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Program Assessment
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Program
View Assessment Details
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Chesapeake Bay Program
Through a unique regional partnership, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) works to meet the goals of the 2000 Chesapeake Bay Agreement. As the federal government lead, EPA maintains the Chesapeake Bay Program Office, whose purpose is to provide coordination, administration, and financial support for restoration of the Bay.
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Rating
What This Rating Means |
PERFORMING
Moderately Effective
In general, a program rated Moderately Effective has set ambitious goals and is well-managed. Moderately Effective programs likely need to improve their efficiency or address other problems in the programs' design or management in order to achieve better results.
- The program effectively integrates modeling and monitoring to measure annual and long-term performance. Annually, the program catalogs implementation of management practices, which are expressed as estimated average annual changes in nutrients and sediment using the watershed model. Over the long term the program monitors key water quality indicators.
- The program actively addresses and corrects management and strategic deficiencies. For example, in response to a GAO recommendation, the program separated its annual Bay progress report into a report on management action implementation and a report on environmental status. The program has received many additional recommendations from reviewers, which it is addressing appropriately.
- The program is on target to meet long term end goals, but these goals will most likely not be achieved by 2010. Submerged Aquatic vegetation increased from 21% in 1985 to 39% in 2005 of the long term restoration target of 185,000 acres. More effective targeting of resources towards the most cost effective management practices would help increase the rate of restoration.
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Improvement Plan
About Improvement Plans |
We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:
- Investigating potential methods to more transparently characterize the uncertainty of the watershed and water quality models, ideally leading to implementation of a method, if feasible.
- Developing a comprehensive implementation strategy that is coordinated between program partners and accurately accounts for available resources.
- Promoting and tracking implementation of the most cost effective restoration activities to maximize water quality improvements.
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