The State of Our Watersheds
An overview was given of the watersheds in Ferguson Township in a previous article, along with our location at the headwaters of two of the Major Chesapeake Bay Sub Watersheds (Juniata and West Branch of the Susquehanna), and an explanation of how impacts to headwaters are sometimes not as visible locally, as they are downstream in a watershed. Stormwater from Ferguson Township ultimately ends up in the Chesapeake Bay. Check out this map of our local watersheds.
On January, 5th, The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) released the 2022 State of The Bay Report. With permission from the CBF (and providing full credit to and a huge thanks for allowing the Township to utilize the CBF’s publications), some excerpts from their press release CBF's 2022 State of the Bay Score Unchanged are presented below. The publications help to illustrate a more global understanding of why our community needs to continue to reduce our impacts to our local water resources.
The CBF release states, “The biennial evaluation graded the Bay and its watershed at a D+, unchanged from the 2020 score. Efforts to restore the Bay are struggling to reduce agricultural pollution. Urban and suburban polluted runoff is increasing amid inconsistent enforcement by government agencies, new development, and climate change. Despite these challenges, the federal/state Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, based on the world’s best science, remains the most promising plan for restoring local rivers, streams, and the Chesapeake Bay. What has been lacking is implementation.
Established in 1998, CBF’s State of the Bay Report is a comprehensive measure of the Bay's health. CBF scientists compile and examine the best available data and information for 13 indicators in three categories: pollution, habitat, and fisheries. CBF scientists assign each indicator an index score from 1–100. Taken together, these indicators offer an overall assessment of Bay health. Reaching an overall score of 70 or more would mean a fully restored Bay, while a 100 represents the Bay’s condition before European settlers arrived in the 1600s. In 2022, the overall State of the Bay score remained a 32, with seven of the 13 indicators unchanged, three increasing, and three decreasing.
In 2022, the overall State of the Bay score remained a 32, with seven of the 13 indicators unchanged, three increasing, and three decreasing.
In the pollution category nitrogen, toxics, and dissolved oxygen indicators were unchanged, the phosphorus indicator improved, and overall water clarity declined. Recent farm conservation funding at the federal and state levels should help reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, which fuels harmful algal blooms that remove dissolved oxygen from the water. Monitoring data indicated the 2022 dead zone—the area of the Bay with low or no dissolved oxygen—was the 10th smallest in size since scientists began surveying it 38 years ago, an encouraging sign. Water clarity dropped one point in the report due to average water clarity in the Bay decreasing slightly in 2022 compared to 2020.
In the fisheries category, the rockfish (striped bass) and oyster indicators rose, while the blue crab indicator declined.
In the habitat category, scores for underwater grasses, forest buffers, and wetlands remained unchanged, but resource lands fell slightly by a point. Resource lands refer to forests, natural open areas, and well-managed farmland. The drop in score was largely due to approximately 95,000 acres of farms and forests transitioning to development across the Bay watershed during the most recent reporting period, from 2013/14 to 2017/18."
If you ever have any stormwater or watershed related questions or concerns, please contact the Ferguson Township Stormwater Engineer.