Chesapeake Bay Program response to Chesapeake Bay Foundation Midpoint Assessment

Today, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation released their midpoint assessment of the progress that Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia are making toward the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL).

Under the Bay TMDL, the District of Columbia, the six watershed states—Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia—and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to develop short-term goals, called two-year milestones, to check in on progress being made to reduce pollution. The Bay TMDL also calls for a midpoint assessment to determine if 60 percent of pollution reducing practices are in place by each of the six watershed states and the District of Columbia by the end of 2017. The final 2016-2017 milestone evaluations and 2017 progress data will be released by the EPA this summer after all data has been processed and assessments are complete.