Maryland governor Wes Moore announced a new strategy to address the ongoing degradation of the Chesapeake Bay. It will be difficult, but it has to be done.
This excerpt helps summarize the strategy.
"While many efforts were undertaken in tandem to clean the bay, the overarching tactics of the past decade zeroed in on large targets known as “point-source” polluters, trying to reduce pollution from single sources such as wastewater treatment plants, for example. Those efforts operated on the idea that an overall reduction in pollution would improve water quality.
Moore’s shift will instead focus more on pollution from diffuse sources, known as “nonpoint source” polluters, such as scores of small farms or deforested coast lines that add up to big pollution contributions.
Cleanup efforts have always tried to adopt both point-source and nonpoint source reductions, but the latter has been more slowly adopted. The May report suggested the shift in focus that on Thursday Moore said Maryland would undertake. “Maryland will become the first state in the nation to formally embrace” that approach, Moore said.
Maryland’s new strategy is multifaceted, but one element highlighted by state officials will focus on targeted restoration of shallow water habitat, where conservationists expect to get the most impact from cleaner water and where striped bass and crab nurseries could flourish."
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