2013 Maryland Pollution Reduction Milestones

The Chesapeake Bay Program recently announced that Maryland achieved its 2013 pollution reduction milestones for nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment.

In 2008, the Chesapeake Executive Council adopted two-year milestones to focus Chesapeake Bay Watershed states on short-term achievable restoration goals.

The milestones are part of the landmark Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2010.

The Chesapeake Bay TMDL is a federal “pollution diet” that sets limits on the amount of nutrient pollution and sediments that can enter the Bay and its tidal rivers to meet water quality goals.

In response, the seven Bay jurisdictions created individual Watershed Implementation Plans (WIP), or restoration blueprints, that detailed specific steps each would take to meet the pollution reduction goals by 2025. The blueprints guide local and state Bay restoration efforts through the next decade and beyond.

The Bay jurisdictions use their two-year pollution reduction milestones to track and assess progress toward completing their WIP restoration actions; EPA regularly reviews each jurisdiction’s milestones.

Progress is measured from the baseline established in the TMDL (2009) and compared to full WIP implementation, which is required by the year 2025.

Maryland is nearly 41 percent toward its 2025 nitrogen target and 61 percent toward its 2025 phosphorus target, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).

EPA requires that the six states and the District of Columbia each reach 60 percent of their 2025 WIP restoration targets for nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution reduction by the year 2017.

source: Maryland Department of the Environment