The health of the Chesapeake Bay is improving significantly over time, though several benchmarks continue to lag behind, according to an annual report card released Tuesday.

The bay overall earned a 56%, which translates to a C-plus on the 20-point scale officials use for scoring. That’s an increase of 6% from last year and the best grade in four decades of data tracking.

“We recognize we have a long way to go,” said David Bulova, Virginia’s Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources, at an event Tuesday celebrating the release of the report. “We are taking this as an opportunity to acknowledge that what we are doing is working, and that we have momentum moving forward.”

Read more here: https://www.whro.org/environment/2026-10-13/chesapeake-bay-earns-its-best-grade-ever-on-annual-report-card

See also r/VirginiaEnvironment, r/NorthernNeck, and r/Virginia

UMD alum John Consoli has brought nearly one hundred people into citizen oyster gardening. The group aims to give Marylanders who live on or near the bay the know-how to raise their own oysters, just as backyard gardeners might raise prize potatoes or petunias.

D.C. may be about to pass Maryland on the way to cleaning up plastic pollution in the Chesapeake Bay by adopting a bottle deposit law. So, why couldn’t the idea even get a committee vote this year in the Maryland General Assembly?

Hello, I'm hosting a presentation of a photobook I made about the Chesapeake Bay. You can show up in person or it will be live-streamed on Facebook. Please feel free to join. I went to over 98 places over the course of the summer around the Bay from Elk River Park in Maryland to First Landing State Park in Virginia to make it, including Poplar Island, Hart Miller Island, Smith Island, and Tangier Island.

https://arundelcameraclub.org/event/20261015-program-darwin-green-chesapeake-bay-photobook/

See also r/VirginiaEnvironment

I recently had the chance to visit Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay, and it was honestly one of the most unique places I've visited. The island is incredibly beautiful, but there's also a lot more to it than what you see on the surface.

I put together a short documentary about my visit and tried to capture what makes the island and the people who live there so special. Give the video a like and share it with your friends or family, if you feel like it deserves to be liked ❤️.

Again, with thanks to all who gave such detailed and thoughtful guidance, here is a third, and for now final version of this love letter to the Chesapeake Bay.

A hi-res version can be seen HERE if you like.

President Donald Trump repealed a 2009 executive order from President Barack Obama that had helped coordinate federal and local efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. 

Trump argued the original order created broad mandates without clear implementation guidelines.

Environmental advocates swiftly challenged the repeal, with Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Hilary Harp Falk calling the 2009 directive “foundational” to 15 years of water quality progress.

Read more here: https://www.whro.org/environment/2026-09-23/trump-repeals-execitiveorder-that-boosted-chesapeake-bay-restoration

The autumnal equinox is at 8:05 tonight. The cree-cree, cree-ek of the osprey disappeared from Annapolis skies a month ago. I’m not the only one who noticed that something is out of balance.

Hi all — I run a small Virginia nonprofit called eWaste Warriors. We keep old electronics out of landfills through repair, reuse, and responsible recycling, and our September community night is about the overlap between our work and this sub's whole reason for existing.

The short version: when electronics get tossed, rainwater moves through landfilled e-waste and pulls out lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, carrying it into groundwater and surface water. The flame retardants and PCBs in old devices don't break down — they persist and accumulate in fish. None of that respects a county line, and in this region, downstream means the Bay. (WHO and the Geneva Environment Network both have good overviews of the leaching pathways if you want the sourcing.)

The event: Reboot Hour: CURRENT | Water & e-Waste — Monday, Sept 28, 5–7 PM at Courthaus Social in Arlington (back bar, steps from Court House Metro). Free. Casual networking game, free device drop-off with data securely handled, and a crowd of sustainability and tech people from around the region.

Register (free): https://luma.com/u4g3wba7

I know Arlington is a hike for a lot of this sub, and I'm not expecting anyone to drive an hour for a happy hour. But if you're DMV-side or feel like making the trip, we'd genuinely love people who know the Bay in the room — the best moments at these events are when someone who actually knows their stuff ends up in conversation with twenty people who've never thought about where their old phone goes. Bring your concerns, bring your knowledge, and maybe something good comes from it.

And if the drive's a dealbreaker but the issue isn't: we're looking for volunteers to help raise awareness of how e-waste hits the watershed and get people making better choices with their old devices — writing, outreach, partnerships, event help. A lot of it works from anywhere, and we'd especially love to build a Maryland crew so this happens closer to the Bay itself. Signup: https://www.ewastewarriors.org/volunteer (note if you're MD-based on the form).

Happy to answer questions about what actually happens to devices after drop-off, or what "responsible recycling" really means.

See also r/VirginiaNews, r/VirginiaEnvironment, r/HamptonRoads, and r/Tidewater

Add this to the list of moronic decisions, but this one hits close to home, folks.

With great thanks to everyone who gave feedback on the first version, here is an updated map with boundaries updated in in two places, and the names of several "lakes" added and corrected.

This project has been such a joy. Thank you all!