Baltimore Harbor Improved, Up to an "F"

How bad do you have to be to get props for improvement, and still get an F:

Baltimore harbor, watershed improving, but still get an 'F' for health

The third annual "Healthy Harbor Report Card" gives the watershed an "F" overall for the second straight year, with excessive bacteria from sewage and storm runoff making the water unsafe to touch, much less swim, in many places.

But water quality improved some in one harbor tributary, the Gwynns Falls, earning it a D-minus grade. And the new water wheel at the mouth of the Jones Falls kept 160 tons of trash out of the Inner Harbor.

"We're moving in the right direction, but we've got to pick up the pace," said Adam Lindquist, manager of the Healthy Harbor initiative for the Waterfront Partnership, a group of harbor-area businesses and tourist attractions.
. . .
Water-quality scores for the harbor, the tidal portion of the Patapsco River and the Gwynns and Jones falls ranged from 52 percent to 61 percent. Three of the four have shown modest improvement since the annual evaluations began in 2012, but the Jones Falls worsened last year.

Pretty bad.

FWIW, you can defeat the paywall on this the same way you can with the Wall Street Journal, just put the article title in to Google, and search on it. It's usually the first selection, and for some reason you can see the whole article.