There is no other organization in the state of Maryland, nor the Mid-Atlantic region for that matter, that has put more of its reputation on the line than the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) to protect the Chesapeake Bay. The 40 years old nonprofit conservation group, which now has an operating budget of over $20 million, has deployed its significant resources to advocate for, as well as set public policy, to ensure the Bay’s survival, earning the respect and support of many in the multistate Bay region.
And yet despite this extraordinary nongovernmental effort, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has sometimes been accused as being too soft on both regulation and mitigation solutions for special constituencies. This concern has also included the Exelon Corporation, (owner of the Conowingo Dam and a CBF corporate donor), and the company’s renewal process of the dam’s operating license in September of this year.
But as CBF’s Senior Water Quality Scientist Dr. Beth McGee points out in her interview with the Spy, it is ultimately science that drives the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s water protection policies, including the Conowingo Dam relicensing process and permitting. And that science data, including the preliminary assessment by the Corps of Engineers study on water quality of the Lower Susquehanna River and the Dam during catastrophic storms, is providing new answers on its long-term risk to the Bay and how this best to mitigate that danger over the next decade.
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