The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing deep spending cuts on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup that critics say will undermine the effort’s scientific integrity and public outreach.
The federal agency published a “notice of funding opportunity” on March 10 seeking applicants on a contract providing administrative support to four advisory committees to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the state-federal partnership leading the cleanup effort. The agreement would pay the winning applicant up to $2.45 million over five years.
On an annual basis, that would amount to a one-third cut from the total spent in 2025, according to figures provided by the EPA.
EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said the new amount “does not signal a reduced commitment” to the committees but rather an “increased commitment to direct implementation.” The agency will redirect the savings to grants that support what the spokesperson called “real, on the ground projects” that reduce nutrient and sediment pollution to the Bay.
But some environmental advocates and state policymakers say the reduction is deeper than it looks at first blush. The 2025 funding was reduced for at least some of the committees after the change in presidential administrations. Compared to 2023 and 2024, the contract represents a cut of 50% or more, they say.
Many of the effort’s advisors – who mostly consist of scientists, environmental regulators, clean-water advocates and agricultural leaders – were caught off guard by the action. Representatives of some of the program’s signatory partners say they weren’t asked for input, a breach of the cleanup program’s consensus-based, decision-making norms.
And some critics contend that the contract’s language gives the EPA unprecedented control over the committees’ ability to set their own priorities.
“It’s substantially different from previous requests for funding,” said Leila Duman, the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays restoration officer for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and a member of the Bay Program’s management board. “From a very broad level, this [notice] cuts about half of the funding that provides the coordination staff and potentially changes the way the advisory committees operate in a pretty significant way.”
For more than four decades, the driving force behind cleaning up America’s largest estuary has been the Chesapeake Bay Program, a partnership led by the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, New York and West Virginia, the mayor of the District of Columbia, the chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission and the administrator of the EPA.
The effort has produced mixed results. Priorities such as oyster restoration, land preservation and access to public access to waterways have reached the partnership’s self-imposed goals, and more progress continues to be made on those fronts. But other goals are lagging far behind, including the central aim of reducing nutrient and sediment pollution.
The contract at the center of the controversy deals with the funding and operation of the program’s four advisory committees: the Stakeholders’ Advisory Committee, Local Government Advisory Committee, Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee and Agricultural Advisory Committee.
The committees bring to bear knowledge and advice on the cleanup from a variety of sources. They provide input directly to the Bay Program Executive Council, which includes state governors, the EPA administrator and others.
Several critics said a move to diminish their role would erode the program’s overall effectiveness and efficiency at a time when its leadership is trying to accelerate cleanup results.
“Without their independent feedback, we are missing critical information and data from the people who are experiencing the successes of and challenges to the restoration effort in real time, making it harder to adapt to threats to our progress,” said Kristin Reilly, director of the Choose Clean Water Coalition.
The committee members are volunteers, appointed from across the 64,000-square-mile watershed, and they often bring years of experience and unique perspectives to the program’s toughest policy questions, said Anna Killius, executive director of the Bay Commission, a tri-state body of lawmakers. With the ink still drying on the newly revised Bay Agreement, which is set to guide the effort through 2040, she said the partnership can ill afford to upend its committees.
“We urgently need the fresh, bold ideas and forward thinking that our advisory committees consistently provide,” Killius said in a statement.
To understand the importance of the committees, several advocates said, look no further than the hefty report authored in 2023 by the Scientific and Technical committee. The Comprehensive Evaluation of System Response is widely credited with steering the partnership to put greater emphasis on reviving shallow waters that support many types of aquatic life.
At a Bay Program meeting in mid-March, several participants spoke out about the proposed changes. Representatives of the state governments of Maryland and Virginia each expressed reservations about the contract. Bill Dennison, a University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science marine scientist and chair of the Scientific and Technical committee, said his committee faces the steepest cutbacks, reducing its ability to meet the program’s scientific needs.
And others have questioned why funding is being reduced at a time when the Bay Program is receiving a historic high of $93 million in funding from Congress.
Dan Coogan, who has headed the EPA’s Bay Program office since last October, said at the meeting that the revised budget would result in greater funding parity among the committees.
Verna Harrison, a member of the Stakeholders’ Advisory Committee and former assistant secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said she worries that the contract’s language undermines the committees’ independence. She pointed to wording she says gives EPA officials excessive sway in committee decisions, including setting agendas and selecting committee members. The EPA, though, disagrees that it is improperly inserting itself into committee business.
Harrison added that she hopes the EPA withdraws the notice of funding and draws up a new one in consultation with its Bay Program partners.
In her statement to the Bay Journal, the EPA’s Vaseliou said the agency has no intention of doing that. The agency has set an April 24 deadline for applications to apply for the funding opportunity.
Because they want coal and oil, screw the environment.