Bay Program releases final two-year work plans

Today, the Chesapeake Bay Program released a collection of short-term plans aimed at protecting and restoring the Bay, its rivers and streams and the surrounding lands. These twenty-seven work plans outline specific actions our partners intend to take over the next two years in their work toward achieving the goals and outcomes of the landmark Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.

Each two-year work plan addresses one or more of the Watershed Agreement’s thirty-one interconnected outcomes and outlines short-term actions critical to our work, integrating both new and long-held strategies to create an environmentally and economically sound Chesapeake Bay. Actions outlined in the plans will help maintain the health of local waters, sustain abundant fish and wildlife populations, restore vital habitats, foster engaged and diverse communities through increased public access and education, conserve farmland and forests and improve the climate resiliency of the region. The plans will help the Bay Program partnership track implementation, evaluate progress and manage adaptively to foster continuous improvement.

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement was signed in June 2014 by representatives from the six watershed states, the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of the federal government. In July 2015, the Chesapeake Executive Council announced the release of a set of twenty-five strategies outlining our long-term approach for implementation, monitoring and assessing progress toward the Watershed Agreement’s goals. Our work plans outline the specific, short-term steps our partners plan to take over the next two years toward meeting those long-term goals, and represent the next step in a continued commitment toward a healthy and vibrant Chesapeake Bay watershed.

The work plans and a summary of participating partners can be found online on the Management Strategies and Work Plans Dashboard.