FILE - A small boat travels along the Honga River near the Chesapeake Bay, as the sky lights up at sunrise in Fishing Creek, Md., May 14, 2020. A report on the Chesapeake Bay released Tuesday, June 6, 2023, found strong disparities between communities in different parts of the bay's watershed in terms of health, economics and social justice concerns, presenting the challenges of improving the health of the nation's largest estuary in a larger context.
The health of the bay is a reflection of what's happening across its six-state watershed, which includes Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia and the District of Columbia. “What’s really apparent here is that to have a healthy ecosystem you have to have a healthy community. If you don’t have a healthy community, the net result is the bay is going to feel the effect,” Dennison said. “The inequities we’re seeing at the economic, social, level are being manifested as well into the health of the bay.”
“We need to pick up the pace of restoration so that we can hit our nutrient reduction targets in the future and ensure our resilience to climate change,” said Peter Goodwin, president of the UMCES. Of seven indicators, there were improvements in water clarity, nitrogen, phosphorus, and aquatic grasses.