The Chesapeake Bay is in trouble.

This is no longer news, but the recent meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council (a decision-making body that includes the Governors of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, the Mayor of the District of Columbia and others) confirmed that the existing 2010 cleanup deadline will not be met. Participants in that meeting agreed that setting long term deadlines no longer made sense, and that our elected leaders of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed need to take short term actions with near term deadlines to accelerate progress.