About the Chesapeake Bay
(source: www.chesapeakebay.net)
The Chesapeake Bay is about 200 miles
long, stretching from Havre de Grace,
Maryland, to Norfolk, Virginia. The Bay’s
width varies from its narrowest point (3.4
miles across near Aberdeen, Maryland) to
its widest point (35 miles across near the
mouth of the Potomac River).
Many natural geographic factors also
influence the Bay’s health. The Bay
watershed – the area of land that drains
to the Bay stretches across more than
64,000 square miles. It encompasses parts
of six states – Delaware, Maryland, New
York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West
Virginia – and the entire District of
Columbia. More than 17 million people
live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. .
Combine this with the fact that the Bay’s
average depth is just 21 feet, and that
means a lot of water – and pollution –
drains into a narrow, shallow estuary.
The Chesapeake Bay’s land-to-water ratio
(14:1) is the largest of any coastal water body in the world. This is why our actions on the land
have such a big impact on the Bay’s health.
There are a number of issues that threaten the Chesapeake Bay’s health. Some of the major
issues facing the Chesapeake Bay are:
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Nutrient and sediment pollution from agriculture, stormwater runoff, air pollution and
wastewater treatment plants
Development and population growth
Low populations of many fish and shellfish species, including shad, oysters and
menhaden
Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay is a difficult task. However, with a dedicated effort by
government, businesses and the region’s 17 million residents, we can achieve a healthy,
restored Bay for future generations to enjoy.
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What are the major rivers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed?
The Susquehanna, Potomac, Rappahannock, York and James rivers are the five largest rivers in
the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Altogether, more than 100,000 streams, creeks and rivers
(called tributaries) thread through the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Each one of us lives within a
few miles of one of these local waterways, which are like pipelines from our communities to the
Bay. Each of the streams, creeks and rivers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed has its own
watershed. These are sometimes called “sub-watersheds,” “small watersheds” or “local
watersheds.”
Facts & Figures
The following is a list of interesting facts and figures to learn all about the Chesapeake Bay's
geography, watershed, and flora and fauna.
Geography
• The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary: a body of water where fresh and salt water mix. It is
the largest of more than 100 estuaries in the United States.
• The Bay is about 200 miles long, stretching from Havre de Grace, Maryland, to Virginia
Beach, Virginia.
• The Bay's width ranges from 4 miles near Aberdeen, Maryland, to30 miles near Cape
Charles, Virginia.
• The Bay is surprisingly shallow. Its average depth, including all tidal tributaries, is about
21 feet. A person who is 6 feet tall could wade through more than 700,000 acres of the
Bay and never get his or her hat wet.
• A few deep troughs run along much of the Bay's length. Some of these troughs are as
much as 174 feet deep. The troughs are believed to be remnants of the ancient
Susquehanna River.
• The Bay and its tidal tributaries have 11,684 miles of shoreline – more than the entire
U.S. west coast.
• The surface area of the Bay and its tidal tributaries is approximately 4,480 square miles.
• Two of the United States’ five major North Atlantic ports – Baltimore and Hampton
Roads – are on the Bay.
Water and Watershed
• The Chesapeake Bay holds more than 18 trillion gallons of water.
• The Bay receives about half its water volume from the Atlantic Ocean. The rest drains
into the Bay from an enormous 64,000-square-mile watershed.
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The Chesapeake Bay watershed includes parts of six states – Delaware, Maryland, New
York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia – and the entire District of Columbia.
About 150 streams, creeks and rivers drain to the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Approximately 51 billion gallons of water flow into the Bay each day from its freshwater
tributaries.
Collectively, the Chesapeake’s three largest rivers – the Susquehanna, Potomac and
James rivers – provide more than 80 percent of the fresh water to the Bay.
The Susquehanna River is the Bay’s largest river. It provides nearly 50 percent of the
fresh water coming into the Bay – an average of 19 million gallons of water per minute.
The Chesapeake Bay watershed is home to more than 17 million people. About 150,000
new people move into the Bay watershed each year.
More than 100,000 streams, creeks and rivers thread through the Chesapeake Bay
watershed. Everyone in the watershed lives within a few miles of one of these
tributaries, which are like pipelines from our communities to the Bay.
There are nearly 18,000 local governments in the Bay watershed, including towns, cities,
counties and townships.
The Chesapeake Bay watershed contains three distinct geologic regions: the Atlantic
coastal plain, the Piedmont plateau and the Appalachian province.
Approximately 7.3 million acres of land in the Bay watershed portions of Maryland,
Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia are permanently preserved from
development.
There are more than 700 public access points on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
The Chesapeake Bay was the first estuary in the nation to be targeted for restoration as
an integrated watershed and ecosystem.
Flora and Fauna
• The Bay supports more than 2,700 speciesof plants and animals, including 348 species of
finfish and 173 species of shellfish.
• The Bay produces about 500 million pounds of seafood per year.
• The Chesapeake region is home toat least 29 species of waterfowl. Nearly one million
waterfowl winter on the Bay – approximately one-third of the Atlantic coast’s migratory
population. The birds stop to feed and rest on the Bay during their annual migration
along the Atlantic Flyway.
• Nearly 80,000 acres of bay grasses grow in the shallows of the Chesapeake Bay and its
tributaries. Young and molting blue crabs rely on bay grass beds for protection from
predators.
• Approximately 284,000 acres of tidal wetlands grow the Chesapeake Bay region.
Wetlands provide critical habitat for fish, birds, crabs and many other species.
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Forests cover 58 percent of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The region loses about 100
acres of forest each day to development.
