Chesapeake Bay Program

COOPERATIVE CONSERVATION CASE STUDY

America’s Premiere Watershed Restoration Partnership

Location: Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic

Project Summary: The Premiere Watershed Restoration Partnership is a regional effort aimed at restoring a system with abundant, diverse populations of living resources, fed by healthy streams and rivers.

Traditional sailing vessel near the Bay Bridge on Chesapeake Bay.

Resource Challenge

The Chesapeake Bay is North America’s largest and most biologically diverse estuary, home to more than 3,600 species of plants, ﬁsh and animals. For more than 300 years, the Bay and its tributaries have sustained the region’s economy and deﬁned its traditions and culture. The region’s estimated $1 trillion economy is heavily linked to the Bay: tourism, ﬁsh and shellﬁsh, even real estate. The watershed’s historic and cultural resources are incalculable.

In a watershed that was once 95 percent forested, 16 million Americans now live, work, and recreate. Millions of acres of resource lands have been converted by development, degrading the watershed with nutrients and sediment. Today the Bay supports less than half the underwater grasses that were present in the 1950s, and the native oyster population has fallen to two percent of mid-20th century levels.

Starting in 1983, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), representing the Federal Government, have signed historic agreements establishing the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership. Since 2003 the “headwater” states of Delaware, New York, and West Virginia have also joined in a cooperative effort to restore water quality. Annually the chief executives of the jurisdictions and the EPA Administrator meet and provide policy direction to the partnership. The Chesapeake 2000 agreement outlines 100 speciﬁ c commitments in ﬁ ve policy areas:

1. Living Resources.

2. Vital Habitat.

3. Water Quality.

4. Sound Land Use.

5. Stewardship and Community Engagement

Examples of Key Partners

The states of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Army Corps of Engineers, non-proﬁ t organizations, local governments, citizen advisory groups, and business and agricultural interests, and others

Results and Accomplishments

In just the last ﬁve years the Partners have:

Planted vegetation along 3,335 miles of riparian buffers.
Opened 606 miles of ﬁ sh passages.
Stocked 153 million Shad in the Bay and tributaries.
Preserved 527,000 acres of land.
Enhanced and created 11,000 acres plus of wetlands.
Placed 1.33 million new acres under nutrient management plans.

Innovation/Highlight

In June 2005, the EPA and the Bay’s State partners completed a uniﬁ ed permitting strategy, requiring more than 400 wastewater treatment plants in six states and the District of Columbia to have enforceable limits on nutrient pollution. This strategy will yield a more than an 18.5 million pound annual reduction in the amount of nutrient pollution that fouls the Bay.

Project Contact

Chris Conner
Communications Director
Chesapeake Bay Program Office

,
410-267-5758
cconner@cheaspaekebay.net

Website: http://www.chesapeakebay.net

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Current Conservation Programs