In his October 13th article “The Chesapeake Bay is at its healthiest in decades, report finds” Adam Willis covers the latest report card for the bay released by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES).
The report card grades the overall health of the Chesapeake at a C+, which ties the previous highest score in 2024 and represents moderate improvements in Chesapeake Bay health since these reports began in 1986.
The Gunpowder River finds itself in the “most-improved” region of the bay: the Upper Western Shore jumped fourteen percentage points in water quality score to 57% this year.
The article quotes Alexandra Fries, a program manager at UMCES, who reminds us of the important takeaway: despite federal cuts, data shows that efforts across the bay are paying off and,
Our collective efforts are making a difference.
Willis also references Gunpowder RIVERKEEPER®’s Theaux Le Gardeur who reported out on our recent anadromous fish spawn monitoring work: higher conductivity and salt levels in the tributaries might be contributing to fewer fish species like yellow perch, white perch, and river shad returning to the Gunpowder to spawn. He notes that while it is encouraging to see the scores go up, there are also troubling signs in the water.
Willis ends the article quoting Le Gardeur’s analogy showing how the water quality report card compares to a middle schooler’s grades: the science shows how far we are from “acceptable:”
I’ve got an 11-year old in Baltimore County Public Schools, and if he came home with a C, I’d be raising my eyebrows.
We are confident that because our monitoring program is Tier-III approved, the data we’re collecting will now go directly into the Bay Program and and MDE’s integrated report to contribute to the next bay report card on the Gunpowder River Basin as part of Upper Western Shore.
For more information, check out Willis’s full article on The Baltimore Banner and the full 2026 Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card.
Thanks to The Baltimore Banner and Adam Willis for this coverage of the Chesapeake and as always, thanks to our members for their continued support. We could not do our part of this watershed-wide effort with our our network of advocates, donors, and volunteers.
