Bay Diet Grift in Jeopardy

 The Bay Journal, EPA proposes ‘significant’ funding cuts to Chesapeake Bay advisors

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing deep spending cuts on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup that critics say will undermine the effort’s scientific integrity and public outreach.

The federal agency published a “notice of funding opportunity” on March 10 seeking applicants on a contract providing administrative support to four advisory committees to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the state-federal partnership leading the cleanup effort. The agreement would pay the winning applicant up to $2.45 million over five years.

On an annual basis, that would amount to a one-third cut from the total spent in 2025, according to figures provided by the EPA.

EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said the new amount “does not signal a reduced commitment” to the committees but rather an “increased commitment to direct implementation.” The agency will redirect the savings to grants that support what the spokesperson called “real, on the ground projects” that reduce nutrient and sediment pollution to the Bay.

But some environmental advocates and state policymakers say the reduction is deeper than it looks at first blush. The 2025 funding was reduced for at least some of the committees after the change in presidential administrations. Compared to 2023 and 2024, the contract represents a cut of 50% or more, they say.

Many of the effort’s advisors – who mostly consist of scientists, environmental regulators, clean-water advocates and agricultural leaders – were caught off guard by the action. Representatives of some of the program’s signatory partners say they weren’t asked for input, a breach of the cleanup program’s consensus-based, decision-making norms.

And some critics contend that the contract’s language gives the EPA unprecedented control over the committees’ ability to set their own priorities.

“It’s substantially different from previous requests for funding,” said Leila Duman, the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays restoration officer for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and a member of the Bay Program’s management board. “From a very broad level, this [notice] cuts about half of the funding that provides the coordination staff and potentially changes the way the advisory committees operate in a pretty significant way.”

My father once told me a story about a dictator, and three men ordered to carry a piano up a flight of stairs. When they told him it was impossible, he shot one, and then the remaining two carried the piano up the stairs. 

Bay Diet Undergoing Organizational Revision for the Next 15 Years

 Bay Journal, Revamping of Bay Program governance expected by summer

When the leaders of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup approved significant revisions last December to the 2014 watershed agreement, they defined what the multi-state and federal partnership will do over the next 15 years. Now, they’re turning their attention to “how.” By July, the Chesapeake Bay Program, which oversees the restoration of America’s largest estuary, is expected to finalize a plan to restructure its governance. Ultimately, the goal of the proposed changes to governance and structure are to advance implementation of the agreement and make the Chesapeake Bay Program more efficient and effective,” said Kelly Offner, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 3, in a statement.

Among the key recommendations put forward by an internal panel: fusing the top two committees into a single board, overhauling subject-specific groups to align with the watershed agreement’s changes and strengthening coordination with federal agencies. The restructuring has been in the works for the last few years alongside the effort to update the 2014 agreement. Bay Program officials wanted to have a new agreement in place — the fifth new or thoroughly revised pact in the program’s history — before the end of 2025.

To prepare for the reorganization, the EPA hired the Massachusetts-based Eastern Research Group to evaluate the Bay Program’s structure. The resulting 2024 report highlighted several longstanding criticisms of the effort’s bureaucracy, including that it has become overly complex, opaque, averse to accepting outsiders’ feedback and burdened by a “siloed” structure that impedes collaboration. The report recommended that officials “simplify and streamline” the program’s structure and processes. In December 2024, the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council directed the Principals’ Staff Committee to oversee a top-to-bottom analysis of the partnership’s management structure and implement changes by July 2026.

I like the idea of simplifying the structure, especially it it reduces the numbers of fingers in the pie, but I suspect something less is actually happening in practice.

 The proposed structural changes were developed through discussions with the Management Board and the Principals’ Staff Committee, Offner said. To help guide those talks, EPA staff members studied organizational structures and interviewed peers at other regional restoration programs, including the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Puget Sound Partnership and several National Estuary Programs.

Under the new structure, the Executive Council’s membership and roles would remain unchanged. But immediately beneath it in the hierarchy, there would be a big change: The Principals’ Staff Committee and the Management Board would be replaced by a single panel called the Policy Steering Committee, made up of “high-level jurisdictional and federal leaders.”

The steering committee would set priorities for implementation committees, which would in turn preside over goal teams arrayed around the revised agreement’s four priorities: healthy landscapes, clean water, habitats and engaged communities. There would also be groups that provide technical support, and advisory committees would continue to dispense expertise on topics ranging from local government to agriculture. The Chesapeake Executive Council gave the go-ahead to the raft of structural proposals at the same December 2025 meeting in which it approved the revised agreement.

In recent committee meetings, some observers came away worried that only state and federal representatives would be allowed to sit as co-chairs on committees. Historically, leaders of non-governmental organizations have been able to serve in those roles. “If I were trying to accelerate progress and address some of these barriers to success, I would want to talk to people on the ground doing the work, experiencing successes and failures in real time,” said Kristin Reilly, director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition. Offner said, though, that “there are no restrictions on non-governmental organizations leadership” chairing committees.

And if I wanted to slow the process, make it less efficient, and make sure more money was wasted on goals that will never be accomplished, I'd invite in a lot more people.

Another Dam Controversy

At the Balmer Banner, Eastern Shore opposition to Maryland’s $340M Conowingo Dam deal splinters

Barely a month after several Eastern Shore counties challenged Maryland and Constellation Energy’s $340 million deal to relicense the Conowingo Dam, three out of four objecting jurisdictions have backed out of the appeal. Dorchester County voted last week to withdraw its challenge to a state environmental certification for the dam, while the attorney leading the coalition spearheading the challenge said two other counties, Queen Anne’s and Kent, also backed out. That leaves only Cecil County, the northern Maryland county at the mouth of the Susquehanna River and Conowingo Dam, holding the line.

