United States Government Accountability Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Water 

Resources and Environment, Committee 

on Transportation and Infrastructure, 

House of Representatives 

CHESAPEAKE BAY 

PROGRAM 

Recent Actions Are 

Positive Steps Toward 

More Effectively Guiding 

the Restoration Effort 

Statement of Anu K. Mittal, Director 

Natural Resources and Environment 

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 2:00 p.m. EDT

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

 

GAO-08-1033T 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

July 30, 2008

CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM 

Recent Actions Are Positive Steps Toward More 

Effectively Guiding the Restoration Effort 

Highlights of GAO-08-1033T, a testimony 

before the Subcommittee on Water 

Resources and Environment, Committee 

on Transportation and Infrastructure, 

House of Representatives

The Chesapeake Bay Program (Bay

Program) was created in 1983 

when Maryland, Pennsylvania, 

Virginia, the District of Columbia, 

the Chesapeake Bay Commission, 

and the Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) agreed to establish a 

partnership to restore the Bay. The

partnership’s most recent 

agreement, Chesapeake 2000, sets 

out five broad goals to guide the 

restoration effort through 2010.

This testimony summarizes the 

findings of an October 2005 GAO

report (GAO-06-96) on (1) the 

extent to which measures for 

assessing restoration progress had 

been established, (2) the extent to 

which program reports clearly and 

accurately described the bay's 

health, (3) how much funding was

provided for the effort for fiscal 

years 1995 to 2004, and (4) how 

effectively the effort was being 

coordinated and managed. It also 

summarizes actions taken by the

program in response to GAO’s 

recommendations. GAO reviewed

the program’s 2008 report to 

Congress and discussed recent 

actions with program officials. 

What GAO Recommends

In 2005, GAO recommended that

the Bay Program complete efforts 

to develop and implement an 

integrated approach, revise its

reports to improve their 

effectiveness and credibility, and 

develop a comprehensive, 

coordinated implementation

strategy that takes into account 

available resources. GAO is not 

making new recommendations.

In 2005, GAO found that the Bay Program had over 100 measures to assess 

progress toward meeting some restoration commitments and guide program 

management. However, the program had not developed an integrated 

approach that would translate these individual measures into an assessment 

of progress toward achieving the restoration goals outlined in Chesapeake 

2000. For example, while the program had appropriate measures to track 

crab, oyster, and rockfish populations, it did not have an approach for 

integrating the results of these measures to assess progress toward its goal of

protecting and restoring the bay’s living resources. In response to GAO’s 

recommendation, the Bay Program has integrated key measures into 3 indices 

of bay health and 5 indices of restoration progress. 

In 2005, the reports used by the Bay Program did not provide effective and 

credible information on the health status of the bay. Instead, these reports 

focused on individual trends for certain living resources and pollutants, and 

did not effectively communicate the overall health status of the bay. These 

reports were also not credible because actual monitoring data had been 

commingled with the results of program actions and a predictive model, and 

the latter two tended to downplay the deteriorated conditions of the bay. 

Moreover, the reports lacked independence, which led to rosier projections of 

the bay’s health than may have been warranted. In response to GAO’s 

recommendations, the Bay Program developed a new report format and has 

tried to enhance the independence of the reporting process. However, the new 

process does not adequately address GAO’s concerns about independence. 

From fiscal years 1995 through 2004, the restoration effort received about $3.7 

billion in direct funding from 11 key federal agencies; the states of Maryland, 

Pennsylvania, and Virginia; and the District of Columbia. These funds were 

used for activities that supported water quality protection and restoration, 

sound land use, vital habitat protection and restoration, living resources 

protection and restoration, and stewardship and community engagement. 

During this period, the restoration effort also received an additional $1.9

billion in funding from federal and state programs for activities that indirectly 

contribute to the restoration effort. 

In 2005, the Bay Program did not have a comprehensive, coordinated 

implementation strategy to help target limited resources to those activities 

that would best achieve the goals outlined in Chesapeake 2000. The program 

was focusing on 10 key commitments and had developed numerous planning 

documents, but some of these documents were inconsistent with each other 

or were perceived as unachievable by the partners. In response to GAO’s 

recommendations, the Bay Program has taken several actions, such as 

developing a strategic framework to unify planning documents and identify 

how it will pursue its goals. While these actions are positive steps, additional

actions are needed before the program has the comprehensive, coordinated 

implementation strategy recommended by GAO. 

