Close your eyes and picture the Chesapeake Bay on a map. Most will see that large body of water that splits Virginia and Maryland into eastern and western shores.

Even if you call it up on your computer somewhere like Google Maps, you’ll see the Bay surrounded by lots of land. Perhaps you’ll notice a few of the big rivers, like the Potomac, James or Susquehanna Rivers.

The picture above shows you what the 160+ organizations in our Coalition see.

Yes, the Chesapeake Bay is in the picture, but so are the thousands upon thousands of creeks, streams and rivers that feed into it. Not only are our bodies made up of lots of water, so are our lands. This picture makes it clear that it’s not all about the Bay, it’s about our local waters, too.

When we talk about the Chesapeake Bay “watershed” this is it. We, the 17 million people who live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, are bound together because those local waters that flow near us all come together at the Chesapeake Bay.

And we should be bound together when it comes to protecting this interconnected web of waters, the source of drinking water for millions in our region. These waters represent our lives – our water, our health, our economy. We have to act like it.

So why would some not want you to see this map? Polluters and those paid off by them spend a lot of money to make sure we don’t realize our common interest in protecting our waters. They want you to believe the Chesapeake Bay has nothing to do with your life – that it’s not tied to your local waters. It’s always one state vs. another, Eastern Shore vs. Western Shore, the federal government vs. the states, the city dwellers vs. those in the country. Name any which way to divide people and it will have been tried in an effort to divert attention from pollution.

We have to resist the urge to be divided to the point of inaction because there’s too much at risk.

We have to understand it’s not just the Bay that is impaired by pollution. There are thousands of impaired creek, stream and river sections located throughout the six states and the District of Columbia. For those places not polluted, we need to make sure they stay that way.

What would be the ideal way to address pollution within this large web of Chesapeake Bay waters? We think things need to go local. When you take things down to that level, you have to sit around the table with your neighbors and have a hard conversation about pollution in your local waters – how to address it if it is there, how to keep it out if it isn’t. No finger pointing, just solutions for your local community.

Through the Chesapeake Bay Pollution Diet, also known as the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), this is what is scheduled to take place. Each state has developed its own unique Pollution Diet called a Watershed Implementation Plan. Each state’s plan is unique, and it will be further refined by local government entities that will draft their own plans– in some cases it may be county level and others may be planning or soil conservation district level.

There’s some uncertainty on who the local government players will be because this process has never gone down to the local level like this. Another thing that has never happened as states have wrangled and failed during previous attempts to clean up the waters of the Chesapeake Bay – federal lands will be accountable for the pollution they contribute. For states with a large military presence this adds key players to the table who have never been there before.

Think of the Chesapeake Bay Pollution Diet (Chesapeake Bay TMDL) as your state’s Pollution Diet and your river’s Pollution Diet because that is exactly what it is. If you want to protect clean water in your local community you should support this process. Let the Pollution Diet go local. It’s the best protection for your water.