Asked about the withdrawals, Charles D. “Chip” MacLeod, the attorney for the Clean Chesapeake Coalition that filed the appeal, pointed to a campaign by Maryland environmental officials to dissuade counties from their challenge. “Lots of pressure being applied to local officials who dared to slow the process and bring attention to a bad deal for the Bay and Marylanders,” MacLeod said in an email Friday. Cecil County officials remain committed to the challenge “at this stage,” MacLeod said.

Maryland Department of the Environment officials have toured the Eastern Shore in recent weeks in an effort to convince the Republican-led four counties to reconsider. State officials met with county leaders at a recent Maryland Association of Counties summit and have presented at county council meetings in both Cecil and Dorchester counties to make their case for the downstream benefits of the settlement deal. The effort appears to have paid off. Officials on the Dorchester County Council announced last week that they voted to withdraw from the appeal following conversations with state regulators.

A not so brief recap of the situation. When completed in 1928 on the Susquehanna River just above the head of Chesapeake Bay, Conowingo Dam was the second largest hydroelectric powerplant in the US. Immediately, sediments, natural erosion as well as agriculture enhanced silt, started to fill the "pool" behind the damn, protecting the Bay from them. When I arrived in the Chesapeake Bay region in 1985, the head of the EPA Bay Program said the filling of the pool with sediment was the single greatest threat to the Bay.  Years later, that threat has become reality. The pool behind the damn has no room for more sediment, and in freshets, mud simple pours over the dam. Rather than plan ahead, the authorities decided to wait, and then blame whoever owned the dam at the time for the situation reverting back how it would be in the dams absence, tying restoring the pool (at least somewhat) to relicensing the dam. If it were me, I might just offer to hand them the keys for a buck or two, and find out how they deal with it.

Chesapeake Streams Tell the Story

The Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin issues a News Release: Streams showing slow, but steady, improvement in the Chesapeake Bay watershed

A new report from the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), the organization tasked with assembling and reporting the data, shows a 1.4 percent improvement in overall stream health throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed over the past six years.

The tracking tool is a Chesapeake basin-wide index of biotic integrity for stream macroinvertebrates, known as Chessie BIBI for short. One way scientists gauge the health of a stream is by figuring out who calls it home. Specifically, how many and what species of benthic macroinvertebrates — the scientific term for creek critters like dragonfly and stonefly larvae — are living at the bottom of a stream. Some creek critters need healthy streams to live while others are more tolerant of poor conditions.

“It would be too expensive to monitor for every possible contaminant in every part of the stream,” explains Dr. Claire Buchanan, director emerita at ICPRB and one of the study’s co-authors. “The health of the creek critters gives us a good gauge on the overall health of the stream because their numbers show a predictable pattern depending on their sensitivity to pollution. If something is going wrong — or right — they’re going to tell us.”

The Chessie BIBI tracks percent improvement over 6-year intervals to capture the various monitoring schedules across the watershed.

In the past quarter century, Chessie BIBI has seen which translates to almost 15,000 healthier stream miles overall, according to the report. With the new numbers, an estimated two-thirds of the roughly 145,000 stream miles in the Bay watershed now have Chessie BIBI ratings of excellent, good, or fair.

So, looking at their map, we see a band of streams in relatively poor health along the fall line, where most of the urbanization has occurred. However, despite all the hyperventilation about Pennsylvania not holding up it's end of the Bay Diet by controlling agriculture, the hinterlands of Pennsylvania look pretty good. Maryland's Eastern Shore is a little iffy. 

Well That Clears Things Up

At the Bay Journal, Understanding Chesapeake Bay water clarity isn’t clear cut

One of the murkiest questions surrounding the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort seems like it should be the easiest to answer: Is the water getting clearer? For decades, widely used data indicate that, overall, water clarity is getting worse. Earlier this year, for instance, the Chesapeake Bay Report Card released by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science reported that 2024 water clarity was “very poor” and that “water clarity scores continue to show a significant decline over time.”

One of the major goals of the state-federal Bay Program partnership is to reduce the amount of sediment and nutrients entering the Bay to improve clarity so that underwater grass beds can get enough light to survive.  The region has spent billions of dollars to control sediment and nutrient-fueled algae blooms that cloud the water — seemingly without significant results. Yet underwater grass beds in the Bay have expanded even as data seem to show that the water is murkier. The amount of submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, increased from 38,227 acres in 1984 to 78,451 acres last year.

If the water is cloudy, how are grasses getting enough light to expand? A recent analysis published in the Annual Review of Marine Science came up with an answer, though it is murky too: The amount of light available for plants is improving, even if it doesn’t always look that way.  “For a long time, the story was that we’ve been cleaning up the watershed, but clarity is not improving,” said Jessie Turner, an assistant professor in the Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences at Old Dominion University, who was the lead author of the journal article. “That has switched, but it was hard to untangle things.”

Turner has been trying to sort out the story for nearly a decade, first as a student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and then in her current position. Former colleagues from VIMS and the University of Delaware are co-authors of the article. It turns out that how far we see into the water — how visibly “clear” it is — is not the same thing as how much light is passing through that water.

The Bay goal is to get more light to underwater plants, but the main tool for measuring clarity has been the Secchi disk — a black and white disk that is lowered into the water until it disappears. The Secchi disk is cheap and easy to use and has been relied upon for decades by researchers and citizen scientists. But it measures visual clarity, not the amount or quality of light that might be reaching plants on the bottom.