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on GAO-08-1033T. 

For more information, contact Anu Mittal, 

(202) 512-3841, mittala@gao.gov. 
Madam Chairwoman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to be here today to participate in your second hearing 

focusing on the importance of protecting the health of our nation’s great

water bodies, such as the Chesapeake Bay. As you know, the Chesapeake 

Bay is the nation’s largest estuary and has been recognized by Congress as 

a national treasure. In response to the deteriorating conditions of the bay,

in 1983, the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; the District of 

Columbia; the Chesapeake Bay Commission;1

 and the Environmental 

Protection Agency (EPA) first partnered to protect and restore the bay by 

establishing the Chesapeake Bay Program (Bay Program). Subsequent 

agreements in 1987, 1992, and 2000 reaffirmed the partners’ commitment 

to bay restoration, and in their most recent agreement, Chesapeake 2000, 

which was signed in June 2000, they established 102 commitments 

organized under five broad restoration goals to be achieved by 2010. 

In October 2005, we issued a report on the Chesapeake Bay restoration 

effort that addressed (1) the extent to which the Bay Program had 

established appropriate measures for assessing restoration progress, (2) 

the extent to which the reporting mechanisms the Bay Program used 

clearly and accurately described the bay’s overall health, (3) how much 

funding had been provided by federal and state partners for restoring the 

Chesapeake Bay for fiscal years 1995 through 2004 and for what purposes, 

and (4) how effectively the restoration effort had been coordinated and 

managed.2

Our report included six recommendations—one recommendation to 

develop and implement an integrated approach to measure overall 

progress, three recommendations to enhance the effectiveness and 

credibility of the Bay Program’s public reporting, and two 

recommendations to improve the management and coordination of the 

restoration effort. Since our report was issued, the Bay Program, with the 

encouragement of Congress, has been taking steps to address the findings 

and recommendations we identified in our 2005 report. My testimony 

today will therefore cover the concerns we raised in 2005, the 

recommendations that we made to address these concerns, and our 

 1

The Chesapeake Bay Commission is a tristate legislative assembly representing Maryland, 

Pennsylvania, and Virginia. 

2

GAO, Chesapeake Bay Program: Improved Strategies Are Needed to Better Assess, 

Report, and Manage Restoration Progress, GAO-06-96 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 28, 2005). 

Page 1 GAO-08-1033T 
assessment of the steps that the Bay Program has taken to address our 

recommendations. 

For our 2005 report, we reviewed planning and program implementation 

documents and funding data from Bay Program partners. We also 

convened a panel of nationally recognized ecosystem restoration and 

assessment experts. For the 2005 report, we conducted our work from

October 2004 to October 2005 in accordance with generally accepted

government auditing standards. For this testimony statement, we updated 

our 2005 report by assessing the progress that the Bay Program has made 

in implementing our recommendations. We reviewed Bay Program 

documents, such as a July 2008 report to Congress, entitled Strengthening

the Management, Coordination, and Accountability of the Chesapeake 

Bay Program and the Bay Program’s Scientific and Advisory Committee 

bylaws and operational guidance. We also looked at partners’ activities 

and funding data in the new Bay Program database, and spoke with 

officials at EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office. We conducted our 

work in July 2008 in accordance with generally accepted government 

auditing standards. These standards require that we plan and perform the 

audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable 

basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We 

believe the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings 

and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

In summary: 

• In 2005, we reported that the Bay Program had established over 100 

measures to assess progress toward meeting some of its commitments and 

provide information to guide management decisions. For example, the 

program had measures for assessing trends in various living resources 

such as oysters and crabs, and pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus 

levels. However, the program had not developed an approach that would 

allow it to integrate all of these measures and thereby assess the progress 

made by the overall restoration effort in achieving the five goals outlined 

in Chesapeake 2000. We recommended that the Bay Program develop 

such an approach, which would allow the program to combine its 

individual measures into a few broader-scale measures that it could then 

use to assess key ecosystem attributes and present an overall assessment 

of this complex ecosystem restoration project. In response to our 

recommendation, the Bay Program integrated key measures to develop

three indices of bay health and five indices of restoration progress and has 

used these indices to present overall assessments of the health of the bay

and the restoration effort. We believe that these new indices will allow the 

Page 2 GAO-08-1033T 
Bay Program to provide a better overall assessment of the bay’s health and 

the restoration progress. 

