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May 21, 2025

Talbot Spy

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Archives Ecosystem Eco Lead

Infrastructure Bill would Boost Bay Restoration Funding, Senate Eyes $238M Funding Increase over Next Five Years

August 4, 2021 by Bay Journal

The struggling Chesapeake Bay restoration effort stands to get a hefty infusion of funding from the ambitious $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal reached over the weekend in the U.S. Senate.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act calls for providing $238 million over the next five years to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program, which coordinates the state-federal restoration effort.

The Bay restoration effort is among $21 billion in environmental remediation projects that would be funded under the bill. The 2,702-page measure also includes money for physical infrastructure, such as highways, bridges, transit and rail, airports and ports, power and water systems, waterways, broadband access and electric vehicle charging stations.

Hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators, the infrastructure bill is much smaller than the $2.6 trillion plan that Biden proposed in March. Many Republicans had criticized that plan because it included funding for things not traditionally deemed as infrastructure, such as workforce training and care for the elderly and disabled.

Those are now to be included in a separate $3.5 trillion spending bill that Democrats are working on, which faces an uncertain future in the closely divided Congress.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is expected to pass the Senate with the backing of Republican leaders, also slashed funding for clean energy tax credits intended to help fight climate change.

But the bill increases spending overall on environmental remediation above what Biden had proposed. It would provide funds for cleaning up abandoned mine land and Superfund sites, as well as for improving the resiliency of degraded ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes, Puget Sound and Gulf of Mexico.

The Chesapeake restoration effort also could get additional help from the bill’s proposal to boost funding nationally for water and wastewater infrastructure. Two EPA programs that provide loans to states for upgrading sewage and stormwater treatment facilities and for enhancing drinking water systems each would get an additional $14.7 billion over the next five years. That would more than double the current annual level of funding for such projects.

The Chesapeake Bay Program received $87.5 million for fiscal year 2021, and President Biden has proposed increasing that by $3 million for fiscal year 2022, which starts Oct. 1. The House has already approved that level of funding. The infrastructure measure, if passed, would boost that by roughly 50%, providing an additional $47.6 million a year.

“As we work to modernize our infrastructure and tackle climate change, it’s crucial that we’re investing in protecting our watersheds,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “That’s why we fought to include funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program in the bipartisan infrastructure deal.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) cited the Bay Program funding as one of the reasons he supported the infrastructure bill. “Marylanders will be pleased to see this includes funds for ecosystem restoration,” he said in a statement.

The bill’s text doesn’t say how the EPA is to use the additional money. The Bay Program typically funds research and helps assess cleanup progress, but nearly two-thirds of its money also goes to states, local governments and nonprofit groups for on-the-ground projects.

Even without such details spelled out in the bill, Bay advocates hailed the proposed funding increase. Kristin Reilly, director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition, called it “a shot in the arm” for the states and federal government, which could help them get closer to putting all needed pollution reduction practices in place by their 2025 deadline.

“While currently there is ambiguity on the exact allocation of this funding, we are heartened to see the restoration of our waterways is recognized as a national priority,” Reilly said in a statement. “This investment will not only help provide all the benefits clean water brings, but the many on-the-ground restoration projects this funding supports will also deliver good jobs and stimulate local economies.”

With just four years to go to meet the deadline of the “pollution diet” that the EPA set for the Bay in 2010, advocates and state and local officials have been urging Congress to boost funding for the restoration effort, which remains far short of many of its goals.

At least one-third of the outcomes pledged in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement are lagging badly or in limbo. An internal Bay Program review found that seven, including the key goal of meeting nutrient and sediment pollution reduction targets, are unlikely to be met by the 2025 deadline.

In May, governors of the six Bay watershed states, the mayor of the District of Columbia and the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, a tri-state legislative advisory body, wrote Congress seeking an additional billion dollars for the effort. They didn’t specify how the extra money could be spent.

The Choose Clean Water Coalition, representing dozens of environmental and community groups across the six-state watershed, also wrote congressional leaders that month asking in part for a $132 million boost in Bay Program funding. It proposed distributing the increased funding in grants to states and local governments to support their restoration efforts.

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives, Eco Lead Tagged With: bay, Chesapeake Bay, cleanup, environment, infrastructure, restoration

Contractor Named, Work to Resume on Tred Avon Oyster Sanctuary

March 17, 2021 by Bay Journal

Work is set to resume by early April on the protracted restoration of oyster reefs in Maryland’s Tred Avon River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District announced Wednesday that it has awarded a $3.8 million contract to a Florida company to construct 34 acres of reefs in the river.

The Tred Avon is one of five Maryland waterways targeted for large-scale oyster restoration. With Bay oyster populations depleted to 1% or 2% of their historic abundance by pollution, overfishing and disease, Maryland and Virginia have each pledged as part of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement to rebuild oyster populations and habitat in five of their Bay tributaries by 2025.

The other Maryland tributaries targeted for large-scale oyster restoration are Harris Creek and the Little Choptank, St. Mary’s and Manokin rivers. Work has been completed in Harris Creek and the Little Choptank, with the St. Mary’s getting under way and the Manokin still in planning.

The Tred Avon project has suffered repeated delays since it began in 2015. It became a battleground of sorts, as watermen objected to the materials and methods used to rebuild reefs and repopulate them with oysters.

