Chesapeake Bay Action Plan

After decades of effort, the voluntary, collaborative approach to restoring the health and vitality of the Chesapeake Bay— the largest estuary in the United States—has not worked and, in fact, is failing.

A diverse group of 57 senior scientists and policymakers have joined forces to save the Bay.  This is our plan.

A death warrant for the Chesapeake Bay?

By admin | December 29, 2023

Opinion by GERALD WINEGRAD

Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement. As a Maryland state senator at the time, I witnessed this event along with 700 other hopeful activists. Our optimism for a clean bay is being crushed as the harsh reality sinks in: The Environmental Protection Agency is badly failing in its duty to enforce the Clean Water Act and to prod bay states to meet mandatory pollution reductions to restore the Chesapeake. This is despite the states being given 15 years to comply.

My prescription for restoring Chesapeake Bay demands strong medicine!

By admin | November 20, 2023

This might be a Hail Mary pass, but it is time for policy makers to end the greenwashing and half-measures and adopt these proposals. Bay Restoration Prescription. The price of not doing so is a degraded Chesapeake with lurking flesh-eating diseases and dying fisheries…

EPA and bay state governors again do nothing to advance the cause of a clean Chesapeake Bay

By admin | November 6, 2023

These top scientists found that reductions in key bay pollutants of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment were likely overestimated from BMPs for agriculture and developed lands. The BMPs were not as effective as thought. “While Chesapeake Bay Program modeling suggests that phosphorus reductions targeted by the TMDL are nearly achieved, analysis of water quality at riverine monitoring stations finds limited evidence of observable reductions in P concentrations.”

Efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay are a study in cowardice and political expediency

By admin | November 6, 2023

There is more very bad news for all of us in Chesapeake Country: the bay watershed lost 20,000 acres of forest a year (2013-2018). Maryland led the way. A new study also shows that developed impervious areas in the watershed increased by 50,651 acres from 2013 to 2018. This is mostly from new structures, roads, driveways, parking lots and runways.

Chicken industry wins again, crippling Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts

By admin | August 22, 2023

In 2022, the industrialized Delmarva chicken industry produced 596 million chickens in 4,889 chicken houses—a record 4.4 billion pounds of chicken and $5 billion in wholesale value. This was a 38% broiler increase in a decade. These chickens produced 1.5 billion pounds of chicken excrement — equal to the weight of two Statues of Liberty! Corn and soybeans grown for feed are highly nitrogen intensive, adding more nitrogen to the bay.

Clamping down on farm pollution is a necessity for a better Chesapeake Bay

By admin | July 24, 2023

This is the third time a cleanup deadline has been missed without sanctions as Clean Water Act violations by the states are ignored by the EPA and no new regulatory and financial initiatives are required.

At the root of this failure is agricultural pollution. We have allowed agribusiness to lather 25% of the bay watershed with millions of tons of fertilizers and animal excrement from 83,000 farms. Agriculture has become the largest and least-regulated source of bay pollutants: 50% of nitrogen; 45% of phosphorus; and 60% of bay choking sediment.

Agriculture is destroying the Chesapeake Bay

By admin | July 7, 2023

Between 1950 and 1982, the amount of nitrogen from manure and fertilizer applied to bay crop land nearly doubled, reaching 960 million pounds annually, as farmland decreased by nearly half. Alarmingly, the average annual rate of nutrient reductions from bay region farmland has actually decreased since 2009.

Environmental hypocrisy at work in train wreck wastewater treatment blockage

By admin | April 5, 2023

Commentary by Gerald Winegrad: In politics, as in life, there is nothing more abhorrent to me than hypocrisy. The colossal outrage expressed by Baltimore City and County elected officials, joined by state and federal counterparts, against the proper treatment of wastewater from the Feb. 3 Ohio train wreck by Clean Harbors of Baltimore reeks of…

We are senior Chesapeake Bay scientists and policymakers from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania who have concluded that after decades of effort, the voluntary, collaborative approach to restoring the health and vitality of the largest estuary in the United States has not worked and, in fact, is failing. Our group unanimously recommends that all states draining into the Chesapeake Bay adopt our 25 action items in their Watershed Implementation Plans (WIP) and implement them to improve the Bay’s water quality and to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act.

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