On January 5, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation released its 2022 State of the Bay Report. The biennial evaluation graded the Bay and its watershed at a D+, unchanged from the 2020 score.

Efforts to restore the Bay are struggling to reduce agricultural pollution. Urban and suburban polluted runoff is increasing amid inconsistent enforcement by government agencies, new development, and climate change.

Despite these challenges, the federal/state Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, based on the world’s best science, remains the most promising plan for restoring local rivers, streams, and the Chesapeake Bay. What has been lacking is implementation.

“While we’ve made significant progress, far too much pollution still reaches our waterways and climate change is making matters worse,” said CBF President Hilary Harp Falk. “The good news is that the Bay is remarkably resilient and there is tremendous energy around the table. With many new leaders taking charge – EPA administrators, governors, legislators, and within environmental organizations – we have an opportunity to prove that restoring clean water is possible. By following the science, approaching our challenges with optimism, and holding each other accountable, we will leave clean water, strong economies, and vibrant communities for the next generation.” 

Pennsylvania

With nearly 28,000 miles of polluted streams statewide, Pennsylvania has a lot of work to do to get back on track and meet its Clean Water Blueprint.

As part of the $220 million Clean Streams Fund, state legislators dedicated $154 million toward a new statewide program to support family farmers in designing and implementing practices that keep soils and nutrients on the farm instead of in streams, called the Agricultural Conservation Assistance Program (ACAP).

Agricultural activities are a leading identified source of stream impairment, and more than 90 percent of the Keystone State’s remaining pollution reductions must come from agriculture.

CBF Pennsylvania Science Policy and Advocacy Director Harry Campbell said:

“The recent commitments dedicating $220 million towards clean streams, have helped give the Commonwealth something it hasn’t had in some time—momentum.  ACAP provides critical resources to help farmers get the job done.

“These recent investments, along with enhancing its latest watershed implementation plan and being held accountable along the way, would be significant steps toward reaching the 2025 pollution-reduction goals.

“It is critical that during this new legislative session, the Governor and legislators provide increased and sustainable funding that builds on momentum and leads to the clean water that is the right of every Pennsylvanian.

“Investment of financial and technical resources will create resilient infrastructure on farms and in communities, boost local economies, and protect human health.  CBF looks forward to working with the Governor and legislators to leave a legacy of clean water for future generations.”

Federal

Federal funds and leadership are critical to achieving the Blueprint goals.  In the coming year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will begin distributing the additional $20 billion the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allocated to Farm Bill conservation programs.

These programs are crucial to Bay restoration because they support farmers who use practices that help stop agricultural pollution at its source, improve water quality in local waterways and the Bay, and build climate resiliency on the farm.

The 118th Congress is also due to reauthorize the Farm Bill this year.

USDA must direct a significant amount of the $20 billion IRA increase to areas in the Bay states where it can do the most to reduce farm runoff. It can do so through the Chesapeake Bay States’ Partnership Initiative it created last May.

Congress should build on that investment with more conservation funding for farmers in the Bay region in the 2023 Farm Bill.  Congress must also provide USDA with enough money to hire more technical experts who can work directly with farmers to put these practices in the ground.

CBF Interim Federal Affairs Director Keisha Sedlacek said:

“The $20 billion IRA boost and next year’s Farm Bill give the Biden administration and Congress the perfect opportunity to jumpstart the cleanup effort. Farm practices that improve water quality are the most cost-effective way to tackle the largest source of pollution in the Bay and its tributaries. The same practices make farms more resilient to climate change and its effects. Devoting more federal dollars to agricultural conservation in the region is a smart investment that benefits local communities, businesses, and the Bay.”

Summary Of Report

Established in 1998, CBF’s State of the Bay Report is a comprehensive measure of the Bay's health.

CBF scientists compile and examine the best available data and information for 13 indicators in three categories: pollution, habitat, and fisheries. CBF scientists assign each indicator an index score from 1–100.

