Chesapeake Bay RAVE multimedia

by iLCP, Jenny Nichols

Produced in partnership with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation with imagery from the Chesapeake Bay RAVE.

Last December, EPA issued a science-based diet that—if achieved—would reduce pollution to our waterways. Just as progress is underway, powerful forces are working to derail the recovery effort. All of us who love the Bay and its rivers and streams must make our voices heard.

ACT

Watch this video, visit cbf.org/getinvolved, and write your state representatives. Tell them you care about clean water!

Chesapeake Bay RAVE

The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers approximately 64,000
square miles (164,000 km2) and comprises one of the most important
 estuaries in the North Atlantic. With rapid development along its 
shores destroying vast swaths of wetlands and buffering forest, and
 polluted with a steady increase in agrochemical runoff from the 1950s
 on, this once thriving estuarine ecosystem was headed toward collapse.

A forty-year campaign by The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other
stakeholders has gradually turned the tide, with current political will
 at the point of tipping toward long-term restoration and protection of
 the Bay. The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Act (H.R. 3852/S.
1816) was introduced to both chambers of the United States Congress 
last October, on its way to mark-up at the end of this year. These two 
bills seek to amend the Federal Clean Water Act (Section 117) to ensure 
that the six states of the Bay watershed, plus the District of
Columbia, develop and implement detailed plans to reduce pollution 
sufficiently to achieve Bay-wide pollution reduction targets for
 nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment by 2025.

The Chesapeake Bay RAVE, a project of the International League of
Conservation Photographers (iLCP) and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation 
(CBF), is a collaborative effort to highlight the importance of this 
legislation through photographs, video, and stories from across the 
Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. iLCP and CBF will use the collected
 media from the RAVE to document issues facing the Bay and to produce an exhibit of 
thirty photographs to premiere in September 2010 on Capitol Hill. The compelling visual media displayed will help facilitate news
 coverage on the urgency of the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Act, advocating for the restoration of the Bay’s health and its protection in the 
long term. The expedition team is composed of iLCP 
photographers from across North America, including several who live 
within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.