Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Education Programs and Information About the Bay

LAND USE

What happens on the land matters greatly to the Bay.

A profound relationship exists between the water of the Chesapeake Bay and the 64,000 square miles of land comprising the Bay's watershed. Some 50 rivers and thousands of streams run from the watershed into the Bay, like the roots of a great tree. These tributaries, each with its own watershed, directly connect farms, forests, and developed communities in six states and the District of Columbia with the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay is comprised not only of the tidal waters in the Bay itself, but of all the waters that flow into the Bay. Before European settlers began to arrive here some 400 years ago, the lands of the Chesapeake Bay watershed were largely forested, with small American Indian settlements. Untouched lands absorbed and filtered rainwater as it ran across the watershed and into the Bay. Today, with about 17 million residents in the watershed, there are significantly greater stresses and less filtering capacity in the ecosystem we call home.

CBF firmly believes it is possible to restore the Bay. But constantly removing the open land that provides a natural water filter makes it much harder.

About the Watershed

The Chesapeake Bay watershed extends from the Atlantic coast of Virginia to Cooperstown, New York, where the Susquehanna begins; from the Chester River headwaters in Delaware, to the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia and West Virginia. View our maps of the watershed.

About 400 years ago, forest covered 95 percent of this land. Wetlands covered over 3.5 million acres, and underwater grasses are estimated to have covered 600,000 acres of the Bay's bottom.

These resources--forest, wetland, underwater grasses--serve to regulate the flow of rainfall running off the land and to filter contaminants from streams, rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay. Well-managed farmland can also function as a natural filter.

Impact of Development

The Bay is in critical condition. River and stream health is declining and the Bay's "dead zone" is increasing. Thanks to years of work and millions of dollars invested in pollution reduction, we have slowed the Bay's decline to some extent. These investments in pollution controls and improved technology for sewage treatment plants, utilities, and industries must continue, as must progress improving farm practices.

But these advances are increasingly threatened by two major problems that result from common development patterns:

Increasing paved surfaces, such as roads, rooftops, and parking lots.
Increasing reliance upon cars for transportation, and septic systems for sewage.

What the Bay will be in the future will be determined, in part, by the patterns of development now occurring throughout the region.

Impact of Stormwater

When it rains, water accumulates on man-made surfaces such as roads, roofs, and parking lots. These hard (impervious) surfaces prevent the rain from soaking in. As more houses, roads, and shopping centers are built, more water runs off the impervious surfaces and enters our streams and other waterways, either directly or through urban storm drain systems. This water is called stormwater or urban runoff, and it eventually finds its way into the Chesapeake Bay. Learn more about stormwater.

Learn how you can be a part of CBF's Team Mud Busters to help resolve pollution problems associated with stormwater.

Sprawl

As our population grows, continuing sprawl development threatens to overwhelm progress that has begun to be made in pollution reduction.

Every year, more than 100,000 acres of natural lands in the three major Bay states are converted to far-flung urban uses such as housing, roads, malls, and offices. In the process, farms, forests, and wetlands are changed from a green filter into a gray funnel that erodes soils and channels contaminants into the Bay. Socially and economically, sprawl has divided neighborhoods into isolated pods and reduced the ability to maintain existing infrastructure, while forcing government to spend millions in new roads, sewer and water lines, and other construction beyond the fringes of our communities.

As the name implies, sprawl is the land use pattern characterized by spread-out, low-density housing, shopping centers, and separated office parks. Sprawl has devastating social, economic, and environmental consequences for our quality of life and the Chesapeake Bay. It is the result of policies and practices that are actually reducing our choices, opportunities, and quality of life. There are better ways to grow. Our voices and our choices determine the patterns by which future growth will be accommodated.

Continued sprawl is not the future we would choose for the Bay watershed, our children or the Bay. CBF believes it's up to all of us to take action for more informed and more sustainable patterns of development.

Uncontrolled sprawl is not a given--there are smarter ways to grow.

Smart Growth

Smart growth has become a popular catch phrase with many different people and organizations. For that very reason, it is often misunderstood and misused.

