Chesapeake Bay Foundation: Bay states not on track to meet Chesapeake Bay goals by 2025

October 8, 2022
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ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the states with the largest runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, are not on track to meet their goals to restore the nation’s largest estuary by 2025.

Those are the findings in a report released Tuesday during a video press conference by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmentalist organization.

The assessment comes just days before a meeting in Washington of the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council, a high-powered consortium that includes the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware and New York; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission.

During the Oct. 11 meeting, members are expected to discuss accelerating efforts to clean up the bay by 2025. Their decisions will directly affect over 18 million people and 3,600 species of plants and animals that live in the watershed’s 64,000 square mile expanse.

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The pollution reduction goals were established by the council in the 2010 Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, a regional effort between the watershed states.

Hilary Harp Falk, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said while the states that make up the bay’s watershed are making progress, they must face the fact they are not moving fast enough to fulfill the blueprint’s goals.

“The bay states need to recommit to the partnership and its collective goals to restore rivers, streams and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay,” Falk said.

The foundation aimed its heaviest criticism at Pennsylvania.

“Pennsylvania is not on track to meet its 2025 pollution-reduction commitments, including the creation of an adequate plan that achieves those commitments,” the report said.

Although Maryland and Virginia are projected to meet their goals in reducing wastewater pollution, they are behind in other metrics, the foundation said..

“All jurisdictions are behind in meeting commitments to reduce pollution from stormwater and agriculture,” Falk said. “We know that key policy changes are necessary to fix these issues that have long hampered our collective success.”

These changes include increased funding for state conservation programs and pollution monitoring, the foundation said.

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Under the blueprint, the Environmental Protection Agency is assigned to enforce restoration efforts, but foundation officials said the EPA has been lax in its actions.

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