Bay water is filled with tiny particles. Some are bits of sediment, but many are tiny algae cells and microscopic bits of detritus from organic material that is breaking down in the water. Those organic particles limit visibility, but they don’t block light waves. Instead, they scatter them, reflecting light through the water column. Turner likens it to headlights in a fog bank. The headlights brighten the fog, which is made up of tiny water particles, but a driver can’t see very far into it.

 

“You can have a lot of light getting to your eyeball in the fog, but the visibility is very poor,” Turner said. “In the water, that would look like a very shallow Secchi depth reading. But you still have enough light for something like seagrass.” “What ultimately matters to something like SAV is how much light is getting to the bottom.”

When Turner and her colleagues examined historical data gathered with specialized light sensors, they found a different trend than those seen with Secchi disks. Data from those sensors, which assess the amount of sunlight that is penetrating the water, including the specific wavelengths that are important for plant photosynthesis, show improvements since around 1990.

So they've been measuring the wrong thing for the last 35 years? Actual light, including spectrums, aren't that tough to measure. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: In Honor Of Alice Cooper available for browsing at the usual place and time.

Wanna Bet?

 Bay Journal, Chesapeake Bay leaders approve cleanup plan they call ‘achievable’

Leaders of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup approved major revisions Dec. 2 to the pact that has guided the effort for more than a decade, vowing speedier results despite uncertainty over federal funding.

“We are impatient,” said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and the outgoing chair of the Chesapeake Executive Council. “We want this to be the era of yes and now.”

The reworked Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement extends deadlines for cleanup goals to 2040, 57 years after the first agreement was signed in 1983. The latest action comes after earlier versions of the agreement— inked in 1987, 2000 and 2014 — fell short of achieving the central goal of significantly reducing nutrient and sediment pollution.

While I'm unlikely to be around to collect, I'm willing to put $1000 in escrow betting that 2040 will roll around, and a large number of the cleanup goals will be unmet.  They don't really want to actually get there, they'd have to dismantle an enormous bureaucracy devoted to pretending to solve the Bay's problems.

New Bay Diet Approved

 Chesapeake Bay Mag, Bay States Approve New Watershed Agreement with 2040 Deadline

Four governors and the mayor of Washington, D.C. descended on the National Aquarium in Baltimore Tuesday to adopt a revised Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. An update to the Chesapeake Bay restoration plan devised in 2014 with a 2025 deadline, this new Watershed Agreement will direct the next 15 years of Bay cleanup efforts.
. . .
The revised 2025 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement builds upon progress, according to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, instead of simply restarting the program. “We are redoubling our effort to make achievable, not just aspirational, goals.” While 2040 is the next big milestone date for the new agreement’s goals, there are “critical checkpoints” planned along the way, Youngkin said. The new agreement contains four goals: Thriving Habitats, Fisheries and Wildlife; Clean Water; Healthy Landscapes; and Engaged Communities. It also includes 21 outcomes for the Bay states to reach. To achieve the outcomes, the partners will create management strategies for each.

and from VIMS,  2025 Chesapeake Bay dead zone near long-term average

That's what you get for $25 Billion or so.

New Bay Diet Vote Tomorrow

From the Bay Journal, Revised Chesapeake cleanup agreement set for vote Dec. 2

The Chesapeake Bay Program’s Executive Council is set to consider adopting a raft of updates to the blueprint that has guided the multi-state and federal effort for more than a decade. The Bay Program has overseen the estuary’s cleanup since 1983, directly and indirectly influencing the spending of billions of dollars in environmental projects.

The council includes the governors of all six states in the Bay watershed — Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware and West Virginia — as well as the mayor of the District of Columbia; the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which consists mostly of state legislators.

As the Bay Journal went to press, four governors were expected to attend the meeting: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer (D) and outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Also expected to attend are the District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and Maryland state Sen. Sara Love (D), chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission.

The 2014 version of the Bay agreement had set a 2025 deadline for putting in place actions necessary to achieve a variety of goals, including reducing nutrient and sediment pollution, expanding public access to waterways, planting trees along streambanks and opening the upper reaches of rivers and streams to fish passage. The effort met a number of its goals but fell short of others, including the foundational goal to reduce nutrient pollution in the Bay.

The newly revised agreement extends the region’s cleanup commitment by 15 years. Many leading environmental groups have criticized the document as lacking ambition. They point to rollbacks, for example, in the amount of wetlands to be created.

The federal government shutdown in October and early November also prevented many agency experts from participating in the final days of revising the agreement.

But advocates for the new plan say it is an improvement over the first draft circulated for public comment over the summer. The revised version sets a uniform deadline of 2040 to reach the plan’s goals, with a 2033 midpoint assessment. And it more firmly ties states to meeting a mandatory “pollution diet” that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enacted in 2010.

“The Bay restoration movement could have easily fizzled out in the current climate of division and uncertainty, said Keisha Sedlacek, senior policy director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the region’s largest Bay advocacy group. “Instead, everyone worked to find common ground, creating a vision for the next 15 years,”

I expect it to be every bit as successful as the last one. 

A New Bay Diet Plan for Fisheries?

Seafood Source, Stakeholders nearing update on Chesapeake Bay Agreement with multiple goals for fisheries

Federal and state stakeholders are getting close on an update to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement – a voluntary accord that sets goals for conservation and clean water – laying out desired outcomes for some of the region’s fisheries. First established in 1983, signatories to the agreement include the governments of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New York, and the District of Columbia, along with the Chesapeake Bay Commission and federal agencies. The last update to the agreement was signed more than a decade ago in 2014, but officials are reportedly close to signing onto a revised agreement with final approval expected at a 2 December Chesapeake Executive Council meeting.

