Benthic Macroinvertebrate Impairments
- Author:
- John Wolf
- Date Created:
- March 4, 2008
Each state in the watershed conducts benthic macroinvertebrate assessments as part of its biennial water quality assessment report mandated by the Clean Water Act. Where assessed benthic macroinvertebrate communities are deemed the most degraded, states must designate those stream segments as impaired and add them to the list of impaired waters in need of cleanup. The Bay Program state partners - Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia - used the data and results from their 2006 water quality assessments to prepare summaries of stream conditions in each state. The methodologies for benthic macroinvertebrate assessment vary by state, therefore a synthesis of results across the entire watershed was not attempted at this time The map presents a summary of each state's assessment results within the boundaries of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.