• In 2005, we also found that the Bay Program’s primary mechanism for 

reporting on the health status of the bay—the State of the Chesapeake Bay

report—did not provide an effective or credible assessment of the bay’s 

current health status. These reports were not effective because, like the 

program’s measures, they focused on individual species and pollutants 

instead of providing an overall assessment of the bay’s health. Often, these

reports showed diverging trends for certain aspects of the ecosystem, 

making it difficult for the public and other stakeholders to determine what 

the current condition of the bay really was. These reports were also not 

credible because they (1) commingled data on the bay’s health with 

program actions and modeling results, which tended to downplay the 

deteriorated conditions of the bay and (2) were not subject to an 

independent review process. As a result, we concluded that the Bay 

Program reports may have been projecting a rosier picture of the health of

the bay than may have been warranted. In response to our 

recommendations, the Bay Program took several steps to improve the 

effectiveness and credibility of its reports. However, we believe the Bay 

Program can take additional steps to establish an independent peer review 

process that will enhance the credibility and objectivity of its reports. 

• For fiscal years 1995 through 2004, we reported that about $3.7 billion in

direct funding was provided for the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort by 

11 key federal agencies; the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; 

and the District of Columbia.3

 An additional $1.9 billion was provided for

activities that had an indirect impact on bay restoration. Although we did 

not make any recommendations about the need to collect and aggregate 

information on the amount of funding contributed by the various partners 

to the effort, since we issued our report, the Bay Program has set up a 

formal data collection effort. The Bay Program has established a Webbased system for collecting information from its partners on the amount 

and source of funding being used and planned for restoration activities. 

 3

Key federal agencies include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency,

Forest Service, and Natural Resources Conservation Service; Department of Commerce’s

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Department of Defense’s Army, Army 

Corps of Engineers, and Navy/Marine Corps; Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife 

Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and National Park Service; and EPA. For purposes of our 

report and this testimony, we defined direct funds as those that are provided exclusively 

for bay restoration activities (e.g., increasing the oyster population) or those that would no

longer be made available in the absence of the restoration effort. 

Page 3 GAO-08-1033T 
• Finally, in 2005 we reported that the Bay Program did not have a 

comprehensive, coordinated implementation strategy that would allow it 

to strategically target limited resources to the most effective restoration 

activities. Recognizing that it could not manage all 102 commitments 

outlined in Chesapeake 2000, the Bay Program had focused its efforts on 

10 keystone commitments. We also found that although the Bay Program 

had developed numerous planning documents, some of these documents

were inconsistent with each other and some of the plans were perceived 

to be unachievable by stakeholders. Moreover, the program invested 

scarce resources in developing and updating certain plans, even though it 

knew that it did not have the resources to implement them. While we 

recognized that the Bay Program often had no assurance about the level of 

funds that may be available beyond the short term, we concluded that this

large and difficult restoration project cannot be effectively managed and 

coordinated without a realistic strategy that unifies all of its planning 

documents and targets its limited resources to the most effective 

restoration activities. In response to our recommendations, the Bay 

Program has taken several actions to improve the coordination and 

management of the restoration effort, such as developing a strategic

framework to articulate how the partnership will pursue its goals. While 

these actions appear to be positive steps in the right direction, we believe

that additional actions, such as identifying resources and assigning 

accountability to partners for implementing the strategy, are needed for 

the Bay Program to move forward in a more strategic and wellcoordinated manner. 

We discussed our assessment of the Bay Program’s actions taken in 

response to our recommendations with program officials. Based on this 

discussion, we incorporated technical changes to this statement. 

Page 4 GAO-08-1033T 
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest of the nation’s estuaries, measuring 

nearly 200 miles long and 35 miles wide at its widest point. Roughly half of

the bay’s water comes from the Atlantic Ocean, and the other half is 

freshwater that drains from the land and enters the bay through the many 

rivers and streams in its watershed basin. As shown in figure 1, the bay’s 

watershed covers 64,000 square miles and spans parts of six states—

Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West 

Virginia—and the District of Columbia. 

Background 

Figure 1: Chesapeake Bay Watershed

New York

Virginia

Maryland

Pennsylvania

D.C.

West Virginia

Delaware

Chesapeake Bay watershed

Sources: Chesapeake Bay Program Office and GAO.