 

“Improvements in habitat and water quality lead to healthier wildlife and fisheries. Environmentally – including agriculturally – literate people are more engaged stewards of the Chesapeake Bay’s healthy watersheds. Better water quality means swimmable, fishable waters for watershed residents and visitors,” a recent draft of the agreement noted. “Healthy fish and shellfish populations support a vibrant economy for a spectrum of related industries.”

Among the agreement’s stated goals is to “protect, restore and sustain fisheries and wildlife, as well as the network of land and water habitats they depend on, to promote a balanced and resilient ecosystem and support local economies and recreational opportunities.”

That includes establishing a sustainable blue crab fishery in Chesapeake Bay, with cross-jurisdictional coordination via the Blue Crab Advisory Report. The most recent winter dredge survey found that the Bay’s blue crab numbers were the second-smallest in recent history with an estimated population of 238 million. CBF called the finding a “red flag,” pointing to environmental factors as one reason for the decline. In response, the watershed agreement sets an outcome of maintaining blue crab abundance and target harvest rates.

The draft also lists several goals for fish habitat and passage improvements, including:

• Improving the quality and quantity of tidal shallow water fish habitat;
• Increase consideration of forage species in fishery management decision-making for predator fish;
• Improve the quality of non-tidal fish habitat;
• Improve 270 stream miles of waters impaired by acid mine drainage by 2040;
• Develop freshwater mussel conservation plans for 10 tributaries; and
• Restore passage and connectivity to at least 150 miles of aquatic habitat every two years. The agreement would also continue collaborative work on oyster restoration in the bay, setting a goal of restoring 2,000 acres of oyster reef habitat by 2040.

 

After criticizing an earlier draft of the agreement as “lacking,” the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said the revised version is a noted improvement. “This agreement isn’t perfect, but it is essential. For decades, we’ve seen time and again that progress only comes when we work together toward shared goals,” CBF Senior Policy Director Keisha Sedlacek said in a statement. “This December, the Bay states and federal partners must come together and formally renew their promise to restore the Bay, guided by the revised agreement. We will keep advocating for the policies, investments, and science to exceed goals for a healthy Bay – and hold leaders accountable if they fall short.”

The primary fisheries of interest in the Bay are oysters, crabs, Stripped Bass and Menhaden (by far the largest by dollars). Of these, only oysters can be said to have been improved during the previous iterations of the Bay diet. I don't see what they're doing that is going to make a big difference. But the money will get spent. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Roll Tide up on time and under budget at The Other McCain.

Fifteen More Years to Save the Bay

From Lancaster Farming, Chesapeake Bay Program Committee Resets Bay Improvement Goals for 2040

A key committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program voted unanimously this week to accept a revised agreement that charts a way forward for bay improvements through 2040. The vote clears the way for the program’s executive council to give final approval in December. Members of the principals’ staff committee broke out in applause after consensus was reached at the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, on Oct. 28.

The revision is the result of “tens of thousands of hours” of work put in by program partners, said Josh Kurtz, secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and chair of the committee. While falling short of a 2035 target date favored by Maryland, Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for some of the goals, Kurtz said the agreement aims to “improve and streamline” the current one from 2014.

Public comment this summer criticized the draft agreement as being weak and lacking clear target dates, leading to some revisions since the comment period closed on Sept. 1. “The desire for a stronger, time-bound commitment was the No. 1 thing heard from the public during the feedback period,” Kurtz said earlier in October.

The 2040 target date compromise came from recognizing that states are at “very different places” in meeting nutrient reduction goals, he said. Kurtz believes the timeline will be voluntarily accelerated for some of the desired outcomes. “We’re still going to meet a lot of those goals before the 2040 timeline,” he said. 

The revised agreement streamlines the number of goals from 10 in the 2014 agreement to four broader goals that specify outcomes for clean water, fish and wildlife, healthy landscapes and engaged communities. Watershed-wide, conservation initiatives have fallen short of some targets outlined in the 2014 agreement, including those for reducing nitrogen and phosphorus loads by 2025.

ChesapeakeProgress, a public website tracking the progress of bay improvements, estimated that conservation practices are on track to achieve 59% of nitrogen reduction goals, 92% of phosphorus reductions and 100% of the sediment reduction target by 2025 compared to 2009 nutrient loads. Despite sediment reduction goals being met for the watershed as a whole, the website reported that Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania have not yet met their statewide targets. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia and West Virginia have met their statewide nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment targets, while Maryland has met its phosphorus and sediment goals and is on course to meet its nitrogen target for 2025.

I'll just be that in 2040, many of the goals will be unmet, and they will be looking at another round of funding. As Milton Friedman notes  “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

The Wednesday Wetness

MDDNR, Chesapeake Bay Monitoring Shows Hypoxia Conditions Improved in Late August and September

Data collected by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Old Dominion University showed an above average volume of hypoxia—waters with less than 2 mg/l of oxygen—in the Chesapeake Bay mainstem of Maryland and Virginia in early August, that then decreased to below average in late August and September.

Early August hypoxia remained consistent with late July with a volume of 1.85 cubic miles. and the tenth-highest early August volume in the past 38 years sampled. Anoxia – waters with less than 0.2 mg/l oxygen – was more than double the average at a volume of 0.54 cubic miles.

Hypoxia volumes decreased in late August to just below average, and anoxia also decreased to 0.06 cubic miles, one-third of average observed volumes.

