Today, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) publicly unveiled a new web-based tool designed to help states, municipalities, federal agencies and others quickly and easily assess the most effective ways to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
The Chesapeake Assessment and Scenario Tool (CAST) allows users across the watershed to develop and quickly receive feedback on various pollution reduction scenarios. Using CAST, jurisdictions are able to see the implications of their specific actions and management decisions and gain an understanding of which Best Management Practices (BMPs) are most effective at reducing the nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads reaching their local streams and entering the Bay. This valuable information can then help jurisdictions refine their management decisions and adapt their actions prior to submitting their information into the full Chesapeake Bay Program model for analysis.
First developed by the State of Maryland under a grant from EPA, CAST complements other Bay modeling tools by offering summarized results that can be fed directly into the suite of Chesapeake Bay Program models for full analysis. In this way, it supports Bay jurisdictions in the development of their Phase II Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs)
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