Achieving Water Quality Goals in the Chesapeake Bay: A Comprehensive Evaluation of System Response

In 1983, the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the mayor of District of Columbia, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator signed the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement. The one-page agreement acknowledged the “historical decline in the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay” and committed to addressing a major cause of the decline by pledging “to fully address the extent, complexity, and sources of pollutants entering the Bay.” Subsequent Bay agreements have expanded the number of partners and the number of restoration goals, but reducing two key pollutants, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), has remained a centerpiece of every subsequent Bay agreement.