Taken together, these indicators offer an overall assessment of Bay health. Reaching an overall score of 70 or more would mean a fully restored Bay, while a 100 represents the Bay’s condition before European settlers arrived in the 1600s.

In 2022, the overall State of the Bay score remained 32, with seven of the 13 indicators unchanged, three increasing, and three decreasing.

Pollution

In the pollution category nitrogen, toxics, and dissolved oxygen indicators were unchanged, the phosphorus indicator improved, and overall water clarity declined.

Recent farm conservation funding at the federal and state levels should help reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, which fuels harmful algal blooms that remove dissolved oxygen from the water.

Monitoring data indicated the 2022 dead zone—the area of the Bay with low or no dissolved oxygen—was the 10th smallest in size since scientists began surveying it 38 years ago, an encouraging sign.

Water clarity dropped one point in the report due to average water clarity in the Bay decreasing slightly in 2022 compared to 2020.

Fisheries

In the fisheries category, the rockfish (striped bass) and oyster indicators rose, while the blue crab indicator declined.

Striped bass populations have been declining and this year’s juvenile striped bass survey found low numbers in Maryland. However, states along the Atlantic coast have put in place stronger measures to reduce the number of fish harvested as well as catch-and-release mortality.

These regulations should allow the striped bass population to rebuild by 2029, which is why the score increased despite population declines.

Oysters are seeing a renaissance of sorts. After years of overharvesting and limited natural reproduction, in 2020 and 2021 Maryland and Virginia reported the highest rates of juvenile oyster production in the past 30 years.

Large-scale oyster restoration projects have been completed in eight sanctuary tributaries in Maryland and Virginia, with two more sanctuary restoration projects planned to be completed before 2025.

Scientists monitoring the oyster restoration sanctuaries have found high densities of oysters beginning to build vertical reef structure, an important marine habitat.

Blue crabs fell the most of any indicator, with the overall score dropping five points. In 2022, blue crab dredge survey results found the lowest number of crabs in the Bay in the survey’s 33-year history.

In response, fishery managers decreased catch limits to try to reduce overall harvest.

Efforts to increase underwater grasses—important nursery habitat for blue crabs—have stalled, with underwater grass acreage hovering around 70,000 acres each year after hitting a high of 105,000 acres in 2018.

Habitat

In the habitat category, scores for underwater grasses, forest buffers, and wetlands remained unchanged, but resource lands fell slightly by a point. Resource lands refer to forests, natural open areas, and well-managed farmland.

The drop in score was largely due to approximately 95,000 acres of farms and forests transitioning to development across the Bay watershed during the most recent reporting period, from 2013/14 to 2017/18.

Pollution From Farmland

Overall, the unchanged score is largely a result of failures to make needed changes on farmland to reduce pollution.

After forests, the agricultural sector is the second largest land use in the watershed and about 90 percent of the remaining reductions needed to meet the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint must come from limiting farm-related pollution.

However, the cleanup is hitting a roadblock. For years, jurisdictions made continuous, incremental progress toward Bay restoration goals by upgrading wastewater treatment plants.

Today, most of the major wastewater plants in the watershed have been upgraded to stringent standards that improve overall water quality. Because of this, future water quality improvements must come largely through efforts to limit polluted runoff from farms, buildings, roads, lawns, and other diffuse sources that are more difficult to control.

Efforts to do so are complicated by climate change, which is bringing stronger rainstorms that drop more precipitation in shorter time periods.

The good news is that many of the same practices that will reduce agricultural and urban runoff—such as tree plantings, restoring soil health, and limiting impervious surfaces—are the same ones that help reduce greenhouse gases and make the region more resilient to a changing climate.

Saving the Bay and addressing climate change are inextricably, and fortunately, linked.

Additional Resources

There is hope on the horizon.

The recently passed federal Inflation Reduction Act included $20 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support farm pollution reduction practices nationwide. And last year, Pennsylvania lawmakers approved $154 million for a new agricultural cost share program.

