On Dec. 9, 1983, I joined 700 other elected officials and citizens meeting at George Mason University to witness the signing of the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement. It was only a one-page document, but it committed the bay states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to begin a coordinated approach to restore this great but degraded estuary. I was a 30-something state senator then.

Tragically, the Chesapeake remains significantly degraded and its overall water quality has improved only marginally after 41 years. This is despite major efforts, including the enactment of landmark legislation and the expenditure of more than $12 billion. Efforts by supposed leaders to greenwash the harsh reality have blunted the urgent necessity to aggressively regulate agricultural pollutants that are undermining restoration.

These “leaders” tend to ignore that overall bay water quality has barely improved in 41 years. The most recent EPA Chesapeake Bay Program data clearly documents this: Only 29.8% of the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries meet basic water quality standards dictated by the Clean Water Act (CWA). This means 70.2% of bay waters fail to meet the water quality necessary for living resources to flourish, which is the most critical goal of the Bay Program.

In 2002, 37.2% of the bay’s water met CWA requirements. So, water quality worsened over a decade of supposedly ramped-up efforts to meet mandatory pollution reductions. Back in 1985 at the start of measurements, 26.5% of bay water met these CWA requirements. This documents a minuscule 3.3 percentage point improvement in 40 years toward the 100% attainment requirement of the CWA.

The best that can be said is that despite an increase from 13 million to 18.5 million people in the watershed, the bay’s water quality has not declined.

This failure is due primarily to the lack of regulatory measures to curb pollutants (nutrients and sediment) from agricultural operations. Fully 90% of the reductions in nutrients to achieve basic CWA requirements must come from farms, by far the biggest source of bay pollutants as they cover about 24% of the land mass. Secondarily, pollutants from existing and new development must be addressed, including ending forest loss and planting riparian buffers.

Despite mandatory requirements to achieve pollution reductions imposed by the EPA in 2010 after voluntary measures repeatedly failed, and despite states being given 15 years to achieve such reductions by 2025, the states have failed miserably to do so, including Maryland. The response by the EPA, the enforcement agency, was the same as the bay states — postpone any sanctions and any new meaningful initiatives for years while a “new” plan is drawn up. The agreement to draw up a new plan was made in 2022. It will not be completed until the end of this year, if then.

The response of elected officials and the environmental community has been tepid. Successes are touted while flesh-eating diseases from water contact and collapsed and collapsing fisheries persist. Oysters are at 3% of historic levels and yet success is claimed in restoration. Critical bay grasses were to be restored to at least 185,000 acres but success was claimed when they recently hit 82,937 acres.

A severe drought-driven drop in the bay dead zone in 2023 is touted while ignored is that in 2024, the dead zone was above its long-term average. The EPA Bay Program concluded that nitrogen reductions from all sources have been grossly overstated by nearly 50%. This is partly linked to increased farm fertilizer use, more farm animals and their excrement, and the ineffectiveness of farm best management practices despite $2 billion in grants to farmers since 2010.

Despite these findings, the EPA ignored them in announcing the recent two-year progress report, which used outdated reductions.

Many insiders have learned that the easiest path in dealing with the major reason for failure — agriculture — is to throw more money at voluntary programs that have not worked and disregard regulatory actions. Policymakers, conservation leaders and some scientists have learned that job security, advancement and monetary rewards come from promoting a firehose of dollars to put out the ecological fire, thus avoiding conflict.

Too many supposed leaders have become environmental mercenaries who desire to avoid any blowback in pushing for regulatory changes that impede the financial prospects of themselves or their organizations. You will repeatedly hear these environmental mercenaries touting the great successes of the Bay Program.

With such cowardice and Trump’s virulently anti-environmental agenda and his previous attempt to kill the Bay Program by cutting all funding, the dreams of a restored bay we all embraced in 1983 now seem hopeless. At 80, the stinging reality is that after 54 years of advocacy, my optimism has been crushed as the Chesapeake dies a death of a thousand cuts on the altar of political expediency.

Gerald Winegrad (gwwabc@comcast.net) represented the greater Annapolis area as a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate for 16 years. He served on the Chesapeake Bay Commission and developed and helped pass legislation on the Chesapeake Bay.