September saw a further decrease in hypoxia volumes to less than half the average volume, and no anoxia was present; however, mechanical issues during the Sept. 15-17 cruise resulted in some missing data in the mainstem Bay around the Maryland/Virginia state line.

So, basically, not much different than the past. I'm sure glad we spent a lot of the $25 Billion Bay Diet on fixing hypoxia. But at least the bureaucracy is healthy.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Barbara Eden up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

Are They Cutting Climate Change out of Bay Diet?

I hope so. WHRO, Proposed revision to Chesapeake Bay agreement cuts out climate change, environmentalists say

The massive, decades-long effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay is at an inflection point. Significant progress has been made, including restoring oyster habitat across the region. Other goals have proven more difficult to achieve, such as cutting pollution.

Growing challenges from climate change now threaten to stall or reverse progress — and local environmental groups worry that proposed changes to the document guiding the bay restoration do not address those threats. “We are glossing over this giant problem that's going to make the bay agreements today and of the future really, really difficult,” said Mary-Carson Stiff, executive director of the Norfolk nonprofit Wetlands Watch.

The concerns stem from the recent release of a draft new iteration of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. Virginia and other states around the region signed onto the most recent agreement in 2014. It set 31 benchmarks for participants to voluntarily achieve by 2025, such as boosting seagrass and crab populations. Officials failed to meet about a third of the targets by this year’s deadline.

Late last year, the Chesapeake Executive Council, which includes Gov. Glenn Youngkin and sets the strategic vision for the restoration, launched an effort to formally revise the document by the end of 2025. The resulting draft was developed by a Chesapeake Bay Program committee made up of nearly three dozen members from various state and federal agencies. The draft document simplifies goals, consolidating the previous 10 goals and 31 specific outcomes into four broader goals and 21 outcomes.

The agreement “acknowledges that the partnership cannot address every issue at once and that progress must be made in a strategic manner, focusing on efforts that will achieve the most meaningful and cost-effective results,” officials wrote in the draft.

The 2014 agreement included climate resiliency as a goal and set objectives, including monitoring shifting sea level conditions in the bay ecosystem. The new draft does not mention climate change or sea level rise by name, Stiff said.

“All of a sudden, they change tune and use politically palatable language like ‘changing conditions,’” she said. “To not really speak truthfully about what the challenges are, it does a disservice to everyone who's a part of the hard work to actually implement the goals. The time is now to be radical.”

The Bay restoration project is to find ways to improve the condition of the Bay. Even assuming climate change is significantly changing the Bay, the question is whether that would be for the better or worse. There are plenty of fine, clean ecosystems south of the Bay. Besides, what are you, the Bay folks going to do to fix the climate, ban coal and oil in China and India?  

Maryland Legislators Getting Ready for the Next Round of Bay Dieting

CBS News Maryland lawmakers urge clear timelines, community oversight in updated Chesapeake Bay restoration plan

A group of Congressmembers representing the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Region is calling for a new agreement to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the rivers and streams throughout its watershed.

On Thursday, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, along with 22 other bipartisan Members of Congress, pushed for a new Chesapeake Bay agreement that "sets ambitious, measurable, and achievable targets, especially for water quality improvement and pollution reduction, in order to restore and protect the Bay," according to a press release.

In a letter written to the Chesapeake Executive Council (CEC), lawmakers addressed the numerous problems the Bay faces, including:

• Falling populations of key fish and wildlife species
• Emerging pollutants of concern
• Agricultural land and forest depletion
• Shifting environmental dynamics
• And the prevalence of invasive species

"While federal resources will continue to play an essential role in achieving our vision of a healthy Bay, we know that we cannot arrive at our many goals through such funding alone," the letter said. "A robust Watershed Agreement that sets measurable targets that are both ambitious and achievable is key to unlocking the full potential of federal support for the Bay and its watershed. Therefore, we are closely monitoring the PSC's work to update the agreement to meet current and future challenges."

A good start, but I suspect when they get in the back room to actually set the goals, every interest group will be pushing for more than is reasonable. 

Critics Fear Reasonable Bay Diet Goals

 Bay Journal, Bay agreement draft criticized as ‘weakening’ commitment

Proposed revisions to the plan that guides the Chesapeake Bay cleanup fall short of what many experts and environmental advocates want to see.

The draft document weakens several targets in place since 2014, including goals for restoring wetlands and establishing new public access points. Some goals provide only an X for amounts instead of real numbers, leaving crucial numerical objectives to be decided months or even years into the future. And, while many tasks face their own deadlines, there is no cutoff date by which the entire suite of initiatives must be completed.

“My initial thought was this was very incomplete,” said Keisha Sedlacek, senior policy director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “While the goals and outcomes included are the right ones, there is less accountability and detail than we were anticipating.”

The Chesapeake Bay Program, the state-federal collaboration that has overseen the cleanup since 1983, released an 18-page revised version of the 2014 Bay agreement for public comment on July 1. The program’s Executive Council is set to vote on a finalized draft in December.

Heaven forfend they should set goals that might be achieved.  Then they'd have to close up shop and go home.

Where Did the Swans Go?

From the Bay Journal, Where did the Chesapeake’s elegant tundra swans go?

Tundra swans breed in the Arctic during warmer months. In North America, they are grouped into Eastern and Western populations. The Eastern band travels more than 4,000 miles to winter in coastal areas from Maryland to North Carolina — mostly the latter nowadays.

Annual surveys conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service typically count 90,000-100,000 birds in the Eastern population, but their numbers unexpectedly dropped from a record high of 137,000 in 2023 to a 45-year low of 64,000 in 2024. Wildlife officials chalk up that decline to normal annual variation and not to any specific factors or threats.