Susquehanna River

Patuxent River

Potomac River

York River

James River

Rappahannock River

Location of Chesapeake Bay 

watershed

Over time, the bay’s ecosystem has deteriorated. The bay’s “dead zones”—

where too little oxygen is available to support fish and shellfish—have 

increased, and many species of fish and shellfish have experienced major

Page 5 GAO-08-1033T 
declines in population. The decline in the bay’s living resources has been 

cause for a great deal of public and political attention. 

Responding to public outcry, on December 9, 1983, representatives of 

Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; the District of Columbia; EPA; and 

the Chesapeake Bay Commission signed the first Chesapeake Bay 

agreement. Their agreement established the Chesapeake Executive

Council and resulted in the Chesapeake Bay Program—a partnership that 

directs and conducts the restoration of the bay. The signatories to the 

agreement reaffirmed their commitment to restore the bay in 1987 and 

again in 1992. The partners signed the most current agreement, 

Chesapeake 2000, on June 28, 2000. Chesapeake 2000—identified by the 

Bay Program as its strategic plan—sets out an agenda and goals to guide 

the restoration efforts through 2010 and beyond. In Chesapeake 2000, the 

signatories agreed to 102 commitments—including management actions, 

such as assessing the trends of particular species, as well as actions that 

directly affect the health of the bay. These commitments are organized 

under the following five broad restoration goals:

• Protecting and restoring living resources—14 commitments to 

restore, enhance, and protect the finfish, shellfish and other living 

resources, their habitats and ecological relationships to sustain all 

fisheries and provide for a balanced ecosystem; 

• Protecting and restoring vital habitats—18 commitments to preserve, 

protect, and restore those habitats and natural areas that are vital to 

the survival and diversity of the living resources of the bay and its 

rivers; 

• Protecting and restoring water quality—19 commitments to achieve

and maintain the water quality necessary to support the aquatic living 

resources of the bay and its tributaries and to protect human health; 

• Sound land use—28 commitments to develop, promote, and achieve

sound land use practices that protect and restore watershed resources 

and water quality, maintain reduced pollutant inputs to the bay and its 

tributaries, and restore and preserve aquatic living resources; and 

• Stewardship and community engagement—23 commitments to 

promote individual stewardship and assist individuals, communitybased organizations, businesses, local governments, and schools to 

undertake initiatives to achieve the goals and commitments of the 

agreement. 

Page 6 GAO-08-1033T 
As the only federal signatory to the Chesapeake Bay agreements, EPA is 

responsible for spearheading the federal effort within the Bay Program 

through its Chesapeake Bay Program Office. Among other things, the 

Chesapeake Bay Program Office is to develop and make available 

information about the environmental quality and living resources of the 

Chesapeake Bay ecosystem; help the signatories to the Chesapeake Bay 

agreement develop and implement specific plans to carry out their 

responsibilities; and coordinate EPA’s actions with those of other 

appropriate entities to develop strategies to improve the water quality and 

living resources in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. 

In October 2005, we found that the Bay Program had established 101 

measures to assess progress toward meeting some restoration 

commitments and provide information to guide management decisions. 

For example, the Bay Program had developed measures for determining 

trends in individual fish and shellfish populations, such as crabs, oysters, 

and rockfish. The Bay Program also had a measure to estimate vehicle 

emissions and compare them to vehicle miles traveled to help establish 

reduction goals for contaminants found in these emissions. 

The Bay Program Has 

Developed an 

Integrated Approach 

to Better Assess 

Overall Restoration 

Progress 

While the Bay Program had established these 101 measures, we also found 

that it had not developed an approach that would allow it to translate 

these individual measures into an overall assessment of the progress made 

in achieving the five broad restoration goals. For example, although the 

Bay Program had developed measures for determining trends in individual 

fish and shellfish populations, it had not yet devised a way to integrate 

those measures to assess the overall progress made in achieving its Living 

Resource Protection and Restoration goal. According to an expert panel 

of nationally recognized ecosystem assessment and restoration experts 

convened by GAO, in a complex ecosystem restoration project like the 

Chesapeake Bay, overall progress should be assessed by using an 

integrated approach. This approach should combine measures that 

provide information on individual species or pollutants into a few broaderscale measures that can be used to assess key ecosystem attributes, such 

as biological conditions.

