Description
Book SynopsisAlthough media reports suggest that there always has been public concern over the health of the Chesapeake Bay, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. For centuries people saw the bay as a bottomless sink for waste productsa natural decomposer with the ability to freshen itself with ocean inflows. Not until human health and livelihood seemed threatened did people begin to think seriously about management by such methods as treating sewage and limiting seafood harvests. Chesapeake Waters chronicles four centuries of public attitudes about the bayand legislative responses to themfrom 1607, the date of the first English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, to the close of the twentieth century. In the last few decades, wide-reaching measures by federal and local governments have influenced how people use the bay: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed a massive study of bay quality; the Chesapeake Bay Program was launched; the Critical Area Protection Act went into effect. The