As recently as the 1960s, the tundra swan population in North Carolina only numbered in the low thousands. In recent decades, the state has averaged approximately 65,000-75,000 wintering tundra swans, mostly in and immediately around the neck of land between the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, Morris said. He suspects that the birds found the region more hospitable after many of its forests were plowed under for cropland, offering them a ready food source. “We had swans, but nothing anywhere near like it is now,” he said.

But that influx might not have happened if not for concurrent changes in the Chesapeake Bay’s fragile ecosystem, according to Morris and other experts.

 

The Bay’s water quality had been on the decline for many years largely because of increasing nutrient and sediment pollution flowing off city streets, suburban yards and farm fields during heavy rain. The biggest turning point came in 1972, when the remnants of Hurricane Agnes triggered widespread flooding and a multi-decade downturn in the Bay’s health.

The cloudy water in the Bay and its tributaries smothered much of the underwater grasses that had fed and nourished generations of tundra swans, said Kayla Harvey, waterfowl program manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. As their preferred food dwindled, tundra swans began feeding in farm fields on waste grains, such as corn and soybeans.

By the 1980s and ’90s, North Carolina surpassed the Chesapeake as the population’s most important wintering ground.

Hunting pressure doesn’t appear to have impeded that trend. While Maryland legislators tried to legalize hunting the birds, arguing that it would bring in permit revenue, the bill died in committee. North Carolina, though, is among 10 states (including Delaware and Virginia in the Bay watershed) where tundra swan hunting is allowed. Because North Carolina has the largest population, the state receives the lion’s share of the federally allocated permits for the Eastern region — usually around 4,800 of the 5,600 total.

Bringing more tundra swans back to the Chesapeake will require continued efforts to revive its ecosystem, Harvey said. The biggest determinant will be increasing underwater grasses through actions such as direct seeding and improving water quality to support more growth, she added.

There used to be a pretty reliable small flock of Tundra Swans that occupied the shallow bar area between Matoaka Cottages and Western Shores to the north of us for the winter season. In the the last few years, I would say 5 or so, there have been only the occasional swan up there. I think I only saw a couple of them up there once this winter.

It's curious that they seem to be blaming a recent decline in the swans in the Bay region to water quality, which the Bay program would insist has seen a measurable, if small improvement due to the $25 billion or so spent to clean up the bay. 

The emphasis on SAV seems misplaced too. In North Carolina, their increase is credited to more farming, Could it be the decline here could due to a decrease in farming, and an increase in suburbs

Speaking of SAV, also at the Bay Journal, Goal for restoring Chesapeake’s underwater grasses might be increased

Meeting the Chesapeake Bay’s underwater grass restoration goal could soon get more difficult.

The state-federal Bay Program partnership may increase its goal for underwater grasses, an important habitat for blue crabs and many other species, from 185,000 to 196,000 acres.

Even the smaller of those numbers is more than double what’s been observed in the Bay in recent years, and the region has never come close to the 185,000-acre figure since Baywide measurements of the grass beds — officially called submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV — began in the early 1980s.

Nonetheless, scientists and state officials say the goal should be updated to better reflect the amount of potential SAV habitat if the region meets its pollution reduction goals in the future.

The Bay Program established the 185,000 figure in 2003 using photographs from aerial surveys conducted during the 1900s — mostly old agricultural surveys — to map the location of all grass beds that could be seen in different parts of the Bay at some point in time.

Brooke Landry, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and chair of the Bay Program’s Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Workgroup, said that when the original maps were drawn, portions of some shoreline grass beds were inadvertently cut off in the mapping process, resulting in an underestimation of the observed amount.

Also, grass beds have been observed in recent years in some locations where they had not been previously mapped.

When those areas are included, the extent of Bay bottom that supports SAV, or is known to have done so at some point in the last century, increased to about 196,000 acres.

That updated figure is being proposed as a goal for the revised Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, the policy document that guides Bay restoration efforts, which is being updated this year.

Landry acknowledged that meeting the goal will be difficult. While 196,000 acres of the Bay may have supported SAV at some point in time, it’s unclear whether that much ever existed in any single year during the past century.

The greatest extent of grass beds observed in recent decades was about 108,000 acres in 2018. Since then, the amount observed in annual aerial surveys has ranged from roughly 63,000 to 83,000 acres.

 So we're nowhere near the current goal, and they're proposing to increase the goals for the next go around. Seems like a pretty sure way to achieve failure the next time around. And do we really have any specific mechanism proposed to increase SAV, beyond further restricting nutrients?

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: The Last Champion of Cracker Barrel up at the Other McCain.

Bay Program Dusting Off the Same Old Plan

 From the Bay Journal, A new take on Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals: What’s in, what’s out?

Leaders of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup are touting a back-to-basics approach in the restoration blueprint set to be finalized by the end of this year.

The Chesapeake Bay Program, the state-federal partnership that leads the regionwide effort, released the proposed revisions to the 2014 Bay cleanup agreement for public comment on July 1.
. . .
The revised agreement groups priority goals into four broad categories: habitat and wildlife, water quality, healthy landscapes and engaged communities. Twenty-one more specific outcomes are nested within them.

A Bay Program analysis suggests that the amount of resources needed to achieve 14 of the outcomes will likely remain the same. More resources could be required for four, related to fish habitat, forests and trees, changing environmental conditions, and a robust workforce. The amount of resources needed for three others — wetland restoration, land protection and water quality — is unknown.

