1998 Executive Council Meeting
Welcome to the Chesapeake Bay Program's 1998 Executive Council Meeting. The theme of this year's meeting is: The Future of the Chesapeake Bay- Meeting New Challenges with Technology, Education and a Renewed Bay Agreement.
Established in 1983 under the historic Chesapeake Bay Agreement, the Bay Program is the partnership among Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Executive Council includes the top executives from each jurisdiction, the chair of the Bay Commission and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The members of the 1998 Executive Council are Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening, chair; Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge; Virginia Governor James Gilmore III; District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry, Jr.; Maryland State Delegate John Wood, Jr., chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission; and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol M. Browner.
As the governing body of the Bay Program, the Excutive Council established the policy direction for the restoration and protection of the Bay and its living resources. The Executive Council sets goals and policy through agreements, amendments and directives. At this year's meeting the Executive Council will sign four new directives that address the future of the Bay restoration effort. The 1998 directives call for a regional watershed-based education initiative, a renewed Chesapeake Bay Agreement in the year 2000, more emphasis on innovative technologies in the overall Bay effort and for a concerted regional effort to manage the transport and use of animal waste in the region.
Citizen's Guide to the Chesapeake Bay Program's 1998 Executive Council Meeting
Signed Today by the Executive Council
- Directive 98-1, Education Initiative- This K-12 initiative calls for the departments of education in the four jurisdictions to become more active partners in the Bay Program; for Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia to form interagency working groups in their jurisdiction to include the departments of education, natural resources, environment and agriculture, teachers, nonprofit environmental and education organizations and representatives of higher education; and to convene an Education Summit of the four interagency working groups in 1999 and every two years thereafter.
- Directive 98-2, Chesapeake 2000- This directive calls for the renewal of the historically significant Chesapeake Bay Agreement, the document that set the 15-year-old restoration effort in motion. The process, called Chesapeake 2000, will integrate three projects. First, an internal Bay Program-driven review of the goals and commitments of the Bay clean-up effort. Second, a rigorous public participation process coordinated by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. And, third, Chesapeake Futures, a project coordinated by the Bay Program's Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee that will look to the future of the Bay in the year 2030. The goal of Chesapeake 2000 is a renewed Chesapeake Bay Agreement to be presented in the year 2000.
- Directive 98-3, Implementation of Innovative Technologies- The Bay Program already has played an important role in the development and implementation of new technology, including Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR) and other pollution reduction technologies. This directive calls for these efforts to continue and for the Bay Program to utilize new and innovative technologies to meet the goals and commitments of the Bay restoration. New technology-based efforts in the areas of concentrated animal operations, air quality, ballast water and efficient development patterns will receive special emphasis.
- Directive 98-4, Interstate Animal Waste Distribution and Use- With this directive, the Executive Council calls for a coordinated regional effort to manage the use and transport of animal waste. The directive recognizes the importance of animal agriculture and, at the same time, the need to ensure that animal wastes are properly utilized in a manner that protects the Bay system from nutrient pollution.
Fishery Management Focus
Accepted/or/Adopted at this Year's Meeting
In other actions, the Executive Council accepted two documents and adopted a third in reponse to Directives signed at last year's annual meeting.
- Accepted: The Priority Nutrient/ Sediment Reduction Areas Protocol, in response to Bay Program Directive 97-1, Baywide Nutrient Reduction Progress and Future Directions. The directive called on the Bay Program to develop by 1998 a protocol designed to help managers determine how nutrient goals and reduction efforts can further be targeted to areas of persistent high loadings, especially where evidence indicates a linkage to critical living resource or human health concerns.
- Accepted: The jurisdiction's strategies for net gain in wetlands, in reponse to Bay Program Directive 97-2, Wetlands Protection and Restoration Goals. The directive called on the Bay jurisdictions to develop by 1998 strategies to achieve the protection and restoration of the wetlands resource, to establish a quantifiable wetland restoration and preservation goal and to define methods to measure success in meeting that goal. Overview of Jurisdictional Strategies for Implementing Executive Council Directive No. 97-2
- Adopted: A strategy for implementing the Community Watershed Initiative, in response to Bay Program Directive 97-3, Community Watershed Initiative. The Initiative called on the Bay Program to develop by 1998 a strategy that would ensure the Bay Program commitments for nutrient and toxics reduction, Bay grasses, forest buffers, fish passage, land stewardship, local government involvement, public participation and that other goals would be integrated at the community watershed scale