Chesapeake Bay

As the nation's largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay deserves special attention. River Network and many other organizations have been engaged in a decades-long campaign to protect and restore the Chesapeake and its many tributaries in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, DC and Pennsylvania.

River Network's special role has been to build stronger grassroots voices for cleaner water and healthier rivers within the Bay watershed. To that end, we've provided countless hours of training and advice to hundreds of of local watershed group leaders on fundraising, board development, strategic planning and other "capacity building" needs.

A short one-page summary found in the Related Files box above will give you more detail about our work.

This long-term investment in creating more effective local groups seems to be paying dividends, as recent reports from Johns Hopkins University and others suggest that levels of fertilizers and other nutrients in the Bay are declining.

Many thanks to the Keith Campbell Foundation, the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Agua Fund, and the MARPAT, Munson and Rauch Foundations for helping to make our work possible!