A Chesapeake Bay watchdog group gave the bay and its watershed a health grade of D+ for a score of 32 out of 100 for water pollution, habitat, and fisheries on Thursday, the same as its last assessment in 2020. “Overall, the unchanged score is largely the result of failures to make needed changes on farmland to reduce pollution,” said the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
The foundation said cleanup of the bay should receive “a significant amount” of the $20 billion earmarked for USDA land stewardship programs in the climate, health, and tax bill enacted last year. It also said that “Congress should build on that investment with more conservation funding for farmers in the bay region in the 2023 farm bill.”
Agriculture is the second-largest use of land in the watershed, after forestry, and state plans for pollution reduction call for 90 percent of the remaining reductions to come from farm-related pollution. “We’ve done a great job with wastewater treatment plants,” said foundation president Hilary Falk during a briefing.
The biennial State of the Bay report is available here.