About the Chesapeake Bay Program
The Chesapeake Bay Program is the regional partnership that directs and conducts the
restoration of the Chesapeake Bay in the United States. As a partnership, the Chesapeake Bay
Program brings together members of various state, federal, academic and local watershed
organizations to build and adopt policies that support Chesapeake Bay restoration. By
combining the resources and unique strengths of each individual organization, the Chesapeake
Bay Program is able to follow a unified plan for restoration. The program office is located in
Annapolis, Maryland.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Congress funded scientific and estuarine research of the
Chesapeake Bay, which pinpointed three areas that required immediate attention: toxic
pollution, nutrient over-enrichment, and dwindling underwater bay grasses.
In 1983, the governors of Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania; the mayor of the District of
Columbia; and the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
signed The Chesapeake Bay Agreement of 1983.[1] From this act, the Chesapeake Bay Program
Executive Council was formed.
Since the signing of 1983 agreement, the Chesapeake Bay Program has adopted two additional
agreements that provide overall guidance for Chesapeake Bay restoration:
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The 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement established the Chesapeake Bay Program's goal to
reduce the amount of nutrients--primarily nitrogen and phosphorus--that enter the
Chesapeake Bay by 40 percent by 2000. In 1992, the Chesapeake Bay Program partners
agreed to continue the 40 percent reduction goal beyond 2000 and to attack nutrients
at their source: upstream, in the Chesapeake Bay's tributaries.
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In June 2000, the Chesapeake Bay Program adopted Chesapeake 2000, an agreement
intended to guide restoration activities throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed
through 2010. Chesapeake 2000 also provided the opportunity for the adjoining states
of Delaware, New York and West Virginia to become more involved in the partnership.
These headwater states now work with the Chesapeake Bay Program to reduce
nutrients and sediment flowing into rivers from their jurisdictions. The renewed Bay
agreement was designed to guide restoration activities throughout the Bay watershed
through 2010. The members pledged to achieve over 100 specific actions all designed to
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restore the health of the bay. The agreement is organized into five categories, all
dedicated to restoration and protection of different areas of the Bay's health: living
resources, vital habitat, water quality, sound land use, and stewardship and community
engagement.
o The living resource section of the agreement states the goal of "restore, enhance
and protect, the finfish, shellfish, and other living resources, their habitats and
ecological relationship to sustain all fisheries and provide for a balanced
ecosystem." Some of the specific goals are 1) to help the blue crab population by
establishing harvest targets and begin implementing state fisheries management
strategies and to manage the blue crab fishery to restore a healthy, size, age
structure and biomass, 2) a tenfold increase in the native oyster population, and 3)
protect and restore 114,000 acres (460 km2) of submerged aquatic vegetation by
2010. It also touched on wetlands, watershed, and forest preservation.
o The water quality restoration and protection section states that the program plans
involving stormwater management, upgrading wastewater treatment plants to
biological nutrient removal, and developing tributary strategies for each basinwill,
by 2010, correct the nutrient-relation problems associated with the bay and
remove it from the list of impaired waters under the Clean Water Act.
o The sound land use portion of the agreement talks about permanently preserving
20 percent of the watershed from development by 2010. Also, by 2002, each state
will coordinate transportation policies to reduce the dependence on automobiles
by encouraging travel alternatives such as biking and bus riding.
o Lastly, the stewardship section aims to enhance the ability of citizen and
community groups to participate in Bay restoration and provide an outdoor
experience of the Bay for every student before they graduate high school in order
to encourage knowledge and awareness of the Bay’s problems.
The Chesapeake Bay “Pollution Diet” or TMDL
A Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) was established in December of 2010.
This comprehensive “pollution diet” is based on modeling of water quality reduction needs and
clean up efforts are now based largely on State Watershed Implementation Plans or WIPs.
States are working with local partners to refine and implement their plans, and provide greater
certainty that cleanup commitments will be achieved on schedule. The Bay TMDL is part of an
accountability framework to ensure that all pollution control measures needed to fully restore
the Bay and its tidal rivers are in place by 2025, with practices in place by 2017 to meet 60
percent of the necessary pollution reductions.
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The Chesapeake Bay Executive Order
On May 12, 2009, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that recognizes the
Chesapeake Bay as a national treasure and calls on the federal government to lead a renewed
effort to restore and protect the nation’s largest estuary and its watershed.
The Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order established a Federal
Leadership Committee that will oversee the development and coordination of reporting, data
management and other activities by agencies involved in Bay restoration. The committee will
be chaired by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and include senior
representatives from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security,
Interior, Transportation and others.
The Executive Order requires that these agencies prepare and submit by September 9, 2009
draft reports that make recommendations to:
• Define the next generation of tools and actions to restore water quality in the Bay
and describe the changes to be made to regulations, programs and policies to
implement these actions. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
• Target resources to better protect the Bay and its rivers, particularly in agricultural
conservation practices. (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
• Strengthen storm water management practices for federal facilities and federal land
within the Bay watershed and develop a best practices guide for reducing polluted
runoff. (EPA, Dept of Defense)
• Assess the impacts of climate change on the Bay and develop a strategy for adapting
programs and infrastructure to these impacts. (Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Commerce)
• Expand public access to the Bay and its rivers from federal lands and conserve
landscapes of the watershed. (Dept. of Interior)
• Expand environmental research, monitoring and observation to strengthen scientific
support for decision-making on Bay restoration issues. (Dept. of Interior, Dept of
Commerce)
• Develop focused and coordinated habitat and research activities that protect and
restore living resources and water quality. (Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Commerce).
• Develop strategies to respond to climate change impacts on the Bay.
• Expand environmental markets such as water quality trading.
Federal agencies will consult extensively with the state governments of the seven Bay
jurisdictions -- Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the
District of Columbia -- in preparing their reports.
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