The overall health of the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, received its highest rating since 2002 in an annual report released Tuesday by scientists: a C-plus.
Scientists at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science have specifically highlighted Pennsylvania’s efforts to prevent pollution from flowing into state waters. Pennsylvania has been criticized in the past for not doing enough to prevent pollution from flowing into the bay.
The health of the Bay is a reflection of what is happening in the watershed across the six states, including Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
“The restoration of the Chesapeake Bay is seen as a global model of sustainability. The report shows that progress is being made, but we need to accelerate these efforts, especially in light of climate change, which will make achieving the goals more difficult,” said Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, president of UMCES, which compiled the report.
Bill Dennison, professor and vice president of UMCES, pointed out that the Upper Chesapeake Bay, where the Susquehanna River flows, has the second-highest score of the 16 bay regions measured in the report and continues to improve.
“Pennsylvania has had a bad reputation for a while now. We need to stop playing the blame game and look at the data. The data should help us in our recovery efforts, rather than pointing fingers,” Dennison said in an interview.
Last year, Pennsylvania planted about 340 miles (550 kilometers) of riparian buffers, which are strips of vegetation planted next to streams and waterways to protect habitat, Dennison noted. The state has also focused on increasing the use of green manure in agriculture to reduce erosion, improve soil health and protect waterways from pollution from runoff.
“That practice is very important to absorb the excess nitrate that remains in the fields at the end of the growing season,” Dennison said.
For the first time, researchers published the report in Pennsylvania at the Susquehanna River Basin Commission in Harrisburg.
“There is still much to be done, but this is a strong indicator of progress,” said Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator for the mid-Atlantic region. “After changing course, the partnership is now accelerating progress. Over the past several years, EPA has ramped up enforcement, accountability and investments, and it’s paying off. These efforts have helped achieve historic results in upstream and downstream states and all sectors, especially agriculture.”
This year’s UMCES report is also notable because researchers said they are building a man-made litter indicator to understand the different types of contamination from items like plastic bags and bottles. Currently, not all of this litter is monitored, and data is not collected uniformly across the bay and watershed. Researchers hope the information will be used to create targeted prevention and mitigation strategies.
“There are a lot of things we can do in terms of personal behavior to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the bay,” Dennison said.
The report focuses on seven bay indicators that assess the condition of the aquatic ecosystem. These include phosphorus and nitrogen measurements in the water and how much oxygen is present at various depths. It also focuses on the condition of organisms living in or on the bottom areas of the bay, water clarity and aquatic grasses.
The report also focuses on the health of the Bay Watershed, which includes environmental, social and economic aspects that should provide a more comprehensive picture of the watershed. The health of the watershed scored 52%, or a C, which is the same as the previous year.