An Open Letter to the Chesapeake Bay Conservation Community

By Gerald Winegrad

May 5, 2025

Despite the gross failure of the Bay states to achieve the dictates of the Chesapeake TMDL by 2025 after being given 15 years to do, there have been no sanctions. Nor have the EPA or Bay states taken any new meaningful steps to achieve the necessary reductions in nitrogen or phosphorus.

Instead, over the last two years plans to develop a new plan have replaced actions to force reduction in agricultural and development nutrients and sediment. A new plan may be completed this year but its efficacy and implementation is uncertain given the environmental decimation occurring by the Trump Administration.

Maryland, once THE leader in adopting Bay initiatives and spurring other states to do so, has done little in the last few years and its 2025 legislative session evidenced this fecklessness. See my attached weekend column: Legislative Session an Environmental Disaster PUBLISHED

This lack of action is despite Bay Program scientists’ conclusion acknowledging that computer modeling showing a 40 million pound nitrogen reduction has been overestimated by nearly half.  Equally alarmingly, the latest Bay Program data through 2023 show the amount of nitrogen from nonpoint sources has changed little since 2009, the base year for calculating TMDL reductions.

Even phosphorus and sediment computer modelled reductions are being questioned and lowered.  Toxic chemicals impair 78% of Bay water.

These failures are linked to not adequately addressing nonpoint sources, particularly agriculture. The reality is that the only real success in gaining the necessary reductions is in WWTP enhanced nutrient removal. But 90% of future nitrogen reductions and most P and S reductions will have to come from agriculture. The 2023 CESR report by 50 Bay scientists indicates that efforts to pay farmers for BMPs to voluntarily reduce N and P have not and will not work to achieve required reductions. Model watersheds where many ag BMPs were implemented show little to no success verifying reductions. The Maryland Department of Agriculture LEEF Program legislation is such  a voluntary nothingburger that was sadly supported by the conservation community and will do nothing to advance Bay restoration.

Exacerbating the problem are three major factors not previously accounted for in the TMDL:

1. Greater numbers of farm animals, increased farm fertilizers, ineffectiveness of BMPs, impacts from more developed lands, together erasing more than 8 million pounds of estimated annual nitrogen reductions. Nitrogen runoff from developed lands has increased by about 1.5 million pounds a year since 2009;
2. The Conowingo Dam filled reservoir adds an additional 6 million pounds of annual nitrogen reductions, mostly from Pennsylvania farmland; and
3. Global warming is increasing precipitation, which washes more nutrients off the land adding about 5 million pounds of nitrogen annually back into the equation.

In desperation, EPA, the Bay states, and some in the environmental community tout success in restoration progress citing recent successes oyster reproduction and a rigged UMCES C+ Report card issued last year.

While the expenditure of more than $400 million in oyster shell and seed plantings and new oyster sanctuaries have recently boosted reproduction and oyster numbers, NOAA data available online show that the native oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay is only about 3% of its historic levels due to disease, overfishing, degraded water quality, and habitat loss. Missing in the claim of such “success” on oysters is that under the 2000 Chesapeake Bay Agreement, a commitment was made to increase oyster biomass by ten-fold by 2010. This commitment was abandoned in 2014 as oyster biomass declined—not increased.

Of course, the status of collapsed or collapsing Bay fisheries is ignored in such happy talk. On March 15, 2023, Gov. Wes Moore wrote to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce pleading for money because of an “ongoing commercial fishery disaster in the Maryland waters of the Chesapeake Bay. … Since 2012, landings of seven of Maryland’s marquee commercial fishery species have declined between 27% and 91%. The dockside value of these species has declined between 12% and 85%.”  The species included blue crabs, rockfish, white and yellow perch, and eels.

In a recent LTE in the Washington Post, CBF President Hilary Falk recently praised the oyster success as a perfect example of how well the Bay restoration partnership is working.

The UMCES Annual Report Card was manipulated to boost grades by measurements using non-water quality data like public access and citizen participation. The C+ was touted as documenting great Bay restoration success, the best grade in 20 years, and the media picked up on this. This was simply not accurate. CBF’s last State of the Bay Report issued in 2023 gave the Bay a D+ and a score of 32 when a 70 was needed for recovery. CBF rated the Bay as a 23 in 1983 when the first Bay Agreement was signed. In the last CBF Report, nitrogen and oysters were rated an F, phosphorus a D.

Finally, the most critical single analysis tool of Bay restoration success or failure, are measurements from actual in situ water quality monitoring, not computer simulations. The Bay Program and TMDL are based on restoring water quality and removing the Bay from the CWA’s 303(d) impaired waters list.  Its impairment is due to three parameters: poor water clarity; low dissolved oxygen, and high chlorophyll A (excess algae growth).

The Bay’s waters must meet all three CWA parameters and the TMDL is set to achieve these through specific reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. These are the pollutants causing the impairment. Because of a failure of Bay states to achieve these reductions, the most recent EPA data shows that only 29.8% of Bay waters meet the Clean Water Act regulatory requirements when 100% are required.

In 1985 when measurements began, 26% of Bay waters met the CWA requirements.  So, after 37 years and billions of dollars, progress has been minimal. The EPA is pulling back funding and the states are doing very little new to address agricultural and development pollutants to meet the TMDL and Clean Water Act requirements. Here is the Bay Program Chart:

The conservation community must unite and develop bold new initiatives to address agricultural pollution, the loss of forests in development, and stormwater.  The answer is not throwing more money at voluntary BMPs—this will not work.  Taking to the streets to demand a clean Bay, clean air, and preservation of our natural heritage is also urgently needed to build support for agreed upon initiatives.

Continuing down the same path will yield the same results. The 2025 Maryland legislative session is indicative of this.

Gerald Winegrad represented the greater Annapolis area as a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate for 16 years. Contact him at gwwabc@comcast.net.