Watermen complained that granite rocks used to build reefs in the Tred Avon and Harris Creek snagged crabbing gear and that improperly constructed granite reefs in Harris Creek had damaged boats. They also argued that oysters would not thrive on the granite, contending that oyster shell is the only suitable surface on which spat, or baby oysters, can settle and grow.

Research has shown, however, that juvenile oysters will do well on other hard surfaces in the water, and monitoring of the granite reefs built in Harris Creek found oysters in great numbers on them, and even at higher densities than on reefs rebuilt with shells.

Acting on watermen’s concerns, the Hogan administration placed a hold in 2016 on Tred Avon reef construction, though it later relented. But further delays and cost overruns ensued because of the state’s insistence at that time that no more granite be used in the reef construction. By the time the state withdrew those conditions, federal funding from past budgets had been depleted.

A three-year funding drought followed, easing last year, when the Army Corps included $5 million for Bay oyster restoration in its work plan.

Allison Colden, a fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said she was glad the Tred Avon project is moving forward. She noted that the Annapolis-based environmental group had joined others in urging Congress to provide the federal funding needed to finish the restoration project.

The company selected for the Tred Avon project, BlueForge LLC of St. Petersburg, is to build 12-inch high stone reefs on 21 acres of river bottom, plus 13 acres of reefs only 6 inches high to avoid navigation problems. All will be built of stone in waters that will be at least 6.75 feet deep at mean low water.

“Our team is excited to begin the final portion of restoration work in the Tred Avon River, which will bring us to a total of 130 acres restored in the oyster sanctuary,” said Col. John T. Litz, Baltimore District commander.

To date, 92.5 acres of reef have been completed, with 440 million hatchery-spawned seed oysters planted.

The work had been expected to be done earlier to avoid potential impacts on striped bass spawning in the spring, but unspecified contractual issues delayed the award until now, said Cynthia Mitchell, a Baltimore District spokesperson. The Army requested and obtained regulatory approval to do the work through April, she said, with the construction completed by May.

“We’re thrilled that funding has been allocated to complete the final stages of reef restoration in the Tred Avon River,” said Ward Slacum, executive director of the Oyster Recovery Partnership.

A 2019 monitoring report found that more than 95% of all restored reefs to date in Harris Creek, Little Choptank and Tred Avon Rivers had at least the minimum acceptable density of oysters, which is set at 15 oysters per square meter over 30% of the reef area being measured. More than 80% of the reefs monitored had ideal densities of at least 50 oysters per square meter.

“These reefs provide habitat and water quality benefits for the ecosystem,” said Sean Corson, director of the Chesapeake Bay office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which contributes funding and monitoring of the restoration efforts. “They also will benefit the economy through increased harvest of commercially important species — like blue crab — that use reefs for habitat.

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Eco Lead Tagged With: Maryland, oyster, reefs, restoration, sanctuary, spat, tred avon river

$18 Million in Grants Awarded for Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Projects

September 5, 2020 by Bay Journal

A record $18 million in federal grant money is heading to Chesapeake Bay watershed groups and local governments this year under a 20-year-old program that helps finance restoration projects in the estuary’s drainage basin.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the major funding source behind the Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund, which is managed by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in coordination with the state-federal Chesapeake Bay Program.

Matching contributions bring the outlay’s total to nearly $37 million, the EPA announced Sept. 2.

The agency is working with six states — Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and West Virginia — and Washington, DC, on a plan to clean up the Chesapeake. It has a 2025 deadline.

“EPA’s ongoing commitment and accountability to the restoration of the Bay is furthered by these grants that help address some of our most critical challenges, including reducing pollution from agricultural operations in Pennsylvania,” EPA Region 3 Administrator Cosmo Servidio said in a statement.

Of the funding going toward individual states, Virginia is set to receive the most, with approximately $5.5 million, followed by Pennsylvania at $5 million and Maryland at $3.4 million. Smaller amounts went to the other jurisdictions.

Fifty-six grants were awarded from the fund in 2020. Among them:

  • $975,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to pave the way to create 360 acres of forested buffers along streams in Pennsylvania (Total project cost: $1.9 million)
  • $950,000 to Trout Unlimited to help install 15 miles of livestock-exclusion fencing around streams, establish 80 acres of forested buffers and stabilize 15 miles of streambanks in Virginia (Total project cost: $1.9 million)
  • $470,000 to the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology to restore wetlands on 32 acres of farmland and map saltwater intrusion in Somerset and Dorchester counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore (Total project cost: $631,000)
  • $1 million to the Chesapeake Conservancy to work with the Precision Conservation Partnership on projects at 25 Pennsylvanian farms where the greatest benefits to water quality can be realized (Total project cost: $2.1 million)
  • $500,000 to the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay to work with dairy farmers that supply milk to Pennsylvania-based Turkey Hill Dairy to install conservation practices (Total project cost: $1 million)
  • $500,000 to the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection to construct a “green street” project in Silver Spring (Total project cost: $2.1 million)
  • $227,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to plant 250 trees on city property and install flood-protection infrastructure on Richmond’s Southside (Total project cost: $309,000)
  • $50,000 to the Delmarva Poultry Industry to develop a website that helps connect farmers who have chicken manure to ship with those who need it to fertilize their fields (Total project cost: $59,000)
  • $50,000 to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to investigate river herring habitat upstream and downstream of stream blockages and propose passages for fish to get around them in Oxon Run and Lower Beaverdam Creek (Total project cost: $62,000)

By Jeremy Cox

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Eco Lead Tagged With: Chesapeake Bay, restoration, stewardship, watershed

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