Cleaning Up The Chesapeake Bay Would Bring $130 Billion In Annual Economic Benefits

[n2doc]

Fully implementing an EPA policy that aims to clean up the Chesapeake Bay would result in billions of dollars in economic benefits, according to a new report.

The peer-reviewed report, published Monday by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, analyzed the economic benefits of implementing the EPA’s Clean Water Blueprint for the Chesapeake Bay, a plan that sets a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for how much nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment can enter the bay each year, with the potential of cutting this pollution by 20-25 percent.

The group started with the 2009 environmental conditions of seven kinds of land in the bay region: agricultural land, forest, wetland, open water, urban open space, “other” urban spaces (such as paved areas) and “other,” a category that included mostly barren land. Then, the researchers calculated what the productivity of these land types would be if the Clean Water Blueprint were fully implemented, using economic studies to figure out what the monetary benefit of the land would be under the plan.

The report found that the economic benefits of the restored Chesapeake Bay would total nearly $130 billion each year — an annual increase of more than $22 billion from the $107 billion the bay’s ecosystem services are valued at currently. If the Blueprint were to be scrapped entirely, the annual benefits of the land would decrease by $5.6 billion.

more

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10/06/3575828/chesapeake-bay-economic-benefit/

[marions ghost]

1. The economic benefits are enormous, not to mention quality of life

for humans and animals alike.

"The EPA’s Clean Water Blueprint was created at the request of the six Chesapeake Bay states* and the District of Columbia after numerous other attempts to clean up the bay failed. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has long argued that the Blueprint is necessary to solve the bay’s environmental problems, but with this report, it now argues that a cleanup is a smart economic investment for the region, as well."

PLEASE READ MORE:

http://www.cbf.org/how-we-save-the-bay/chesapeake-clean-water-blueprint


*SIX STATES: Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia--and Washington D.C. Approximately 17 million people live in the Bay watershed.

[zappaman]

2. Kick and Rec!

Spent a lot of time on the body of water while growing up!
This is a good thing!