The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, measuring nearly 200 miles long and 35 miles wide at its widest point. The bay’s watershed covers 64,000 square miles and, as shown in figure 1, spans parts of six states—Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia—and the District of Columbia. The Chesapeake Bay tributaries and watershed make up one of the most biologically productive systems in the world, with more than 3,600 species of plants, fish, and wildlife. The ecosystem also provides a variety of benefits to the almost 17 million people who live in the watershed, such as protecting drinking water, minimizing erosion and flood events related to stormwater runoff, and numerous recreational opportunities. Over time, however, the bay’s ecosystem has deteriorated. As mentioned previously, water quality has deteriorated primarily because of excess amounts of nutrients entering the bay, which lead to the damage of animal and plant populations. According to a 2010 EPA bay document, the single largest source of these pollutants is agricultural runoff. In addition, population growth and development have further stressed the ecosystem. The population of the bay watershed has doubled since 1950, adding approximately 1.5 million people every decade, and is expected to approach 20 million by 2030. With this population increase, open spaces are being paved and developed, creating hardened surfaces that send an increasing amount of polluted stormwater into the bay and its rivers. Furthermore, sediment in the bay, stemming in part from agriculture and urban lands, has had harmful effects on the bay and its watershed, such as preventing light from penetrating to the leaves and stems of underwater grasses that provide habitat and stability to the bay. The deterioration of the bay’s ecosystem has been the cause for a great deal of public and political attention. Efforts to manage the bay’s ecosystem and protect its living resources began as early as the 1930s and continue today. These efforts include the following: In 1980, Maryland and Virginia, later joined by Pennsylvania, established the Chesapeake Bay Commission to serve as an advisory body on the Chesapeake Bay to their state legislatures and as a liaison to Congress. In 1983, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, EPA, and the Chair of the Chesapeake Bay Commission signed the first Chesapeake Bay agreement, formalizing the Chesapeake Bay Program. The Bay Program is a partnership of federal agencies, states, academic institutions, and others that directs and conducts the restoration of the bay. EPA represents the federal government within the Bay Program and supports the partnership through its Chesapeake Bay Program Office. The signatories to the agreement reaffirmed their commitment to restore the bay in 1987 and again in 1992. In 2000, the Bay Program signatories signed the most current agreement, known as the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement. It outlined five broad goals and 102 commitments for the restoration effort. Delaware, New York, and West Virginia later signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to work cooperatively to achieve the pollution reduction targets identified to meet the water quality goals in the agreement. The end dates in the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement commitments largely expired in 2010 or earlier. Some of these commitments have been renewed, but many have not.  Also in 2000, Congress passed the Estuaries and Clean Waters Act, which directed EPA to take various actions to coordinate the Chesapeake Bay Program and to support the implementation of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement. The act also required other federal agencies with facilities in the bay watershed to participate in restoration efforts. In 2005, we examined the Bay Program’s implementation of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement to determine, among other things, the extent to which appropriate measures for assessing restoration progress had been established and how effectively the effort was being coordinated and managed. Among other things, we found that the Bay Program lacked a comprehensive, coordinated implementation strategy to better enable it to achieve the goals outlined in the agreement and assessment reports did not effectively communicate the status of the bay’s health. We made several recommendations to the Administrator of EPA, including to instruct the Chesapeake Bay Program Office to (1) work with the Bay Program to develop a comprehensive, coordinated implementation strategy and (2) to develop and implement an integrated approach to assess overall restoration progress. EPA took several actions to incorporate our recommendations, such as reducing more than 100 bay health and restoration indicators into three indices of ecosystem health and five indices of restoration effort. Subsequently, in the explanatory statement of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Congress directed EPA to implement immediately all the recommendations in our report, and to develop a Chesapeake Bay action plan for the remaining years of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement. The Bay Program responded to the Consolidated Appropriations Act with a July 2008 report to Congress that described the program efforts to implement our recommendations, and the development of an action plan for the Chesapeake Bay. We testified in July 2008 that the Bay Program had taken several actions in