According to an official from the Chesapeake Bay Program Office, the 

signatories to the Chesapeake Bay agreement had discussed the need for 

an integrated approach for several years, but until recently it was generally

not believed that, given limited resources, the program could develop an 

approach that was scientifically defensible. The program began an effort in 

November 2004 to develop, among other things, a framework for 

Page 7 GAO-08-1033T 
organizing the program’s measures and a structure for how the redesign

work should be accomplished. In our 2005 report, we recommended that

the Chesapeake Bay Program Office complete its efforts to develop and 

implement such an integrated approach. 

In response to our recommendation, a Bay Program task force identified

13 key indicators for measuring the health of the bay and categorized these 

indicators into 3 indices of bay health. With the development of these 

indices, the Bay Program should be in a better position to assess whether 

restoration efforts have improved the health of the bay. These indices will

also help the Bay Program determine whether changes are needed to its 

planned restoration activities. The task force also identified 20 key 

indicators for measuring the progress of restoration efforts and 

categorized these indicators into 5 indices of restoration efforts. According

to the Bay Program, these indices are now being used to assess and report 

on the overall progress made in restoring the bay’s health and in 

implementing restoration efforts. The Bay Program has linked these 

restoration effort indices to the overall restoration goals and this should 

help the program better evaluate the progress it has made toward meeting 

the overall goals. 

In 2005, we determined that the Bay Program’s primary mechanism for 

reporting on the health status of the bay—the State of the Chesapeake Bay

report—did not effectively communicate the current health status of the 

bay. This was because it mirrored the shortcomings in the program’s 

measures by focusing on the status of individual species or pollutants 

instead of providing information on a core set of ecosystem 

characteristics. For example, the 2002 and 2004 State of the Chesapeake 

Bay reports provided data on oysters, crab, rockfish, and bay grasses, but 

the reports did not provide an overall assessment of the current status of 

living resources in the bay or the health of the bay. Instead, data were 

reported for each species individually. The 2004 State of the Chesapeake 

Bay report included a graphic that depicted oyster harvest levels at 

historic lows, with a mostly decreasing trend over time, and a rockfish 

graphic that showed a generally increasing population trend over time. 

However, the report did not provide contextual information that explained 

how these measures were interrelated or what the diverging trends meant 

about the overall health of the bay. The experts we consulted agreed that 

the 2004 report was visually pleasing but lacked a clear, overall picture of

the bay’s health and told us that the public would probably not be able to

easily and accurately assess the current condition of the bay from the 

information reported. 

The Bay Program Has 

Improved Report 

Formats but Has Not 

Taken Adequate Steps 

to Enhance the 

Independence of the 

Reporting Process 

Page 8 GAO-08-1033T 
We also found that the credibility of the State of the Chesapeake Bay

reports had been undermined by two key factors. First, the Bay Program 

had commingled data from three sources when reporting on the health of 

the bay. Specifically, the reports mixed actual monitoring information on 

the bay’s health status with results from a predictive model and the 

progress made in implementing specific management actions, such as 

acres of wetlands restored. The latter two results did little to inform 

readers about the current health status of the bay and tended to downplay 

the bay’s actual condition. Second, the Bay Program had not established 

an independent review process to ensure that its reports were accurate 

and credible. The officials who managed and were responsible for the 

restoration effort also analyzed, interpreted, and reported the data to the

public. We believe this lack of independence in reporting led to the Bay 

Program’s projecting a rosier view of the health of the bay than may have

been warranted. Our expert panelists also told us that an independent 

review panel—to either review the bay’s health reports before issuance or

to analyze and report on the health status independently of the Bay 

Program—would significantly improve the credibility of the program’s 

reports. 

In 2005, we recommended that the Chesapeake Bay Program Office revise

its reporting approach to improve the effectiveness and credibility of its 

reports by (1) including an assessment of the key ecological attributes that 

reflect the bay’s current health conditions, (2) reporting separately on the 

health of the bay and on the progress made in implementing management 

actions, and (3) establishing an independent and objective reporting 

process. 

In response to our recommendation that reports should include an 

ecological assessment of the health of the bay, the Bay Program has 

developed and used a set of 13 indicators of bay health to report on the 

key ecological attributes representing the health of the bay. In response to 

our recommendation that the program should separately report on the 

health of the bay and management actions, the Bay Program has 

developed an annual reporting process that distinguishes between 

ecosystem health and restoration effort indicators in its annual report 

entitled Chesapeake Bay Health and Restoration Assessment. The most 

recent report, entitled Chesapeake Bay 2007 Health and Restoration 

Assessment, is divided into four chapters: chapter one is an assessment of 

ecosystem health, chapter two describes factors impacting bay and 

watershed health, chapter three is an assessment of restoration efforts, 

and chapter four provides a summary of local water quality assessments. 

