Stakeholders' Advisory Committee chair says equity and inclusion is needed for a restored Chesapeake Bay

Since his relatively recent election as chair of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Stakeholders’ Advisory Committee (Stakeholders’ Committee), Chuck Herrick has been dedicated to igniting passion and enthusiasm for the Bay restoration effort while also championing inclusivity and equity on the Stakeholders’ Committee.

As the Bay Program approaches 2025, marking a major milestone in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, we sat down with Herrick to ask about his experiences being on the Committee and share his thoughts on how the Bay Program can expand progress beyond 2025.

What background and skills did you bring to the Stakeholders' Advisory Committee and how have those skills translated into your role as Chair?

Early in my career, I worked in the federal government, first for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and later in the White House Council on Environmental Quality. While I was officially an employee of these agencies, nearly all my work involved multi-agency collaboration and partnership programs. I was trying to forge meaningful partnerships among agencies with differing missions, differing cultures and differing policy orientations. It seemed like I was always the most junior person in the room, so I had to learn the craft of managing upwards. On the Stakeholders Committee we’re all volunteers, being the Chair does not mean that you’re the boss of anyone. So, skills like collegiality, active listening, inclusive agenda formulation and reflective facilitation are, I think, especially important.

What was your relationship with the Chesapeake Bay Program prior to joining the Committee?

I’ve been working in the arena of environmental policy and resource management since I was a graduate student at the University of Colorado, which is most definitely not in the Bay watershed. That was almost 45 years ago. Since then, I’ve worked on numerous muti-disciplinary, cross-boundary, multi-agency environmental issues such as acid rain, adaptation to climate change, stewardship and conservation of the Long Island Sound, energy development in the Rocky Mountain West, invasive species management, public lands management and organizational cultural change to promote sustainable operations in the water sector. I’ve worked with academia and research institutions, state, federal and tribal government agencies, municipalities and public utilities, philanthropic foundations and advocacy organizations. So, what I’m trying to say is, although I came to the Stakeholders’ Committee as a relative newbie to the Bay Program, I have tons of experience dealing with cross boundary, multi-agency environmental and conservation issues. You might say that the Bay Program looks, feels and acts like lots of things I’ve worked on.

I’m 100% convinced that we’ll never “fix” the Bay until we learn how to deal with nonpoint pollution, and we’ll never deal with nonpoint pollution until we have enough effective Best Management Practices (BMPs), and we’ll never have enough effective BMPs until all Bay communities take full ownership of the Bay’s health, which won’t happen until all people in the watershed have an equal say in its value, stewardship, management and use."

Have there been any surprising or unexpected challenges or insights since you became a member of the Committee or since starting your tenure as Chair?

I have been surprised by how hard it’s been to build a deep and meaningful culture of diversity, equity and inclusiveness within the Bay Program and the broader arena of Chesapeake Bay conservation and stewardship. I’ve learned so much from colleagues like Bekura Shabazz, Daphne Pee, Donna Harris-Aikens, Abel Olivo and Dana Wiggins. I’m 100% convinced that we’ll never “fix” the Bay until we learn how to deal with nonpoint pollution, and we’ll never deal with nonpoint pollution until we have enough effective Best Management Practices (BMPs), and we’ll never have enough effective BMPs until all Bay communities take full ownership of the Bay’s health, which won’t happen until all people in the watershed have an equal say in its value, stewardship, management and use. I have come to believe that diversity and inclusiveness are the wheels on which the Bay Program moves, not merely programmatic attributes.

What do you see as the biggest challenges or some of the top priorities for the Stakeholders' Committee? How do you plan to address or overcome those challenges or achieve those priorities?

A couple of things come to mind. First, the role of the Advisory Committees. The Bay Program underutilizes its Advisory Committees, ours as well as the Local Government Advisory Committee and the Science and Technology Advisory Committee. I’m trying hard to make us more visible and productively vocal in all partnership fora and interactions. We need to operate on a par with the Bay Program’s federal and state partners. To do this, I’m trying to make us omnipresent, always up-to-speed and laser relevant. Our role is incredibly important, as one of our committee members Verna Harrison puts it, we’re really the only group within the Bay Program whose role is simply to speak truth to those in power.

Another challenge that animates me is the ongoing need to better integrate localities and small communities in the Bay stewardship process. Federal and state agencies have limited regulatory clout when it comes to local land use and zoning decisions. But from a cumulative perspective, they can have an outsized impact on the Bay’s health. Under the leadership of Kate Patton and David Lillard, our Conservation and Land Use Subcommittee is exploring ways to incentivize local partners, including enhanced networking processes, provision of data and land use projections, and capacity building.

And finally, we need to better engage the agricultural sector in our efforts to restore the Bay. We must acknowledge the voice of agriculture, and at the same time develop policy regimes that are fair, balanced, practical, affordable and that assure accountability. I’m eager to see how the partnership’s new Agriculture Advisory Committee jumps in to help us make agriculture a productive partner in the long-term stewardship of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

I see Bay stewardship as a long-term enterprise, something that we should think about in increments of 50, maybe even 100 years.

Are there any recent successes or achievements of the committee that you are particularly proud of?

Local and community capacity building is critical for the long-term stewardship of the Chesapeake Bay. Over the years, the Bay Program has seen its funding increase substantially. But this support has not been distributed in an equitable manner, with community-level groups and underrepresented stakeholders all too often left wanting. Our committee has pursued a sustained agenda to make Bay partners aware of the systemic nature of funding disparities and to take concrete steps to make grant monies more accessible to underrepresented groups and once awarded, easier for small organizations to administer. I’m proud of what we’ve done, but this is a really sticky problem and we have a long way to go.

What are your personal hopes for the future health and sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay as well as the partnership at large in the next two years and beyond 2025?

I’m of two minds regarding this question. On the one hand, I agree with many of our members who argue passionately that we need to rekindle a sense of urgency when it comes to restoration and stewardship of the Bay. This means that jurisdictional partners need to be held accountable, that we model and monitor the Chesapeake Bay Program’s progress in a manner that is credible to all parties and that we need to move quickly and aggressively to satisfy conditions for the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL). On the other hand, I see Bay stewardship as a long-term enterprise, something that we should think about in increments of 50, maybe even 100 years. It would be nice to remove the Bay from the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of impaired waters tomorrow, but even if we did, we’d still need to grapple with PFAS and other pollutants, changes in climate, shifting watershed demographics, a wide spectrum of persistent land use challenges and a variety of fishery pressures, both natural and human induced. Meeting the terms of the Bay TMDL can be approached through a regulatory mindset, whereas long-term stewardship is more a matter of state and local capacity building, education and outreach, and planning.