response to our recommendations, such as developing a strategic framework to unify planning documents and identify how it will pursue its goals. However, we also testified that additional actions were needed before the program had the comprehensive, coordinated implementation strategy we recommended. On May 12, 2009, the President issued Executive Order 13508, Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration. The executive order noted that despite significant efforts, water pollution in the Chesapeake Bay prevents the attainment of state water quality standards, and that restoration of the bay was not expected for many years. It also stated that bay restoration will require restoring habitat and living resources, conserving lands, and improving management of natural resources. The executive order established the Federal Leadership Committee and required the committee to develop a strategy to guide efforts to restore and protect the bay. According to the order, the strategy was to define environmental goals for the Chesapeake Bay and describe the specific programs and strategies to be implemented, among other things. The Federal Leadership Committee published the Strategy in May 2010. On December 29, 2010, EPA established a total maximum daily load (TMDL)—a “pollution diet”—for the Chesapeake Bay and the region’s streams, creeks, and rivers in response to consent decrees stemming from litigation against the agency. A TMDL is the calculation of the maximum amount of pollution a body of water can receive and still meet state water quality standards, and the Clean Water Act requires the creation of TMDLs for water bodies not attaining their water quality standards. The bay TMDL was also influenced by a settlement resolving a lawsuit filed against EPA in which the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other entities alleged that EPA had failed to comply with the Clean Water Act by not taking steps to achieve some of the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement goals. The bay TMDL is the largest ever developed by EPA, encompassing the entire 64,000-square-mile watershed. It identifies the necessary pollution reductions from major sources of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment across the District of Columbia and large sections of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, and sets pollution limits necessary to meet water quality standards in the bay and its tidal rivers. To implement the TMDL, EPA is taking steps to ensure that each watershed state develops a Watershed Implementation Plan that details how and when it will meet pollution allocations laid out in the TMDL. Each watershed state submitted its phase one implementation plan to EPA for review in November 2010, and must submit a phase two plan by March 2012 and a phase three plan in 2017. If EPA concludes that a watershed state has taken insufficient steps to implement its Watershed Implementation Plans or to reduce pollution, the agency is prepared to take one or more actions, including expanding coverage of wastewater permits to sources that are currently unregulated. The TMDL marks a change from the historic nature of the effort, which was based primarily on stakeholder agreements. The Strategy articulates broad restoration goals, specific measurable goals, and actions to achieve those goals. Specifically, it includes 4 broad goals, 12 measurable goals with deadlines, and 116 actions to restore the bay by 2025. The 4 broad goals—restore clean water, recover habitat, sustain fish and wildlife, and conserve land and increase public access— are identified in the Strategy as the most essential priorities for a healthy Chesapeake system. To meet these 4 broad goals, the Strategy identifies 12 measurable goals that contain numeric descriptions of results—or outcomes—to be achieved by 2025 (see table 1). For example, to help meet the recover habitat broad goal, the Strategy identifies a fish passage measurable goal to restore historical fish migratory routes by opening 1,000 additional stream miles by 2025, with restoration success indicated by the presence of river herring, American shad, or American eel. The Strategy also identifies four supporting strategies—expand citizen stewardship, develop environmental markets, respond to climate change, and strengthen science—that were designed, in part, to provide cross- cutting support for attaining the Strategy’s broad goals. In turn, the 12 measurable goals were designed to be achieved through the accomplishment of 116 actions. These actions describe activities to be taken by federal agencies, often in collaboration with the watershed states and other entities. For example, one action in the fish passage measurable goal—remove stream barriers and provide fish passage— calls for two federal agencies to work with state and local partners to, among other things, prioritize stream barriers that inhibit fish passage. Figure 2 illustrates the relationship of the recover habitat broad goal and its measurable goals and selected actions. Federal officials we surveyed reported that about 95 percent of the actions in the Strategy could definitely or probably be accomplished, assuming current and expected budget and staff levels, and generally agreed that accomplishing the actions will lead to the achievement of the measurable and broad goals by 2025. Even though the federal agencies have developed a plan with measurable goals and actions, we found that not all stakeholders are working toward achieving these measurable goals.