We believe that the new report format is a more effective communications 

Page 9 GAO-08-1033T 
framework and clearly distinguishes between the health of the bay and 

management actions being taken.

In response to our recommendation to establish an independent and 

objective reporting process, the Bay Program has charged its Scientific 

and Technical Advisory Committee with responsibility for assuring the 

scientific integrity of the data, indicators, and indices used in the Bay 

Program’s publications. In addition, the Bay Program instituted a separate

reporting process on the bay’s health by the University of Maryland Center 

for Environmental Science. This report, which is released on the same day 

as the Bay Program’s release of the Chesapeake Bay Health and 

Restoration Assessment, provides an assessment of the bay’s health in a 

report card format. While we recognize that the changes are an

improvement over the reporting process that was in place in 2005, we 

remain concerned about the lack of independence in the process. 

Although members of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee are 

not managing the day-to-day program activities, this committee is a 

standing committee of the Bay Program and provides input and guidance 

to the Bay Program on how to develop measures to restore and protect the 

Chesapeake Bay. In addition, we do not believe that the report card 

prepared by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science 

is as independent as the Bay Program believes, because several members 

of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee are also employees of 

the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. We 

therefore continue to believe that establishing a more independent 

reporting process would enhance the credibility and objectivity of the Bay 

Program’s reports. 

From fiscal years 1995 through 2004, we reported that 11 key federal 

agencies; the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; and the 

District of Columbia provided almost $3.7 billion in direct funding to 

restore the bay. Federal agencies provided a total of approximately $972 

million in direct funding, while the states and the District of Columbia 

provided approximately $2.7 billion in direct funding for the restoration 

effort over the 10-year period. Of the federal agencies, the Department of 

Defense’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided the greatest amount of 

direct funding—$293.5 million. Of the states, Maryland provided the 

greatest amount of direct funding—more than $1.8 billion—which is over 

$1.1 billion more than any other state. Typically, the states provided about 

75 percent of the direct funding for restoration, and the funding has 

generally increased over the 10-year period. As figure 2 shows, the largest

Federal Agencies and 

States Provided 

Billions of Dollars in 

Both Direct and 

Indirect Funding for 

Restoration Activities 

Page 10 GAO-08-1033T 
percentage of direct funding—approximately 47 percent—went to water 

quality protection and restoration. 

Figure 2: Percentage of the Total Direct Funding Provided for Addressing Each of 

the Five Chesapeake 2000 Goals, Fiscal Years 1995 through 2004 

Source: GAO analysis of agency data, in constant 2004 dollars.

Water quality protection and restoration

($1.7 billion)

Sound land use ($1.1 billion)

Vital habitat protection and restoration

($491 million)

Living resource protection and restoration

($233 million)

4%

Stewardship and community engagement

($156 million)

6%

13%

30%

47%

We also reported that 10 of the key federal agencies, Pennsylvania, and the

District of Columbia provided about $1.9 billion in additional funding from

fiscal years 1995 through 2004 for activities that indirectly affect bay 

restoration. These activities were conducted as part of broader agency 

efforts and/or would continue without the restoration effort. Federal 

agencies provided approximately $935 million in indirect funding, while

Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia together provided approximately 

$991 million in indirect funding for the restoration effort over the 10-year 

period. 4

 Of the federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture 

provided the greatest amount of indirect funding—$496.5 million—primarily 

 4

In addition to the funding provided for the restoration of the bay, EPA provided more than

$1 billion to Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia through its Clean Water State Revolving 

Fund program during fiscal years 1995 through 2004. The funds provide low-cost loans or

other financial assistance for a wide range of water quality infrastructure projects and 

other activities, such as implementing agricultural best management practices. 

Page 11 GAO-08-1033T 
through its Natural Resources Conservation Service. Of the states, 

Pennsylvania provided the greatest amount of indirect funding—$863.8 

million. As with direct funding, indirect funding for the restoration effort 

had also generally increased over fiscal years 1995 through 2004. As figure 3

shows, the largest percentage of indirect funding—approximately 44 

percent—went to water quality protection and restoration. 

