|
What is Maryland’s Tributary Strategy?
Maryland’s Tributary Teams were created in 1995 to bring together citizens and stakeholders from all walks of life to develop and implement pollution control plans unique to each tributary basin, its population and its land-use patterns -- no small task. Among the pollution control options being implemented today are upgrades to wastewater treatment plants, planting of stream-side forests to absorb nutrient runoff, implementation of best management practices to reduce agricultural runoff, and directing growth to concentrate new development and protect open spaces and natural habitat. This coordinated watershed-by-watershed approach brings the Bay cleanup closer to home for the many citizens, businesses and local governments working to protect local waterways and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.
- Jamie Baxter, Director For more information: |
Maryland’s Tributary Strategy is a statewide plan to achieve
specific water quality standards throughout the Chesapeake Bay;
standards that when realized will support healthy and vibrant
populations of living resources. To achieve them, we must reduce
the flow of nutrients entering the Bay each year by more than 50
percent of 1985 levels – in Maryland, an annual cap of 37.25 million
pounds of nitrogen and 2.92 million pounds of phosphorous.