take ownership of a problem that has defied efforts by the six Bay watershed states, including Maryland.

States will work toward two-year milestones for reducing the Total Maximum Daily Load of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution that is dumped into the Bay and its tributaries. The TMDL goals, which will be announced Oct. 22, are unique to each state.

Meeting the first set of milestones by the end of 2011 would yield a combined reduction of 15.8 million pounds of nitrogen and 1.05 million pounds of phosphorus, officials said.

The federal Clean Water Act is the biggest tool the federal government has for cleaning up the Bay, and it has worked well, Fox said. Yet, only 40 percent of all air pollution sources are regulated by federal or state governments, making deposits of airborne chemicals a problematic source of waterway pollution.

"That number has to change," Fox said. "We have to find a way of building more accountability and more performance into the system."

Some actions must be taken immediately, such as using the pollution limits set by the TMDLs, said Bernie Fowler, a former state senator and staunch Patuxent River advocate.

The EPA will hold public briefings on the TMDL process in November and December and will accept formal public comments on pollution limits. It expects to draft reduction plans next summer.

In the meantime, the public can track the development of the pollution reduction plans and see other information related to the executive order at executiveorder.chesapeakebay.net/.