Chesapeake Bay health gets highest grade since 2002 (2024)

The overall health of the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary, received its highest grade since 2002 in an annual report released Tuesday by scientists: a C-plus.| LINK: Read the Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card 2023-24 (PDF)Scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science made special note of Pennsylvania's efforts to block pollution from entering state waterways.Pennsylvania has faced criticism in the past for not doing enough to stop pollution from flowing into the bay, and the improved report comes after lawsuits accused Pennsylvania of failing to meet its obligations.In a news conference overlooking the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro credited years of efforts to help farmers prevent runoff laced with fertilizer from making it into waters that, like the Susquehanna, drain into the Chesapeake, and to upgrade municipal sewer systems that overflow into rivers during heavy rainfall.Shapiro brushed aside a reporter's suggestion that a C-plus is middling grade and said the focus should be on the commitment to improve."I think what we've seen here is not only a good grade for Pennsylvania, but real improvement, and you're seeing a real commitment to being better," Shapiro said.Since 2019, Pennsylvania has spent about $1 billion on Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts, reduced nitrogen runoff from farms by 2 million pounds and planted 834 miles of natural buffers along waterways to prevent runoff, more than half of the watershed's total planted in that time period, Shapiro said.The health of the bay is a reflection of what's happening across its six-state watershed, which includes Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia along with the District of Columbia."The Chesapeake Bay restoration is seen as a global model of sustainability. The Report Card shows that the results are moving in the right direction but we need to pick up the pace of these efforts, particularly in light of climate change, which will make meeting the targets more difficult," said Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, president of UMCES, which compiles the report.Bill Dennison, a UMCES professor and vice president, pointed out that the Upper Chesapeake Bay, which the Susquehanna River flows into, has the second-highest score of the 16 bay regions measured in the report and continues to improve."Pennsylvania has been getting a bad rap for quite a while now, and we've got to stop playing the blame game, and start looking at the data and let the data guide us in our restoration efforts rather than pointing fingers," Dennison said in an interview.Last year, Pennsylvania planted about 340 miles of riparian buffers, which are strips of vegetation planted next to streams and waterways to help protect habitat, Dennison noted. The state also has focused on increasing the use of cover crops in agriculture to reduce erosion, improve soil conditions and protect waterways from runoff pollution."That practice is a really important one for soaking up the excess nitrate at the end of a growing season that gets left on the fields," Dennison said. For the first time, researchers released the report in Pennsylvania at the Susquehanna River Basin Commission in Harrisburg."There is still much to do, but this is a strong indicator of progress," said Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency's Mid-Atlantic regional administrator. "After being off track, the partnership is now accelerating progress. In recent years, EPA has stepped up enforcement, accountability, and investments and it is paying off. These efforts have helped spur historic results among upstream and downstream states and all sectors, especially agriculture." "We still have strides to make, but what we can do is learn from each other and continue this great work and continue to build on the strength of that partnership as we move forward and we're just going to continue to see more success," Maryland Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz said.This year's UMCES report also is noteworthy because researchers said they are building a human-made debris indicator to understand the different types of contamination from items like plastic bags and bottles. Currently, not all of this debris is monitored, and the data is not collected uniformly across the bay and watershed. Researchers hope the information will be used to create targeted prevention and mitigation strategies. "There's a lot of things we can do on a personal-behavior level to reduce the plastics that end up in the bay," Dennison said. The report focuses on seven bay indicators that assess aquatic ecosystem conditions. Those include phosphorus and nitrogen measures in the water and how much oxygen is present at different depths. It also focuses on the condition of organisms living in or on the bottom areas of the bay, water clarity and aquatic grasses. The report also focuses on bay watershed health, which includes ecological, societal and economic aspects, which aim to provide a more comprehensive view of the watershed. The watershed health scored 52%, or a grade of C, which is the same as the previous year.Chesapeake Bay Foundation statement"While a C-plus is an improvement, it's clear that far too much pollution is still entering the bay.  We can and must do more for the Bay, its rivers and streams, and the communities that depend on them. "Chesapeake Bay cleanup has made some tremendous progress, which can be traced back to the dedicated state, federal and local partnership formed across the watershed. But there's still a lot of work to be done. "Restoration efforts will not meet goals to reduce pollution by the 2025 deadline. This puts us at a critical moment for the Bay movement. We'll be unable to tackle the significant challenges ahead unless governors across the Chesapeake Bay watershed publicly recommit to continue working together for a healthy bay. Updating the Chesapeake Bay Agreement by the end of 2025 represents a critical opportunity for the partnership to set the stage for success. "We have seen success in some areas. For example, there's been consistent recovery and improvement in overall acreage of underwater grasses; however, we're still less than halfway to meeting the Bay Agreement's goal for sub-aquatic vegetation. We've also collaboratively reduced nutrient pollution from sewage treatment plants that go directly into our waterways, despite population growth and climate change. However, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment from other sources, specifically stormwater runoff and agriculture, remain areas for improvement. "Preventing polluted runoff from entering our waterways will require immense collaboration between states and municipalities. But its multi-faceted benefits are well worth it. People, economies, wildlife habitat, fisheries and more all benefit from a healthy Bay. "Reports like the Comprehensive Evaluation of Systems Response show us there are approaches to bay cleanup that could be more effective and efficient, and also help us optimize the use of resources. Revising the Bay Agreement as soon as possible will be critical to putting those lessons into action and extending our progress beyond 2025."