Maryland Plans New 'Bay Diet'

 WaPoo, Gov. Wes Moore pledges new cleanup approach to Chesapeake Bay

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced a new tack in trying to restore the Chesapeake Bay on Thursday, shifting away from broad-stroke efforts to return the nation’s largest estuary to its heyday.

Instead, the state will focus on targeted strategies that rehabilitate specific, shallow-water habitats. The change to focus on many smaller sources of pollution — often flowing off private property — will require more coordination to implement.
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A May report by the federal Chesapeake Bay Program found that not only were most states failing to meet their pollution-reduction targets but the significant reductions that have been made ultimately had little impact on overall water quality.

In 1985, for example, the program found just 27 percent of the Chesapeake Bay met water quality standards. By 2020, that figure had only risen to the mid-30 range, the report said.

Maryland, along with Pennsylvania and Virginia, is not on track to meet pollution-reduction levels spelled out in a landmark 2010 agreement among the six states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Pennsylvania is the furthest behind its goals in the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, a regional pact to reclaim the bay.
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Moore’s shift will instead focus more on pollution from diffuse sources, known as “nonpoint source” polluters, such as scores of small farms or deforested coast lines that add up to big pollution contributions.

Cleanup efforts have always tried to adopt both point-source and nonpoint source reductions, but the latter has been more slowly adopted. The May report suggested the shift in focus that on Thursday Moore said Maryland would undertake. “Maryland will become the first state in the nation to formally embrace” that approach, Moore said.

Maryland’s new strategy is multifaceted, but one element highlighted by state officials will focus on targeted restoration of shallow water habitat, where conservationists expect to get the most impact from cleaner water and where striped bass and crab nurseries could flourish.

The state may also shift away from paying property owners to simply use best practices to reduce pollution flowing off their land into the waterway. Instead, property owners could need to demonstrate results, getting cash for effectively deploying those best practices. And adjacent land owners that work together to clean a single waterway, for example, could get higher priority for state and federal funding that Maryland doles out. Projects may also be reviewed for how they can leverage multiple funding sources and improve the industries dependent on the bay’s health, such as oyster farming.

This isn't really coming into focus for me, but when I hear "focus more on pollution from diffuse sources", what I think it means is letting Baltimore, and the other cities off the hook, and focusing their efforts on farmers. Prove me wrong.