The 18-page proposed revision to the 2014 Bay Agreement puts forward modest changes. Mostly, it calls for continued progress toward meeting water-quality goals and making the region a more habitable place for humans and wildlife alike. But it’s also notable for what it doesn’t include. In the wake of executive orders from the Trump administration, direct references to climate change and diversity efforts have been deleted.

While I'm happy to see the climate BS elided (for now), what this really sounds like to me is "Give us another $25 billion, and we'll really do it this time.  At the Annapolis Cap Gazette, Gerald Winegard gets the same vibe: Bay restoration sinks to new low with farcical agreement

Last week, the Chesapeake Bay Program released a new draft voluntary Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement to guide restoration in place of the 2014 agreement. This occurred after the abject failure of the bay states to meet the most critical terms of the current agreement. The new agreement egregiously fails to address failed commitments to meet reductions by 2025 in the major bay pollutants of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment ordered by the EPA in 2010.

These reductions were at the heart of the 2014 agreement and yet this failure is unacknowledged as the new plan mostly weakens or omits previous commitments. This illustrates how badly formal efforts to restore the Chesapeake have sunk. This hollow new plan is supposed to take us beyond 2025 and finally restore the bay. It follows failed agreements signed by the bay states and EPA in 1983, 1987, 2000 and 2014.

The latter three pacts solemnly committed the states to meet specific reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus; sediment was added in the latter two. These pollutant cuts were necessary to restore the bay’s waters to meet basic federal Clean Water Act requirements. The voluntary accords detailed specific actions that states needed to take to meet pollutant reductions. The states repeatedly failed to meet these commitments.

After 27 years of failure, the EPA was forced by a 2010 federal lawsuit settlement to impose a mandatory Clean Water Act pollution reduction order on the bay states. The “pollution diet,” known as a TMDL, required each bay state to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment by specified amounts. The states were given until 2017 to achieve 60% of reductions and until 2025 to achieve 100%. Despite a failure of most states to meet their reductions by 2017, no sanctions were imposed.

When in 2022 the states again were failing to meet their restoration requirements and knowing they would not by the 2025 deadline, the EPA abdicated its responsibilities and allowed the states several years to “recalibrate” and draft another plan. The states, including Maryland, took no new bold steps to achieve restoration. Again, the EPA imposed no penalties.

This recalibration is taking seven years, until 2030. The new agreement fails to set any specific reductions or timelines to achieve them. The sad reality is this kick-the-can-down-the-road approach has turned the formal bay restoration into a tragi-farcical charade of political expediency. States avoid the urgency of curbing bay-choking pollutants from agricultural and developed land responsible for poor bay water quality.

I disagree with Gerald on any number of issues on the Bay, but I agree that doing the same thing again, and expecting better results is insane. 

Bay Health Declines

 Chesapeake Bay Mag, Bay Report Card’s C Grade Shows Drop in Health Since Last Year

One year after the Chesapeake Bay’s health grade hit a 22-year high, its report card performance has dropped back down. Researchers are hoping it’s a one-year hiccup within a long-term improving trend.

The University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) released its 19th annual Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card Tuesday. It measures the cleanliness of the Bay and the ecological, economic, and societal state of its watershed. With 2025 marking an important deadline for cleanup efforts, this data gives a snapshot of where the Bay stands and and highlights the need for continued improvement.

The Chesapeake Bay received an overall score of C (50%). That’s five points lower than last year, but indicates a long-term upswing. The watershed received a C+ (57%), with a good score for ecology and moderate scores for economy and society.

Although this year’s data shows a short-term decline, it’s been slowly improving since the 1980s. “We think extreme weather may have had some impact on the scores this year,” said Dr. Heath Kelsey, Director of UMCES Integration and Application Network. Last year was the hottest year on record, with extreme rain patterns contributing to pollution. Prolonged summer droughts, punctuated by runoff events, can cause pollutants to accumulate in waterways. Prolonged droughts followed by runoff events may have contributed to this year’s lower scores.

Most Bay health indicators show long-term improvement: scores are higher for dissolved oxygen, aquatic grasses, total phosphorus, and total nitrogen. Chlorophyll a and water clarity scores have declined, with water clarity receiving an F (18%). This issue remains “mysterious,” according to Bill Dennison, Vice President for Science Application at UMCES. Bay scientists are still investigating the cause of this persistent murkiness, which isn’t fully explained by phytoplankton or sediment.

Water clarity impacts other indicators, too: with recent high temperatures, aquatic grasses are in danger of burning out. Clear water enables them to handle the heat, but cloudy water traps heat and prevents photosynthesis. “The synergistic effect of turbid water and high temperature is a death knell to these plants,” said Dennison. “Water clarity is something we really need to work on because it will build more resilience for the Bay.”

Six regions in the Bay have shown improvement: the Elizabeth, James, and Patapsco and Back rivers, the upper western shore, the upper Bay, and the lower Bay. The lower Bay had the highest grade (B) probably due to its tidal exchange with the Atlantic Ocean and the health of its James River tributary in Virginia. The upper Eastern Shore was the only region with a declining score. UMCES will partner with the Delmarva Land and Litter Collaborative later this month to investigate the reasons for that downward trend.

I take a pretty dim view of these grading systems. They have high annual variability as a result of weather fluctuations, so it's only in the multi-year long run that you can see improvements or declines. As with most people, I judge the Bay health on results that mean something to me. Rockfish (aka Striped Bass) populations have been steadily declining for years. Crabs took a serious turn for the worst this year. The bright spot from a resource point of view, is that the populations of oysters are about a the best they've been since I arrived in 1985. 

