The ongoing federal shutdown has eclipsed the final stretch of negotiations on an updated agreement to guide restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, leaving partner states to contemplate a less ambitious pact with scaled-back targets and modest cleanup goals.

Nearly all normally participating federal agencies have been absent from these deliberations since the Oct. 1 shutdown. The Chesapeake Bay Program’s management board met Thursday without that expertise to hammer out a proposal aimed at closing gaps identified by the public after a draft agreement was announced in July.

That draft agreement had drawn the ire of scientists, advocates and citizen groups for weakening legal accountability under the federal Clean Water Act and diluting the enforcement of the bay’s longstanding pollution limit

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