Virginia’s Governor, Glenn Youngkin, attended the Chesapeake Executive Council on Dec 10th to discuss the current state of the effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams.

The Chesapeake Bay Agreement, signed in 2014, set the deadline to have all pollution reduction practices in place by 2025. While acknowledging we will not meet all the goals set in the Agreement, Chesapeake Executive Council Chair Governor Moore led a recommitment to the restoration effort and issued a directive for the Chesapeake Bay Program to evaluate all the goals and outcomes of the 2014 Agreement and prepare a report of recommended updates by next year’s Executive Council meeting. The Executive Council also issued a directive to evaluate the structure of the Chesapeake Bay Program, ensuring that its work and processes are open to the public and accessible, with a report ready by the 2026 Executive Council meeting.

Virginia Conservation Network serves as the Virginia state lead of the Choose Clean Water Coalition, who issued the following statement:

“For more than a decade, efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams have circled 2025 on the calendar. At this pivotal moment, we applaud Governors Moore, Shapiro, and Youngkin for recommitting to the Bay restoration effort.

“We are seeing real progress throughout the Bay region. Water quality is improving, vital habitats are rebounding, and public access to our treasured waterways and green spaces is growing. But there is much more work ahead to leave a legacy of clean water to future generations.

“Now more than ever, we need strong local and state leadership to propel this regional restoration effort forward. And with clean water at the heart of every healthy community, we need an updated Chesapeake Bay Agreement that embraces a holistic view of restoration. As the Bay Program begins to evaluate the next phase of the Bay Agreement, we urge them to base their recommendations on the latest science and center the impacts on people as they consider future goals and objectives.

“The Choose Clean Water Coalition and our more than 300 nonprofit member organizations will closely follow the developments on the next steps for the Bay cleanup and look for opportunities to assist by providing our expertise and experience working with communities throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed.”

-Kristin Reilly, Director