ENST soil and water quality team works to improve Chesapeake Bay water quality
Dr. Gurpal Toor
Restoration goals for the Chesapeake Bay cannot be realized overnight; it takes years of coordination, cooperation, and compromise to induce the changes needed to positively affect water quality. Gurpal Toor, professor, extension specialist, and associate chair in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR), secured an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant for $3.2M to continue working under the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement to deliver research-based science to the Chesapeake Bay Program regarding agriculture and its contribution to water quality issues.
“The partnership between UMD and federal and state agencies to help Chesapeake Bay restoration allows us to use science to guide the policy-making in our backyards,” said Toor, who leads a project team of three faculty members. “It’s a complex project with huge ramifications for improving water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, and the university has a long history of working with the EPA.”
The goal of the project, with funding in effect through 2027, is to tackle water quality goals by understanding agricultural and other nonpoint source inputs of nutrient pollution like nitrogen and phosphorus, and to a lesser degree, sediments. Agriculture is a critically important component of food production for 18+ million inhabitants of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed that includes parts of six states -- Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia -- and the entire District of Columbia.
