WASHINGTON — Legislation signed into law on Nov. 13, 2025, ended a record 43-day partial government shutdown that began Oct. 1, restoring operations for federal agencies critical to Chesapeake Bay restoration while providing full-year funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture through fiscal year 2026.
The measure, which President Donald Trump approved late Wednesday, allocates $850 million to the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service for conservation efforts, a $65 million reduction from the $915 million in fiscal 2025, but includes $2 million in grants for processing invasive blue catfish that threaten native species in the bay watershed. Other key agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, receive funding at fiscal 2025 levels through Jan. 30, 2026, leaving Congress 11 weeks to complete the remaining nine appropriations bills.
The shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, halted essential Bay Program activities, including pollution monitoring, habitat research and reimbursements to farmers for conservation practices. In Southern Maryland’s Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties, where agriculture covers more than 200,000 acres and contributes nutrient runoff to the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, Natural Resources Conservation Service technicians paused field consultations on cover crops and riparian buffers designed to filter nitrogen and phosphorus before they reach tidal waters. These practices, part of Maryland’s 10-year nutrient reduction plan under the 2010 Total Maximum Daily Load agreement, aim to cut pollution by 24 percent from 2009 levels by 2025.
During the closure, water quality sampling at USGS stations along the Patuxent River ceased, potentially skewing data used to track sediment loads from development in Waldorf and La Plata areas. The EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office, which coordinates restoration across six states and the District of Columbia, deferred grant reviews for wetland restoration projects in St. Mary’s County, where tidal marshes support blue crab nurseries. NOAA fisheries surveys for striped bass stocks, vital to commercial harvests in Solomons, faced delays in vessel maintenance and data analysis, while the Fish and Wildlife Service postponed habitat assessments at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, which borders Dorchester County but influences Southern Maryland’s migratory bird patterns.
The $2 million allocation targets blue catfish, an invasive species introduced in the 1970s that has proliferated in the bay’s tributaries, devouring juvenile crabs and bass at rates exceeding 10 pounds per fish annually in some Potomac sections. Grants will support processors in expanding filleting and freezing capacity, building on a broader $6 million USDA initiative announced in August 2025 to boost commercial harvests.
Chesapeake Bay Foundation Senior Policy Director Keisha Sedlacek issued a statement on the funding deal: “Now that this record-breaking shutdown is over, agencies and employees vital to saving the Bay can get back to this important work. The shutdown took a serious toll on Bay recovery efforts that includes six weeks of stalled conservation projects, farmers waiting to be reimbursed, crucial water quality data not being collected, and pollution inspectors sidelined. We’re not out of the woods yet. This deal only offers a 12-week reprieve for key Bay restoration agencies like EPA, NOAA, and USGS. There’s no time to waste. Congress must finish its job and negotiate fiscal 2026 budgets for all agencies. More importantly, congressional leaders and the president must break this destructive cycle of government shutdowns before the damage they do to the Bay and its waterways becomes irreversible.”
The temporary funding extension averts immediate disruptions but underscores fiscal uncertainties. NRCS’s reduced budget may limit technical assistance enrollments in Maryland’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which has protected 50,000 acres statewide since 1997, including 8,000 in Southern Maryland for streamside forests that stabilize eroding banks along the Zekiah Swamp. Farmers in Calvert County, reliant on cost-share payments for no-till farming, faced delayed reimbursements totaling $1.2 million during the shutdown, prompting some to postpone equipment upgrades.
This shutdown echoes the 35-day closure in late 2018-early 2019, which cost the Bay Program $10 million in lost productivity and delayed the 2020 Watershed Implementation Plan updates. The Chesapeake Bay Agreement, first signed in 1983 by Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and federal partners, has evolved through four iterations to address dead zones spanning 40 percent of the estuary in summer months. Southern Maryland’s 1.5 million residents depend on the bay for drinking water drawn from the Patuxent, recreational boating at Point Lookout and tourism generating $2 billion annually across the watershed.
Restoration milestones include a 22 percent drop in nitrogen loads since 2010, achieved through urban stormwater controls in Prince George’s County and agricultural best management practices in Charles County’s agriculture fields, now largely converted to soybeans. Yet challenges persist: algal blooms in the Little Patuxent River, linked to 15 percent excess phosphorus from lawns and septic systems, and sea-level rise projecting 1.5 feet by 2050, which could inundate 20,000 acres of Calvert’s coastal wetlands.
As agencies ramp up, the U.S. Geological Survey plans to resume groundwater modeling for the Patuxent aquifer, essential for balancing withdrawals that affect base flows to the bay. NOAA’s oyster restoration efforts at Harris Creek in Talbot County, which restored 500 acres since 2010, will accelerate monitoring to inform similar projects in St. Mary’s River. The EPA’s $72.7 million Chesapeake Bay allocation in fiscal 2025 supported 1,200 pollution reduction projects; maintaining that level through January ensures continuity for Southern Maryland’s cover crop incentives, which enrolled 300,000 acres last year.
Congressional negotiators, facing partisan divides over spending caps, must prioritize the Interior, Commerce and Energy bills covering NOAA and USGS by late December to avoid another lapse. The Bay Program’s principal accountability framework, due for revision in 2025, hinges on stable funding to meet 31 outcome goals, from 185 million pounds of annual blue crab harvest to 14,000 miles of restored streams.
