Chesapeake Bay leaders set new cleanup goal for 2040

Chesapeake Bay area leaders have officially committed to a new deadline for improving the health of the nation’s largest estuary: 2040.

The plan approved Tuesday by the state and federal policymakers on the Chesapeake Executive Council is a revised version of their 2014 agreement, which came with a 2025 deadline that bay states realized three years ago they were not going to meet. Tuesday’s vote at the National Aquarium in Baltimore ends months of debate over a new plan, which many environmental advocates have criticized as too slow and not ambitious enough.

The agreement includes goals on subjects from oyster restoration and wetland acreage to curtailing runoff. While the states reached some of their 2014 goals this year, they failed to reduce pollution levels by the pledged amount.