In 2022, Virginia adopted a two-year budget that includes $280 million to assist farmers who install farm conservation practices as well as about $190 million for urban sewer system upgrades and projects to reduce stormwater runoff.

“The State of the Bay is at a precipice,” said Beth McGee, CBF’s Director of Science and Agricultural Policy. “We need to accelerate our efforts at reducing farm pollution to ensure the watershed-wide restoration effort is successful. New funding at the federal and state levels is an opportunity to directly address the Bay’s largest pollution source, but it must be spent efficiently on the projects that provide the most benefit for each dollar spent.”

Investing in agricultural conservation practices also makes good economic sense. For every dollar spent helping farmers adopt practices that improve water quality in the Bay and its tributaries, the Bay region would see $1.75 in higher sales and earnings.

Fully funding the farm pollution-reduction practices needed to restore the Chesapeake Bay would inject $655 million annually into the region’s economy, including $269 million per year in higher earnings for businesses and workers, according to a report prepared for CBF by Key-Log Economics, an ecological economics research and consulting firm based in Charlottesville, Va.  

[In Pennsylvania, farm conservation benefits would result in $352.5 million in economic benefits and support 3,457 jobs.  Read more here.]

The Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint requires the Bay jurisdictions to develop plans to decrease pollution to local creeks, rivers, and the Bay. However, an EPA assessment released last fall found that only Washington D.C. and West Virginia are on track to meet the 2025 goals.

And in November, EPA rejected Pennsylvania’s most recent update to its Bay cleanup plan because it didn’t demonstrate how the state would meet pollution reduction requirements.

At its October meeting, the Chesapeake Executive Council agreed “to set a path forward over the next year to outline the necessary steps, and prioritize the actions needed, to meet the targets” that had been committed to.

Visit CBF’s 2022 State of the Bay Report webpage to read more.

[For more on Chesapeake Bay-related issues in Pennsylvania, visit the Chesapeake Bay Foundation-PA webpage.  Click Here to sign up for Pennsylvania updates (bottom of left column).  Click Here to support their work.

[Also visit the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership to learn how you can help clean water grow on trees.

[CBF has over 275,000 members in Bay Watershed.  [PaEN]

[Visit DEP’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed webpage to learn more about cleaning up rivers and streams in Pennsylvania's portion of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.  Click Here to sign up for regular updates on Pennsylvania’s progress.

[How Clean Is Your Stream?

[Check DEP’s 2022 Water Quality Report to find out how clean streams are near you.]

NewsClips:

-- AP: Chesapeake Bay Earns A D+ In Latest Report

-- Baltimore Sun Editorial: Conowingo Dam: Voided License Is Water Over The Dam; Let’s Float A Better Deal To Cut Pollution

Related Articles:

-- Final State Budget Includes Nearly $700 Million In Funding To Support Local And State Environmental, Recreation Infrastructure Projects!  [PaEN]

-- Chesapeake Bay Foundation: PA's Latest Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Plan Lacks Credible Water Pollution Reduction Strategies, Sustained Funding [PaEN]

-- Chesapeake Bay Foundation: Implementing Farm Conservation Practices In Pennsylvania Will Result In $352.5 Million In Economic Benefits, Support 3,457 Jobs A Year  [PaEN]

-- DEP Awards $12.2 Million In Grants To Support 34 County Clean Water Action Plans In Chesapeake Bay Watershed [PaEN]

-- CBF: Federal Court Vacates FERC Conowingo Power Dam License, Offering New Chance For Chesapeake Bay Protections [PaEN]

-- Bay Journal: Hellbender Habitat Slammed By Pollution From Shale Gas Development In PA's Loyalsock Creek [PaEN]

Related Articles This Week:

-- PA State Sen. Scott Martin Elected Chair Of Interstate Chesapeake Bay Commission  [PaEN]

-- Chesapeake Bay Commission Names Anna Killius New Executive Director  [PaEN]

[Posted: January 5, 2023]

1/9/2023