Gov. Ralph Northam announced the completion of the largest oyster restoration project in the country, in Virginia’s Piankatank and the Great Wicomico rivers.
Virginia is losing 16,000 acres of trees every year to development and disease, according to the Virginia Department of Forestry. Legislation will come before the 2021 General Assembly session that
Fighting climate change, planting more trees and funding environmental progress in tight times will be among the challenges confronting state lawmakers in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania when they gather in January in their respective capitals.
The 2021 legislative sessions will open as last yearâs ended, under the shadow of a coronavirus pandemic that eviscerated state budgets â and even sent Maryland lawmakers home early with many bills still awaiting action.
Tree plantings and stormwater conveyance systems are part of a broad-based partnership effort to establish and connect greenways and blueways in Virginia s Appomattox River corridor. Pictured here is a tree planting at Riverside Park Greenway in Hopewell. Efforts are underway in both Maryland and Virginia to increase tree plantings, especially in underserved areas.
The Chesapeake Bay Program is set to get an extra $2.5 million next year, despite a request by President Donald Trump that its current $85 million budget be slashed to $7.3 million.Â
The bump in funding comes as the programâs six states â Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and Delaware â and Washington, D.C. enter the final stretch of a decade-long push initiated under President Barack Obamaâs administration to clean up the nationâs largest estuary.Â
The Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint signed by the six states and the District of Columbia sets a 2025 deadline for each to meet major targets in reducing sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus that flow from agricultural fields, city streets and sewage treatment plants into the bay. Bay Program funds go toward a range of efforts to achieve those goals, including conservation programs administered by Virginia agencies, tree-planting efforts in urban areas and projects to reduce polluted