Since its formation in the 1980s, the Chesapeake Bay Program has made significant accomplishments in its efforts to restore and protect the Bay. The Bay Program has become a regional, national and international leader in ecosystem science, modeling and restoration partnerships.
The Bay Program’s partnership model shows that a cooperative approach is an effective way to achieve environmental results. Through the Bay Program, leaders and experts from a vast range of groups work across political boundaries to restore the Bay. By working together, Bay Program partners promote a more complete understanding of Bay issues and use their limited resources more effectively.
The Bay Program's partnership model has been recognized and emulated worldwide.
Restoring the Chesapeake Bay and its 64,000-square-mile watershed is an enormous undertaking. Four centuries of population growth took their toll on the Bay ecosystem, resulting in polluted waterways and dwindling natural resources.
After more than 25 years of restoration efforts, data generally show decreasing long-term pollution trends from the Bay’s major rivers. Although that's good news, a clean Bay is the ultimate restoration measure. Some signs are positive, but other key indicators are lagging. Overall, the Bay remains degraded, but Bay Program partners are working harder than ever to bring the estuary back to health.
The Bay Program’s science community has pioneered numerous cutting-edge scientific efforts that have advanced ecosystem restoration in the Bay region and throughout the world.
The original scientific study that first identified excess nutrients as the main source of pollution in the Bay was conducted by the EPA with strong support from the Bay states. In the early 1990s, the Bay Program worked with EPA and NOAA researchers to establish that airborne nitrogen was a contributor to pollution in the Bay and other estuaries.
Bay Program partners and other stakeholders use a suite of computer models that are among the most sophisticated, studied and respected in the world. The models provide a comprehensive view of the Chesapeake ecosystem from the depths of the Bay to the upper reaches of the watershed, and from the land to the air.
Establishing numeric goals and deadlines for environmental restoration was unprecedented when the Bay Program first included them in the 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement. But the practice has now become a Bay Program hallmark and a common way for restoration programs across the country to measure progress.
In 2000, Bay Program partners signed the historic Chesapeake 2000 agreement, which established 102 goals to reduce pollution, restore habitats, protect living resources, promote sound land use practices and engage the public in Bay restoration. At the time, Chesapeake 2000 was considered the most comprehensive large-scale ecosystem restoration blueprint in the nation.
Since Chesapeake 2000, the Bay Program has evolved toward using a mix of short- and long-term goals to improve its accountability and accelerate Bay restoration. In 2009, Bay Program partners set new two-year goals called milestones. These short-term goals, which partners set and meet every two years, lead up to a long-term goal of putting all restoration measures in place by 2025.
