A Conservation Story: Restoring Chesapeake Bay

chesapeake.jpg

This story illuminates the drama that enfolds when groups try to clean up the environment. In this case, it’s about Chesapeake Bay – the largest estuary in the US – a project that’s spanned decades and is nowhere near done. Once known for its abundant shellfish and fisheries, pollution from agriculture, industry and housing developments has resulted in dead zones where there’s too little oxygen to support life. Since 1983, voluntary measures failed to meet the goal of taking the Bay off the "impaired" list by 2010. Deadline after deadline for improved water quality was missed. Time to try a different tactic. It begins with the Clean Water Act which passed in 1972 with a goal of restoring "fishable, swimmable" waters by 1985 – a deadline that remains unmet to this day. To get EPA to do its job, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation sued in 2009 and 18 months later, they settled. Under a binding agreement, EPA promised to develop science-based pollution limits for the Bay and the rivers and streams that feed into it. It delivered on time and surrounding states responded by creating plans to meet those limits with milestones in 2017 and a hard deadline of 2025. […]

Read More