Figure 3: Percentage of the Total Indirect Funding Provided for Addressing Each of 

the Five Chesapeake 2000 Goals, Fiscal Years 1995 through 2004 

Source: GAO analysis of agency data, in constant 2004 dollars.

Water quality protection and restoration

($841 million)

Sound land use ($702 million)

Vital habitat protection and restoration

($209 million)

Stewardship and community engagement

($102 million)

4%

Living resource protection and restoration

($72 million)

5%

11%

36%

44%

Despite the almost $3.7 billion in direct funding and more than $1.9 billion 

in indirect funding that had been provided to restore the bay, the 

Chesapeake Bay Commission estimated in a January 2003 report that the 

restoration effort faced a funding gap of nearly $13 billion to achieve the 

goals outlined in Chesapeake 2000 by 2010. Subsequently, in an October 

2004 report, the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Blue Ribbon Finance Panel 

estimated that the restoration effort is grossly underfunded and 

recommended that a regional financing authority be created with an initial 

Page 12 GAO-08-1033T 
capitalization of $15 billion, of which $12 billion would come from the 

federal government.5

Although we did not recommend that the Bay Program consider 

developing a formal process for collecting and aggregating information on 

the amount of funding provided by the various restoration partners, the 

program has developed a database to capture this information. 

Recognizing the need to centrally and consistently account for the 

activities and funding sources of all Bay Program partners, the program 

created a Web-based form to collect information on the amount and 

source of funding being used and planned for restoration activities. 

Currently, the Bay Program has collected funding data for 2007 through 

2009. However, according to the Bay Program, only the 2007 data—

totaling $1.1 billion—represents a comprehensive, quality data set, and the 

program has plans to improve this database by having additional partners

provide data and increasing the scope and quality of the information. 

In our 2005 report we found that although Chesapeake 2000 provides the 

current vision and overall strategic goals for the restoration effort, along

with short- and long-term commitments, the Bay Program lacked a 

comprehensive, coordinated implementation strategy that could provide a 

road map for accomplishing the goals outlined in the agreement. In 2003, 

the Bay Program recognized that it could not effectively manage all 102

commitments outlined in Chesapeake 2000 and adopted 10 keystone 

commitments as a management strategy to focus the partners’ efforts. To 

achieve these 10 keystone commitments, the Bay Program had developed 

numerous planning documents. However, we found that these planning

documents were not always consistent with each other. For example, the 

program developed a strategy for restoring 25,000 acres of wetlands by 

2010. Subsequently, each state within the bay watershed and the District of 

Columbia developed tributary strategies that described actions for 

restoring over 200,000 acres of wetlands—far exceeding the 25,000 acres 

that the Bay Program had developed strategies for restoring. While we 

recognize that partners should have the freedom to develop higher targets 

The Bay Program Has 

Established a 

Strategic Framework 

but Key Elements to 

More Effectively 

Coordinate and 

Manage the 

Restoration Effort Are 

Still Needed 

 5

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Blue Ribbon Finance Panel was established to identify 

funding sources sufficient to implement basinwide cleanup plans so that the bay and tidal 

tributaries would be restored sufficiently by 2010 to remove them from the list of impaired 

waters under the Clean Water Act. The panel was composed of 15 leaders from the private

sector, government, and the environmental community. 

Page 13 GAO-08-1033T 
than established by the Bay Program, we were concerned that having such

varying targets could cause confusion, not only for the partners, but for 

other stakeholders about what actions are really needed to restore the 

bay, and such varying targets appeared to contradict the effort’s guiding 

strategy of taking a cooperative approach to achieving the restoration 

goals. 

We also found that the Bay Program partners had devoted a significant 

amount of their limited resources to developing strategies that were either 

not being used by the Bay Program or were believed to be unachievable 

within the 2010 time frame. For example, the program invested significant 

resources to develop a detailed toxics work plan for achieving the toxics 

commitments in Chesapeake 2000. Even though the Bay Program had not 

been able to implement this work plan because personnel and funding had 

been unavailable, program officials told us that the plan was being revised. 

It was therefore unclear to us why the program was investing additional 

resources to revise a plan for which the necessary implementation 

resources were not available, and which was also not one of the 10 

keystone commitments. According to a Bay Program official, strategies are 

often developed without knowing what level of resources will be available 

to implement them. While the program knows how much each partner has 

agreed to provide for the upcoming year, the amount of funding that 

partners will provide in the future is not always known. Without knowing 

what funding will be available, the Bay Program has been limited in its 

ability to target and direct funding toward those restoration activities that

will be the most cost effective and beneficial. 

