Sustaining the Chesapeake

The decades-long effort to protect one of the nations most important waterways The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and the site of some of the most significant moments in the nations history. This book provides for the first time a comprehensive story of the effort to save and protect its waters and living resources for future generations. Andrew Ramey describes the enormous taskengaging the states in the Bays watershed and the federal government since 1983to realize one of the largest, most complex, and most expensive ecosystem restoration projects ever undertaken. He also unfolds a dramatic political narrative, tracing the momentous changes in American environmental politics from the green heyday of the 1960s and 1970s to the environmental movements collision with the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the movements ultimate triumph over the anti-environmental backlash of the 1990s and early 2000s. Along the way, he clarifies assumptions about the environmental movement, the major parties roles in it, and our societys efforts to forge sustainable relationships with the natural world. Saving the Chesapeake Bay reveals how a campaign to rescue this crucial resource altered the course of American environmentalism.