DOGE Hits the Chesapeake Bay

 Bay Journal, FEMA cancels $1 billion for flood prevention projects in Chesapeake Bay region

As Crisfield Mayor Darlene Taylor sees it, the low-lying Maryland town has no future unless it can hold back rising water. Computer models suggest that the adjacent Chesapeake Bay could get high enough by 2050 to trigger daily floods that are deep enough to stall cars on roads.

"Could" is doing some heavy lifting here. At the current rate of sea level rise/ground subsidence of about 3 mm per year, which shows no sign of increasing, it should be a long time before the water reaches the engines of cars. But they always reference the wildest, least realistic estimates of future sea level rise.

Hope arrived in the form of a federal grant program under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, created during the first Trump administration. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program helped rural communities like hers to invest in massive projects to fight disaster threats, ranging from wildfires to floods.

Crisfield officially got word from FEMA last July that it had secured $36 million from the program to launch the first phase of its massive flood-protection initiative. “Everything had lined up and everything was in place for this to be a highly successful project,” Taylor said.

A lot has changed since then. Trump returned to office in January, vowing to drastically shrink the size of the federal government. In a terse April 4 press statement, FEMA announced it was pulling the plug on the disaster-preparedness funding, not just for Crisfield but for all applicants and grantees, calling it “wasteful and ineffective,” though without citing evidence to support those claims.

The administration announced that any undistributed funds from the program’s inaugural year, 2020, through 2023 would be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury. The agency also canceled the 2024 funding opportunity, just days before the application deadline for that year’s $750 million allocation.

If Crisfield want's to stay where it is, maybe they should look into what it would take to prepare for floods. 

At the Capital Gazette,  Maryland lawmakers fear deep EPA cuts could cripple Chesapeake Bay restoration

Maryland lawmakers are waiting warily for an Environmental Protection Agency budget that they fear could cut staff so deeply that the Chesapeake Bay restoration program could not adequately proceed. The full budget release, expected in the coming weeks, will follow the agency’s “skinny budget”—essentially a broad budget outline — unveiled in early May and proposed cutting more than half of the agency’s $9.1 billion budget. The Trump administration’s EPA budget request for the 2026 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, was for $4.2 billion.

“I don’t know how we actually implement the Bay program — even it’s fully funded, which I have no reason to believe it will be when we get the final details — when we’ve taken a chainsaw to staffing,” Rep. Sarah Elfreth, a Maryland Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen during a Senate Appropriations hearing last week that he supported the bay program, which is currently funded at $92 million a year. “The Chesapeake Bay Program is an amazing program. Our team takes great pride in running it,” Zeldin said in response to Van Hollen’s questions.

There's no government program that couldn't benefit from a 20% cut, some much more, and some should be eliminated entirely. 

New EPA Boss Supports Bay Program

 Fox 45, EPA chief: Chesapeake Bay Program funding 'is an important priority'

Lee Zelin, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, made his first visit to the Chesapeake Bay area as administrator of the agency. His visit comes as uncertainty surrounds the future of federal agencies and funding. “It's great to be able to be here to meet the team,” Zeldin said before the meeting with Chesapeake Bay Program members. Speaking with FOX45 News, Zeldin said he believes the program is important, “not just for a region, but really for the country.”

The Chesapeake Bay Program is a multi-state, collaborative approach to reduce Bay pollution and improve the health of the region: the program is guided by the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement that goals for restoring the Bay, tributaries, and land surrounding the region.

“There's a massive economic benefit for the region and also the importance of ensuring access to clean air, land and water,” Zeldin said.

During the first Trump Administration, funding for the program was cut in budget proposals. Through Congressional action, the funding was restored. As the second era of the Trump Administration continues to unfold, Zeldin was asked if the program would see funding cut by the administration.

“It’s important that we are making sure that Chesapeake Bay Program has the funding that needs to survive and thrive,” he said. “It's an important priority of mine.”

Compared to "heaving gold bars off the Titanic" ($20 billion stashed away in bank accounts as the former administration was leaving, to support brand new NGOs founded by the escapees), and Stacey Abram's $2 billion dollar project, nominally to provide new energy saving appliances for Georgians, the Bay Program is a paragon of value. Nevertheless, having DOGE go through the books might be a useful exercise. 

'Trust' - I Don't Think that Word Means What They Think It Means

WJZ News Chesapeake Bay restoration could take a hit if state removes millions from trust fund, advocates say

Maryland's budget shortfall could take a major toll on the Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts. The trust fund has been a lifeline for projects that help clean the bay, restore habitats, and reduce pollution. However, state leaders are considering removing $2.59 million from the trust fund to cover state operating costs. The funds would be used for the general operations of the Department of Natural Resources.

The state of Maryland has long been a leader in restoration in large part because we have the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays trust fund," said Matt Johnston, the executive director of the Arundel Rivers Federation. "We will not be able to, in the next three to four years, do a project like this again if they zero out that fund."
. . .
Jesse Iliff, executive director of the Severn River Association, says a number of planned restoration projects are now in jeopardy. "They are critical to providing a healthy Chesapeake Bay and all of the economic benefits that come with that, like improved fisheries, improved tourism, improved property values." Iliff is concerned this decision to take from the trust fund could have long-term consequences.

"Five or 10 years down the line, the best we could hope for is maintaining the status quo, and that would be heavily dependent on the weather," he said.

I would remind readers that 2 years ago,  Gov. Hogan left office with $5 billion (with a 'b') surplus. After 2 years, with 2 more to go, Gov. Moore has turned that into a $3 billion deficit.  The $2.6 million they steal from the Chesapeake Bay cleanup is a drop in that bucket. So, maybe fiscal responsibility is good for the environment?