ANNOUNCEMENTS

Chesapeake Assessment Scenario Tool

CAST Newsletter: December 2024

Tips and information to facilitate environmental restoration efforts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed

Did You Know?

Did you know the 2024 base conditions have been updated? Base conditions refer to the land use, animals, septics, and wastewater that exist in each year. Future base conditions are based on an estimated projection of what conditions will be. Once a year is completed, the base conditions are updated to include reported data. Now, the current 2024 data is available for use in scenarios and reports. You can go into any of your existing scenarios to change the base conditions and rerun the scenario. You don't need to create a new scenario unless you want to compare to the old one, in which case you can simply copy the BMPs over when you create a new scenario.

CAST Webinars and Training

Upcoming Webinars

We are taking a winter break and will resume CAST webinars in January.

In-person trainings are available upon request.

Available Training Videos

Last month's CAST webinar highlighted Monitoring Trends. Although the model data is used for planning and tracking progress toward the Bay TMDL, the monitoring data is what is used to calibrate the model and ultimately delist streams. Three guest speakers joined us to share resources that can be used to track water quality and living resource progress in the nontidal and tidal Chesapeake Bay. Breck Sullivan kicked things off by sharing the information available in the Tributary Summaries and Storymaps, which summarize the short- and long- term trends in the nontidal and tidal water quality for major Chesapeake Bay tributaries. Then, Dr. Rebecca Murphy shared the findings available in the recently updated tidal trends, which are based on data collected from more than 130 monitoring stations throughout the mainstem and tidal portions of the Bay. Dr. Qian Zhang then took us home with a demonstration of shiny apps for the Water Quality Standards Attainment Indicator, which house the data used to update the Water Quality Standards Attainment and Monitoring Outcome on Chesapeake Progress.

This, and other past training videos on topics ranging from buffers to targeting nutrient reductions, are available in the Learning section of CAST under 'Free Training Videos'. Amongst the variety of training content available, there are also short videos on topics like 'Where do I start,' under CAST 101 - Getting Started.

Chesapeake Bay Watershed Success Story

Maryland Department of Environment's "5 Million Trees" Campaign Awarded for Effective Advertising: The Maryland Department of Environment's "5 Million Trees" campaign has been named a MUSE Creative Awards Gold Winner recognizing outstanding advertising. Read more about this success story on MDE's website.

Does your organization have a Chesapeake Bay Watershed success story you'd like to share? If you have a story you would like to see in the next CAST Newsletter, submit an article using the 'Contact Us' feature from any page of the CAST website.

Chesapeake Bay Program Deadlines

2024 Progress toward the Bay TMDL

The Chesapeake Bay Deadlines refer to the major jurisdictions' annual reporting of new BMPs implemented, and existing BMPs verified as functioning in the watershed. BMP implementation information is used to create annual progress scenarios using CAST and to make assessments and report out the estimated impacts of restoration efforts.

  • No later than December 20, 2024: Final nonpoint source BMP submissions for previous July 1 - June 30 data period due from jurisdictions for the 2024 Progress Phase 6 model assessment.
  • December 2024: Progress reports and resubmission reminders are available each Friday. Calls with state technical leads are scheduled to resolve issues.
  • January 2025: Progress reports and resubmission reminders continue. Calls with state technical leads continue.
  • February 10, 2025: Final opportunity for states to update BMP data.
  • February 11, 2025: Final progress run information available to jurisdictions - needed for outside reporting of progress on commitments to keep results relevant.
  • March 21, 2025: 2024 Progress finalized and released on CAST. Progress may be delayed due to unresolved issues surrounding the verification assessments.

Updates to CAST

New features: The CAST-23 versions of the Conowingo WIP and Conowingo WIP Baseline are now available on CAST. The Conowingo WIP Baseline scenario needs to be subtracted from the Conowingo WIP scenario to determine Conowingo load reductions.

Stream restoration calculator fix for nutrient reduction credit population error.

Clarification of error message when selecting multiple BMPs to delete in Edit Scenario.

Updated 2024 base conditions are now available.

Miscellaneous bugs and fixes.

Note: CAST reports will still reflect the version number 7.14.0

A full list of changes is available on CAST's Upgrade History. The new CAST version is Phase 6 - 7.14.1.

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