Progress made in Chesapeake Bay restoration, but uncertainty remains in tackling challenges ahead

Yahoo

30-01-2025

Though environmental leaders acknowledged that progress has been made in restoring the Chesapeake Bay, some challenges and uncertainty remain as they plan for the future.
At a Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee briefing this week, top environmental officials reflected on the work accomplished under the multi-state Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement and emphasized the need to focus on bipartisan collaboration to make that continue.
Some of the headway made since the 2014 agreement, which outlines goals to clean up the bay, includes the smallest dead zone on record observed in the bay in 2023, three consecutive years of increases in underwater grasses, large-scale oyster restoration and land conservation, according to Anna Killius, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission.
But while there has been 'meaningful progress,' Killius said, it's not all good news. The watershed agreement outlined 31 goals to aim for in restoration efforts by 2025, but 13 are off course, prompting the question of what comes next.
Plenty of work remains to restore the bay, including reducing pollution through improvements to wastewater treatment plants, updated stormwater regulations and reduced nutrient applications in certain areas.
In December, the Chesapeake Bay Program's executive council issued a directive for the agreement to be revised by the end of 2025, which could mean new deadlines or goals to replace the ones already achieved.
'For outcomes that we are on track [for] or have already met … we need to ask, is there a new target that we're aiming for?' Killius said. 'For outcomes that we haven't met, like the Watershed Implementation Plan, we need to decide: is there a new deadline, or do we need to fundamentally rethink how we are aiming to meet these targets?'
But looking forward, evolving science is allowing state officials to make better management decisions in real time and helping to focus on where interventions should be targeted, said Maryland Secretary of Natural Resources Josh Kurtz.
Protecting the 'fragile' progress that's already been made will be key in future restoration efforts, said Allison Colden, the Maryland executive director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
'The investments that we've made thus far need to be protected to ensure that we don't backslide, making our efforts moving forward even more difficult,' she said.
However, uncertainty could be on the horizon under President Donald Trump. Widespread confusion ensued across the state when the Trump administration ordered a freeze on federal grants Monday and rescinded it Wednesday.
State officials said Tuesday that the freeze would have affected Maryland's environmental departments, but Kurtz said some preparations were already underway.
​​'We've been doing a deep level of analysis for the past year in terms of looking at each one of these fund sources, what they're funding internally at our departments, to come up with plans — if these funding freezes become permanent — how we would be able to reallocate internal assets to make sure that we're still getting the progress done,' he said at the briefing.
It's too soon to know how the new federal administration could impact individual progress across any goals outlined in the watershed agreement, Killius said.
'We do know kind of what we were working with under the previous Trump administration when it came to the Bay Program,' she said. 'I think we're kind of refreshing our playbook from that administration to work with them again.'
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