Smart growth means ensuring quality and creating choice for how and where we live, and how we get around--allowing us to use excellent, efficient public transit as well as cars, for example. It means maintaining and revitalizing existing communities, ensuring value from in-place public investment, and minimizing external costs such as congestion and pollution. This kind of growth is "smart" because it avoids the trap of allowing current growth to stymie the future through ill-considered negative impacts.

There are many ways in which smart growth can be achieved, from adaptive reuse of abandoned buildings or urban "brown fields," to farmland preservation (download CBF's farmland preservation guide). New, quality mixed-use development may be higher density, but not necessarily the kind of "high" density that many fear.

There are many examples of successful smart growth development in the Bay watershed, some old and some new. Follow the link to read about several examples of Smart Growth communities. The smartest tool for growth, however, is informed people taking action to promote a high quality of life for their communities and the Bay. Read our citizens guides to find out how you can take action in your community:

For further information about smart growth:

Read CBF's smart growth publications
Visit Smart Growth America's website
Read Smart Growth America's "Choosing our Community's Future - A Citizens Guide to Getting the Most out of Development."

Better Ways To Grow

Intelligently and intentionally deciding where and how growth is to be accommodated can serve several important functions:

Full utilization of public investment in services, such as quality schools and libraries, water treatment, and well-maintained roads;
Reduced congestion and pollution compared to sprawl development;
Preservation and restoration of the natural and economic value of existing, well-managed lands.

The fundamental issue in growth decisions is quality of life. We have the opportunity and the ability to make informed decisions about the future we want for our children and ourselves. There are many tools and techniques available to guide future development to achieve and maintain a high quality of life, from preservation of natural lands to progressive local land use policies and innovative urban and suburban designs.

To reduce the ecological impact of our growing population we must make the decisions necessary to preserve the watershed's natural functions:

Minimize water-borne nutrient and sediment pollution
Minimize air pollution washing into the Bay
Maximize value of existing public investment
Improve transportation options
Maintain and restore vital neighborhoods and communities

Transportation

The private automobile is a great convenience, but it's not cheap. In 2008, driving about 15,000 miles per year, an average sedan cost Americans about $22 every day of the year--$8,095 annually, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

Owning a single car is generally the second highest household expense--and today, at least two vehicles per household is considered normal, more depending upon family size. In the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area, for example, the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center, together with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, calculated in early 2009 that transportation costs could reach as high as $13,000 annually for many families living in the far suburbs.

In spite of the cost, vehicle ownership has, until the 2008-2009 economic downturn, increased faster than population. In addition to increasing numbers of vehicles, increasing miles driven exacerbates congestion. And congestion is not merely inconvenient--it's expensive. Time is wasted, and so is fuel.

Learn more about the cost of transportation from the Center for Neighborhood Technology:

It is tempting to think that driving is increasing because the population is growing. However, the fact is that driving, as measured by vehicle miles of travel (VMT), is growing far faster than population.

The growth of VMT stems from increased workforce numbers, and increasing distances between home and work. The former is largely positive, the latter negative. The results include congestion, wasted time and fuel, and increasing competition for funding in local budgets.

Land Use Atlas

This atlas provides an overview of one important metropolitan region in the Bay watershed: Washington, D.C., and the surrounding outlying rural jurisdictions. Through this snapshot of the land, the manner in which natural resources and built features fit together and can be supportive (or destructive) of one another is explored.

How we use land in cities, older suburbs, rapidly growing new suburbs, farm fields, and forests will help determine the long-term health of the Chesapeake Bay, the natural environment, and our communities and economies.

Washington Region of the Chesapeake Bay -- Atlas Coming Soon!

Additional Information:

Acknowledgments: The Land Use Atlas was made possible through the generosity of the Prince Charitable Trusts, the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, and the members of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Primary contributors: Steve Libbey, Cheryl Cort, Jennifer Schlager, and Lee Epstein, Lands Program, Chesapeake Bay Foundation;
Howard Weinberg, Geographic Information Systems,
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science;
Chesapeake Bay Program;
Drew Smith, Department of Geography, University of Maryland at College Park;
Wink Hastings, National Park Service