The Chesapeake Bay Program has indentified source reduction as the preferred option to preventing chemical contaminants from harming our environment. The Strategy set the goal of achieving 100 percent voluntary participation by states and local governments within the Chesapeake Bay basin in the implementation of pollution prevention programs aimed at further reducing the use and generation of potentially toxic chemicals at their facilities. The Strategy seeks to achieve this goal by the year 2000. By implementing pollution prevention activities and thereby reducing the use and generation of chemical contaminants, the water quality of the Bay will improve, and the living resources that inhabit the Bay, including fish, oysters and waterfowl, will be healthier. Pollution prevention also helps communities establish more sustainable strategies to reduce and manage waste.
Trends indicate that the amount of solid waste generated is steadily rising.
The following chart indicates the amount of solid waste generated and projected for the Chesapeake Bay watershed. To some degree, pollution prevention has a role to play in each of the over 1650 local governments in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Governors in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia and the Mayor of D.C. have signed a directive that challenges you to help achieve the 100 percent voluntary participation of local governments in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in the implementation of pollution prevention activities. We hope that you will use the information in this Toolkit to achieve that goal. If your community is doing good things in this area, we'd like to hear about it.