Miscalculation Puts Bay Goal Farther Away

By GREG EDWARDS

Virginia is farther from its goal of preserving a fifth of the Chesapeake Bay watershed in open land than officials had thought.

The state still has roughly 360,000 acres to preserve under the Chesapeake Bay 2000 Agreement. A special General Assembly committee studying conservation funding thought the state still needed to preserve 239,000 acres.

The cost estimates for preserving the additional land presents the committee with a much greater challenge than it thought it faced in tight-budget times.

Sen. Emmet W. Hanger Jr., R-Augusta, chairman of the committee, said the revelation is “a significant setback, at least initially” for the state’s efforts to meet the land preservation goal.

Under the 2000 Bay agreement, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and the U.S. government pledged to protect the bay’s watershed, including permanently preserving 20 percent in open farm, forest or park land by 2010. Maryland and Pennsylvania have met the goal.

Twenty percent of Virginia’s Bay watershed is 2,766,378 acres.

The mistake occurred in 2000 when workers at the Department of Conservation and Recreation calculated how much land Virginia had already saved toward the goal. They inadvertently included 116,511 acres of the George Washington National Forest in West Virginia.

Current department Commissioner Joe Maroon explained that the miscalculated forest land and other minor adjustments to the original figures mean the state is nearly 121,000 acres farther from the goal than was thought. The mistake was caught as the department worked to improve the quality of the original calculations, he said.

No matter what the total, it’s obvious the state needs to intensify its efforts at land preservation, Hanger said. “We need to do what we can do.”

Contact Greg Edwards at (804) 649-6390 or gedwards@timesdispatch.com.

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO

Originally published by Times-Dispatch Staff Writer.

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