(Posted by Howard Ernst.)

The Chesapeake Bay Commission describes itself as a tri-state legislative commission created in 1980 “to advise the members of the General Assemblies of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania on matters of Bay-wide concern.” Yet the majority of its elected members have poor environmental voting records…

On December 3, 2008 an unprecedented event took place in Annapolis, Maryland. A group of twenty distinguished Chesapeake Bay scientists and policy experts crowded into a small room at the Maryland Inn to discuss the fate of the Bay restoration effort. The meeting itself was not particularly significant, most of the people in the room knew each other and all the attendees had participated in similar discussions in the past, but what the participants had to say was groundbreaking. Within a short period of time, the diverse group of environmental experts agreed to a unanimous statement regarding the Bay restoration effort. Their statement declared that the voluntary/collaborative structures under the formal Bay Program had not succeeding and, as a consequence, the Bay’s health was declining, not improving: