Trump signed the order September 16, rescinding Executive Order 13508, which President Obama issued in 2009 to create a federal leadership committee, direct agencies to coordinate restoration work, and require science-based strategies and public reporting across the watershed. The replacement directs EPA and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Interior, and War to reassess their Chesapeake Bay activities, prioritize direct projects in areas of greatest need, and document reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment rather than administrative or planning work.
Buried in the order is a specific instruction to EPA. It must evaluate the burden of stormwater fees and encourage Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. to repeal them, framing the charges as costly "rain taxes" that the 2009 order never explicitly required. The order does not cancel any fee itself. Stormwater charges are set under state or local authority and typically fund drainage improvements, flood mitigation, and maintenance of municipal stormwater systems, which means the practical effect depends entirely on what individual jurisdictions decide to do next.
The Numbers Behind the Order Cut Both Ways
The administration's case rests on real progress. As of 2025, watershed jurisdictions had met 100% of their sediment-reduction goal and 90% of their phosphorus goal, though only 57% of the nitrogen target, according to figures cited in the order itself. Nitrogen entering the Bay fell 15% since 2009, phosphorus dropped more than 21%, and this year's Chesapeake Bay dead zone is projected to be among the smallest measured since 1985, roughly 31% below the long-term average. Those gains support the administration's argument that some of the framework's coordination work has done its job.
They also show why coordination still matters going forward. Wastewater treatment plant upgrades drove most of the nitrogen and phosphorus reductions achieved since 2009, but agriculture and stormwater runoff have become more important sources of the reductions still needed. That makes the order's pressure on stormwater fees one of its most consequential provisions. If jurisdictions cut those fees without replacing the revenue, local governments could end up with less money for exactly the runoff-control projects the order says agencies should prioritize.
The Broader Partnership Survives, on a Different Footing
Revoking the 2009 order does not eliminate the underlying restoration partnership. Section 117 of the Clean Water Act separately authorizes the Chesapeake Bay Program and requires EPA to maintain a program office, and the states, Washington, D.C., federal agencies, and the Chesapeake Bay Commission remain parties to the revised Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, which runs through 2030 before its targets are due for revision. Federal money has kept flowing under that structure. EPA and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation announced more than $44 million in Chesapeake Bay watershed grants in February, and the administration says it has cut Chesapeake Bay Program administrative spending by nearly $1 million while distributing $2.7 million more to watershed jurisdictions than in fiscal 2025.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation sees the change differently. President and CEO Hilary Harp Falk said the 2009 order provided "the federal leadership, coordination, science and accountability needed to restore the Chesapeake Bay," and argued its repeal weakens the federal-state partnership at a moment when stronger coordination, not less, is what the watershed needs. Agricultural runoff has already been identified as a lagging piece of the Bay's 2025 restoration targets, and losing a shared federal accountability structure right as that gap becomes the harder problem to solve is exactly the timing critics are pointing to.
For corporate environmental teams, utilities, engineering firms, and infrastructure contractors working in the watershed, existing permits, Clean Water Act obligations, and local stormwater charges remain in place unless the responsible state or local government actually changes them. The near-term move is to watch implementation rather than assume anything has changed yet. Washington, D.C. has built its own stormwater fee fund into this year's budget to support flood mitigation and green infrastructure, the kind of dedicated local funding stream that becomes more important, not less, if federal coordination and pressure on fees both increase at once. Watershed communities have already learned from recent flooding events how much local stormwater infrastructure has to carry on its own when a storm arrives, regardless of which federal order happens to be in effect.
Whether measurable water-quality results can keep improving without the regional financing and coordination structure that helped produce this decade's gains is the real test. The dead zone shrinking to a near-record low this year happened under the old framework. Whether the new one, focused more narrowly on documented project results, can sustain that trend once the states are left to coordinate more of it themselves is the open question the next few Bay Program reporting cycles will answer.
