THE CHESAPEAKE BAY STORY - THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE PROGRAM

The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) is based on good science and high qua lity data. This has allowed the program to set and implement meaningfu l goals. The research phase resulted in the ''1983 Chesapeake Bay Agre ement'', which called for the jurisdictions to focus existing pollutio n control programs on reducing the nutrient loads to the Bay. A second ''Bay Agreement'' was developed and signed by the jurisdictions in 19 87. This agreement contained 27 specific goals including a Basinwide N utrient Reduction Strategy to reduce ''1985 controllable'' nutrient lo ads to the Bay by 40 percent in the year 2000. To assure high quality monitoring data, CBP established a strong quality assurance and qualit y control procedure which is Used for all monitoring. To assist with t he monitoring a computer program, ''Chesapeake Bay Automated Monitorin g System'' was developed to evaluate the quality of field and laborato ry data and to allow the data to be directly loaded into the CBP compu ters. The Chesapeake Bay Program Office developed models for the drain age basin and the water of the Bay. The watershed model simulates the pollutant loads from eight land uses, the majority of the point source s and atmospheric deposition. It processes these loads through the riv er systems and delivers the load to the Bay for use in the Bay model. The Bay model uses these loads and adds atmospheric deposition, loads from the ocean interface and loads from bottom sediments to simulate w ater quality data at all points in the Bay. The models were used to co nfirm that the 40% nutrient reduction goal was correct, resulting in a n amendment to the 1987 Agreement, calling for a commitment by the jur isdictions to develop tributary specific strategies to reach the goal. The tributary strategies lay out the future goals and direction that must be taken to reach the nutrient reduction goals. These tributary s trategies are being evaluated by the program office, using the models. The results of the evaluation and model simulation of the implementat ion progress in the basin are discussed along with the economic implic ations of reaching these goals.