One moment, Sophie Waterman was baking her father a birthday cake on her day off. The next, the Chesapeake Bay Program geographer had lost her job amid Trump administration cuts of probationary government workers.

It felt like a “punch in the gut,” said Waterman, who grew up in Catonsville and lives in Glen Burnie.

“My whole world changed between the time I woke up to the time I went to bed,” she said. “The bay means a lot to me. The watershed means a lot to me, and so to be a part of that was amazing. And then, for that all to be ripped away from me?”

The Bay Program, based in Annapolis, is at the helm of the effort to clean up the nation’s largest estuary and its network of tributaries, the health of which affects the millions of people living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and thousands of plant and animal species who call it home.

Advocacy groups focused on reducing bay pollution told The Sun that they’re bracing for more cuts to federal positions serving the waterway, and for cuts to grant funding for environmental projects from the EPA and other federal agencies.

Waterman had been working for the U.S. Geological Survey under the Bay Program umbrella since June, meaning she was still in the midst of a yearlong probationary period. She said she was one of four probationary geographers terminated from the Bay Program last month. One other Bay Program employee, who worked for the U.S. Forest Service, was also terminated, she said. Overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, the program includes staffers from a variety of other agencies.

“I really held on to the fact that conservation is popular. It’s a very nonpartisan thing. People like to go outside, whether it’s hunting or fishing, or just to go for a hike,” Waterman said. “I think I’ve lost that, a little bit. I don’t think people think that, actually.”

New EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin plans to cut 65% of the agency’s “wasteful spending,” according to a statement from White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

The agency has been slashing grant programs since Zeldin took office. In a news release Wednesday, the agency touted 21 new canceled grants, and a total of $287 million in “taxpayer dollars saved” since the cuts began.

Many canceled initiatives, including a $50 million grant to the Climate Justice Initiative, were considered “wasteful DEI and environmental justice programs.”

During Trump’s first term, he made several proposals to slash the Bay Program’s budget, which were rebuffed by Congress. But in a visit to Annapolis in February, new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told Fox45 News that he believes the Bay Program is important, “not just for a region, but really for the country.”

“It’s important that we are making sure that Chesapeake Bay Program has the funding that [it] needs to survive and thrive,” he said. “It’s an important priority of mine.”

Hilary Harp Falk, president and CEO of the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said it has been a dizzying first few months of Trump’s administration, with paused and canceled grant funding, terminated employees and widespread uncertainty about the future. The organization, she said, is “sounding the alarm.”

“Its just total chaos. Every day we get new information,” Harp Falk said. “But it’s clear that these cuts are going to have a huge impact on the science and the restoration.”

And it isn’t just cuts to EPA. Plenty of federal agencies contribute to environmental efforts. For example, Harp Falk said she is also concerned with recent cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and how they could impact fisheries science research and climate research for the region.

It comes at a crossroads for the decades-long effort to bring the bay and its tributaries up to water quality standards. As of 2024, 29.8% of the bay and its rivers met the standards, compared to 26.5% in 1985.

Early reductions in harmful nutrient and sediment pollution came from retrofits to wastewater treatment plants throughout the bay watershed, but efforts to curtail runoff from urban areas and agricultural lands have proven trickier. Scientists say that increased development and a changing climate have made the effort even more difficult.

After the states surrounding the bay missed a 2025 pollution reduction pledge, bay officials are currently re-working an agreement with extended deadlines.

“It’s really hard to stay focused right now, because there is a new crisis on the hour,” Harp Falk said.

But it will be critical for the bay states to sign a new agreement, and continue funding projects that plant trees, prevent manure runoff and restore habitat for wildlife, said Harp Falk.

“We really need the states to step up,” Harp Falk said. “The states need to focus on making sure we have sound science. They need to make sure that the process that has been set up for the new bay agreement continues to move forward — even with cuts, and potentially a government shutdown.”

On Wednesday, advocates from the Annapolis-based Choose Clean Water Coalition took to Washington, D.C. in support of continued funding for bay priorities, including a stable $92 million for the Bay Program, $15 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chesapeake WILD Program and $1 million from USGS to combat invasive catfish.

But a major focus for the day was also environmental grant funding from the federal government. Around the bay watershed, nonprofit groups are still unable to access some previously awarded grant money, said Kristin Reilly, director of the Coalition, which represents more than 300 organizations working to improve water quality in the Bay region.

In particular, a lot of grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture remains fenced off, Reilly said. Some USDA programs seem to have been terminated, too, including Urban and Community Forestry grants focused on tree-planting. USDA did not respond to a request for comment from the Sun.

“Still, to this day, as of right now, there’s a lot of USDA and EPA and other agency funding that is not flowing, despite some of those court cases,” Reilly said.

Moon Valley Farm, a 70-acre certified organic vegetable farm in Frederick County, is among those unable to access USDA dollars, said owner Emma Jagoz.

The farm had been awarded several grants from the agency, including to plant a new meadow, to provide labor rights education to its immigrant workers and to grow its online sales.

The farm had already purchased a number of things to begin implementing the grants, including seeds and a new delivery truck, Jagoz said.

But now, some of the programs aren’t accepting reimbursement requests, and office hours with USDA have been canceled.

“This kind of freeze without communication, without any assurances and without any timelines — when we’re really counting on very specific timelines — it’s just gonna make it harder to entice farmers to farm, and to work with the government in the future,” Jagoz said.

Still, Jagoz said she is forging ahead with her programs, given that she signed contracts pledging to complete them.

“I’m a woman of my word. I honor my commitments,” she said.

Waterman, by contrast, isn’t confident that her work at the Chesapeake Bay Program will be able to continue in her absence.

Waterman, who got the job last year after several years steeped in bay policy at the nonprofit Chesapeake Research Consortium, had been working on projects to modernize maps showing conserved lands, and make maps and data sets more accessible to users in the bay watershed, including state and local governments and nonprofits.

She and another geographer led the latter effort. But they were both fired last month, Waterman said.

“There’s only so much that the state can do,” Waterman said. “How are we going to move the needle forward if one of your biggest partners has suddenly just kind of dropped off the face of the map?”

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