C+: BAY'S GRADE

Report card gives Chesapeake Bay a C+, its best grade in 21 years

• Timothy B. Wheeler, Bay Journal
• The Chesapeake Bay’s health, which has waffled between middling and poor for decades, ticked upward in 2023 to its best condition in more than 20 years, according to the latest annual report from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

In a report card issued July 9, the university gave the Bay’s overall health a C-plus for 2023, a half-letter grade improvement from the previous year’s mark. It earned a 55% score, up four points from 2022.

How much real progress that represents is an open question. The university has only been issuing Bay report cards since 2006, but in looking back at water quality, habitat and underwater grass data for previous years, it found that the Bay’s health received exactly the same score in 2002.

This report card comes at a critical time, as the Bay restoration effort is falling short of key goals for the third time in its 41-year history. The state-federal Chesapeake Bay Program is now looking to tweak its most recent strategy, adopted in 2014, to extend it beyond its 2025 deadline. Some scientists and environmental advocates FINISH READING HERE

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