Chesapeake Bay Program: Improved Strategies Needed to Better
Guide Restoration Efforts GAO-06-614T, Jul 13, 2006 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
Chesapeake Bay. The partnership's most recent agreement,
Chesapeake 2000, sets out an agenda and 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 appropriate measures for
assessing restoration progress have been established, (2) the
extent to which current reporting mechanisms clearly and
accurately describe the bay's overall health, (3) how much
funding was provided for the effort for fiscal years 1995
through 2004, and (4) how effectively the effort is being
coordinated and managed. The Bay Program had developed over 100
measures