SD3 - Report of the Chesapeake Bay Commission


Executive Summary:
The Chesapeake Bay Commission is required by law to report to the General Assemblies of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia on its activities and on the "status of interstate environmental and economic issues in the Chesapeake Bay Region and the progress of coordinative efforts." This document is intended to fulfill that requirement.

The development and signing of the Chesapeake Bay Agreement in December of 1987 represented, in many respects, a high-water mark in the evolution of the multi-jurisdictional effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay. The Agreement constituted an absolute commitment on the part of the Environmental Protection Agency, the states of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and the Chesapeake Bay Commission to work together to achieve a set of specific goals within an identified timeframe. For the first time, all of the affected and involved jurisdictions are working together to develop and implement mutually agreed upon programs which will accomplish a single, identified goal: a healthier and more productive Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.

The signing of this Agreement has altered the entire face of the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort. Prior to 1988, the states, the District of Columbia and the federal government were bound by a very loose commitment to cooperate in efforts to protect the Bay. In fact, and on an operational level, meetings and joint ventures among the jurisdictional participants were relatively rare. An exception was the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which has worked since 1982 to assist and educate the legislatures of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania on Bay-related issues of mutual interest to the three states.

The 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement has spawned numerous inter-jurisdictional working groups and it is now common to find all of the interested parties working together to find acceptable solutions to common problems. The Chesapeake Bay Commission has been centrally involved in this venture. A chart of the post-Bay Agreement organizational structure for the Chesapeake Bay Program appears on the following page.

The 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement has essentially constituted the environmental agenda for the Bay states over the past two years. The first year, 1988, was largely spent in developing plans and strategies to achieve our identified goals. The actual implementation of many of those strategies did not get firmly underway until 1989. For this reason, and because the emphasis for the entire Chesapeake Bay restoration effort has been re-defined over the past two years, the Chesapeake Bay Commission staff elected to publish a single "biennial" report for the years 1988 and 1989. This document, in conjunction with the issue papers and resolutions referred to herein, constitute that report.