Planning Targets – Local Area Planning Goals

Local area planning goals (LAPG) are developed by states from the Phase III Planning targets. LAPGs are the local pollutant goals that are intended to meet the state-basin planning targets without considering climate change. There are different targets to account for the impact of climate change. The geographic scale of the LAPGs is determined separately by each state. The state-basin planning targets are developed by the Chesapeake Bay Program using the no action scenario on 2010 base conditions, the everything, everywhere by everyone scenario (E3) on 2010 base conditions, watershed and estuarine relative effectiveness, and the Chesapeake Bay assimilative capacity while accounting for projected atmospheric deposition load reductions.

Phase III Watershed Implementation Planning Targets

Targets are listed by state basin. Several of the Phase III WIPs do not match the Phase III planning targets. Some of the states did not meet the planning targets while others exceeded the planning targets. Therefore, we advise not to use Phase III WIPs as a proxy for comparing progress to planning targets but to instead use the Compare Planning Targets tool, linked below.

Nitrogen and phosphorus targets are provided before and after basin-to-basin and nitrogen to phosphorus exchanges. The basin-to-basin and nitrogen to phosphorus exchanges have been established in the Chesapeake Bay Program since 2010 and allow plans for efficient and effective implementation in the watershed with equivalent environmental (water quality standard) outcomes in the tidal Bay.

Nitrogen and phosphorus targets were approved in July 2018. Sediment targets are available on this fact sheet. A presentation describing decisions on sediment targets, methods used to generate sediment targets, and final sediment targets is available here.

Climate Change

Separate targets were developed to account for the changes in loads due to climate change. More information may be found in the document and table.All planning targets have a 2025 deadline.

LAPGs

The LAPGs for each state are posted as they are made available.