As a result of these findings in 2005, we recommended that the Bay 

Program (1) develop a comprehensive, coordinated implementation 

strategy and (2) better target limited resources to the most effective and 

realistic work plans. In response to our recommendation to develop a 

comprehensive and coordinated implementation strategy, the Bay 

Program has developed a strategic framework to unify existing planning 

documents and articulate how the partnership will pursue its goals. 

According to the Bay Program, this framework is intended to provide the 

partners with a common understanding of the partnership’s agenda of 

work, a single framework for all bay protection and restoration work, and, 

through the development of realistic annual targets, a uniform set of 

measures to evaluate the partners’ progress in improving the bay. 

However, while this framework provides broad strategies for meeting the 

Bay Program’s goals, it does not identify the activities that will be 

implemented to meet the goals, resources needed to implement the 

activities, or the partner(s) who will be responsible for funding and 

Page 14 GAO-08-1033T 
implementing the activities. Therefore, we continue to believe that 

additional work is needed before the strategy that the Bay Program has 

developed can be considered a comprehensive, coordinated 

implementation strategy that can move the restoration effort forward in a 

more strategic and well-coordinated manner. 

In response to our recommendation that the program target resources to the 

most cost-effective strategies, according to the Bay Program, in addition to

the strategic framework described above, it has developed 

• annual targets that it believes are more realistic and likely to be 

achieved; 

• an activity integration plan system to identify and catalogue 

partners’ current and planned implementation activities and 

corresponding resources; and 

• program progress dashboards, which provide high-level summaries 

of key information, such as status of progress, summaries of 

actions and funding, and a brief summary of the challenges and 

actions needed to expedite progress.

According to the Bay Program, it has also adopted an adaptive management 

process, which will allow it to modify the restoration strategy in response to 

testing, monitoring, and evaluating applied strategies and incorporating new 

knowledge, and thereby, better inform partners’ actions, emphasis, and 

future priorities. Bay Program officials told us that these actions have 

started to have the intended effects of promoting enhanced coordination

among the partners, encouraging partners to review and improve their 

progress in protecting and restoring the bay, increasing the transparency of 

the Bay Program’s operations, and improving the accountability of the Bay

Program and its partners for meeting the bay health and restoration goals. 

We believe these actions are positive steps toward responding to our 

recommendation and improving the management and coordination of the 

Bay Program. 

In addition, the Bay Program partners have established a funding priority 

framework that lists priorities for agriculture, wastewater treatment, and 

land management activities. While these priorities can be used to help 

achieve some of the annual targets established by the program, other annual 

targets—such as those for underwater bay grasses and oysters—do not 

have priorities associated with them. We believe that a clear set of priorities 

linked to the annual targets can help the partners focus the limited 

Page 15 GAO-08-1033T 
resources available to those activities that provide the greatest benefit to the 

health of the bay. 

In closing, Madam Chairwoman, it is well recognized that restoring the 

Chesapeake Bay is a massive, difficult, and complex undertaking. Our 

October 2005 report documented how the success of the program had 

been undermined by the lack of (1) an integrated approach to measure 

overall progress; (2) independent and credible reporting mechanisms; and 

(3) coordinated implementation strategies. These deficiencies had resulted

in a situation in which the Bay Program could not present a clear and

accurate picture of what the restoration effort had achieved, could not 

effectively articulate what strategies would best further the broad 

restoration goals, and could not identify how to set priorities for using 

limited resources. Since our report was issued, the Bay Program, with 

encouragement from Congress, has taken our recommendations seriously 

and has taken steps to implement them. The Bay Program has made 

important progress, and we believe that these initial steps will enable 

better management of the restoration effort. However, additional actions

are still needed to ensure that the restoration effort is moving forward in 

the most cost-effective manner. 

Madam Chairwoman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be 

happy to respond to any questions that you or Members of the 

Subcommittee may have. 

Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public 

Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. For further 

information about this testimony, please contact Anu Mittal at (202) 512-

3841 or mittala@gao.gov. Other individuals making significant 

contributions to this testimony were Sherry McDonald, Assistant Director, 

and Barbara Patterson. 

Contacts and 

Acknowledgments 

Page 16 GAO-08-1033T (360989) 
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