(6/2025) In a previous article I highlighted that there are changes coming to the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. This is an agreement signed by the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, the District of Columbia’s Mayor, the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, and the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

The agreement was intended to create a unified approach to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay until 2025. As this agreement sunsets, these executives tasked the Principle Staff Committee (PSC), mostly state level cabinet members, such as the Pennsylvania Secretaries of Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and the Department of Agriculture, with revising the agreement for 2025 and beyond. In 2024 Governor Shapiro appointed me to an advisory board tasked with providing local government advice to the Chesapeake Bay Program.

In this role I sit on the Management Board for the Chesapeake, which is the staff tasked with doing most of the work. In this role I have had a front row participatory role in the revision of the 2025 plans. On May 23rd we presented our suggestions to the Principle Staff Committee for their review. This agreement is too far ranging and with too much detail to address fully in one article. Today, I will focus on the proposed changes to the Agreement’s Vision.

In 2024 the Executive Council indicated that any changes should reflect the following principles and directions:

A renewed and greater emphasis on engaging all communities of the watershed as active stewards of a healthy and resilient Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.

This is a huge change, one championed by the Local Government Advisory Committee on which I serve. For too long the focus of the Bay programs have been focused "the bay". In truth the impacts to the Bay can start as far away as New York state. How in the world do we instill a desire to improve the Chesapeake Bay to people, who may have never seen or even know about the Chesapeake Bay? By focusing on the watershed and the communities within it, efforts can be made to highlight local concerns, which also impact the Bay. The most obvious example is flooding. No one likes it when their property or local road infrastructure is impacted by flooding. Likewise, flooding is bad for the Bay, as it results in a wave of harmful debris, chemicals, and nutrients reaching the Bay. If we fix our flooding issues, we help ourselves AND the Bay. This new focus on upstream community engagement is critical to keeping our communities and the Bay healthy.

Our mandate to address water quality and living resources throughout the Bay and watershed.

This is sort of a no brainer, but it matters that the focus isn’t just on the water. Focusing on living resources, such as, trout, fresh water mussels, crabs, oysters, trees, etc…, helps to provide a means to measure water quality improvements AND a way to continue the engagement with communities throughout the watershed. One could say that improving living resources is a good unto itself, but the truth is at a community level, we need more than that. We need to highlight how improving our water, improves our living resources. By the way, we are also a living resources and clean water is good for us.

Elevating conservation as a key pillar of the Chesapeake Bay Program, alongside science, restoration, and partnership.

When it comes to improving damaged ecosystems or most anything, the basis must be in the most recent science. It is pointless to ignore reality and ignoring the science generally doesn’t end well for anyone AND tends to cost us more. Restoration is the goal, not just for healthy crabs and oysters, but for the economic viability of communities throughout the watershed. Flood debris can take out a bridge in Adams County as easily as anywhere else. Restoring natural floodplains is a scientifically proving way to restore the health to waterways and communities.

In the case of the Bay, partnerships are critical, as no one state is responsible for the damage done and no one state can solve the problems.

This does take partnerships. Enter conservation as a peer to these three key pillars. Conservation is tricky concept. Some see it as preservation of natural resources, others see it as the responsible management of natural resources. The general feeling with the Bay program is that the latter is more appropriate. While preservation is the gold standard, it is also more expensive and often times conflicts with the natural growth of communities. We can find ways to conserve resources without stopping growth an there are conservation measures that can be unique to specific land types, planning and zoning criteria, and population density. Conservation is not a one size fits all approach, instead it is an effort to work with communities to provide for sustainable quality of life, the economic base and the environmental health of a community.

A grounding in the most recent scientific understandings and issues that have emerged since the current Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement was signed in 2014.

Another no brainer. Our understanding of the natural world and how it changes is critical to everything we do. Since 2014, we have seen an increase to high intensity storms and flooding, and increase in "ghost" forests due to salt water infiltrating coastal fresh water systems, ocean levels have risen, and the temperature of waters throughout the watershed has increased. The more we understand these changing climate conditions, the better and more cost effective our response can be.

Goals and outcomes that are measurable and time bound. Time frames should be sufficient to accomplish the outcomes as quickly as possible. In particular, our regulated nutrient and sediment load reductions, especially those within non-point sources.

I am going to skip the long version of this, as I will be covering this in another article regarding the ways this partnership intends to measure success.

Acknowledgement that our scientific understanding is continuously evolving and that our efforts need to constantly adapt accordingly.

We have gone over this one in the course of the previous principles. One note that I do have to make is that how we talk about the climate is changing. Due to staff at the United States no longer being able to use the term, Climate Change, the entire partnership has accepted the phrase, changing environmental conditions. It is on one hand a ridiculous compromise, which really changes nothing. On the other hand, it does open up the definition to no longer being solely focused on the environmental sciences. It isn’t just global warming and climate change causing problems, it is also population increases, technological and consumer product and waste changes. Hopefully, this change will result in a fuller discussion of issues impacting the world in which we live.

The fact that while each partner shares a common goal, we are all approaching this goal from different perspectives, challenges, and opportunities.

This is a big one from the partnership perspective. In order to keep a partnership this size together, we must respect each perspective in order to keep everyone engaged. Having met a fair amount of elected officials and now serving on and chairing an advisory board of 22 elected officials, I can say there are many many perspectives on the causes, impacts, and solutions to the health of our shared watershed. I am pleased to say that being a part of this effort has been an experience unlike any other. This is largely due to this last concept of respecting our partners.

There will be more in articles to come. Next time I will outline the specific goals of the partnership and get into the weeds of the goals which most impact our communities.