Tracking Healthy Waters Protections in the Chesapeake Bay

Description

A team of graduate students in the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy at the College of William & Mary surveyed local government staff in 23 Chesapeake Bay watershed localities in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Four categories of watershed protection tools were tested across all states: watershed management, zoning ordinances, development management and natural resources protection. On average, localities utilized less than half of the policies categorized as watershed management and development management. Development management and natural resources protection policies were almost universally used. Local policies varied in their level of stringency and enforcement. A number of state regulations mandated the use of certain policies, and localities differed widely in their use of local regulatory authority to have more restrictive policies. The most successful localities blended mandates with incentives and advisory services, while gearing action and awareness specifically toward watershed protection.

Each state differed in a number of ways concerning their approach to protecting healthy watersheds. Maryland, characterized by a high amount of state control, mandates a number of protective regulations regarding watershed health. These state standards and regulations are largely uniform and do not allow sufficient flexibility for individual localities facing divergent pressures. Pennsylvania exercises more decentralized control over the localities. Counties in Pennsylvania do not engage in the same regulatory design process, leaving this to municipalities and engaging in an oversight role. Similar to Maryland, Virginia exercises a high degree of state control over watershed protection, but the state does allow for more flexibility than Maryland, placing different requirements on developed and undeveloped localities.

A basic statistical analysis looking at potential relationships between the various tools and watershed health demonstrated that only two categories appeared to have a significant relationship with watershed health. Development management policies and zoning ordinances showed statistically significant correlations with the proportion of “good” or “excellent” quality samples within a county. Given the intent of this project as a pilot study, the sample size was too small to gain more than a cursory understanding of the interstate and intrastate trends. Future studies should focus on expanding the sample size and modifying the survey methodology to capture a greater level of detail.