Approach to Chesapeake Bay Land Use Policy Tasks

Description

The 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement established goals and outcomes for the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, its tributaries and the lands that surround them. This Approach to the Chesapeake Bay Land Use Policy Tasks document will assist the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in achieving the Watershed Agreement's Land Use Options and Evaluation Outcome, which states, "By the end of 2017, with the direct involvement of local governments or their representatives, evaluate policy options, incentives and planning tools that could assist them in continually improving their capacity to reduce the rate of conversion of agricultural lands, forests and wetlands as well as the rate of changing landscapes from more natural lands that soak up pollutants to those that are paved over, hardscaped or otherwise impervious. Strategies should be developed for supporting local governments’ and others’ efforts in reducing these rates by 2025 and beyond."

The three options discussed in this document identify approaches to evaluating policy options, incentives and planning tools that could assist Chesapeake Bay states in continually improving their capacity to reduce the rate of conversion of agricultural lands, forests and wetlands as well as the rate of changing landscapes from more natural lands that soak up pollutants to those that are paved over, hardscaped or otherwise impervious. To facilitate the process of identifying and evaluating such options and tools, the Maintain Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation Team (GIT), which houses the Land Use Options and Evaluation outcome, identified three tasks and requested that Tetra Tech develop an approach for conducting these tasks: (1) Conduct a professional survey of local government and interest groups to identify which policy options, incentives and planning tools have been most effective at reducing land conversion rates, and to determine if additional information and tools, such as an online repository of effective land use policy options, incentives and planning tools are needed to achieve a reduction in land conversion rates. (2) Conduct a comprehensive review to determine the range of existing land use policy options, incentives and planning tools currently being implemented at the local and state level. (3) Create an online repository of such examples to serve as a user-friendly knowledge base, including studies and reports of the costs, benefits and effectiveness of such examples. 

In response, Tetra Tech documented a recommended approach for undertaking these three tasks.