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Today, 17 million people live there, with 130,000 new residents moving in each year.
According to Bob Koroncai of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, each and every one of those residents is responsible for nearly choking the life out of North America's largest estuary.
"If you eat, you are part of the problem," Koroncai said. "If you flush a toilet, drive a car or fertilize your lawn, you are contributing to the problem."
Breathing life back into the Chesapeake, Koroncai said, is a task for the people who live in the watershed.
"It's going to take a behavioral change of the 16-17 million residents to make this happen," he said.
Koroncai delivered his comments Monday to a crowd of about 200 at Franklin & Marshall College. They gathered to hear details of a draft plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
The meeting was the seventh in a series of 17 public forums being held in the six states and District of Columbia included in the bay's watershed.
The EPA has had plans to clean up the bay for many years, but implementation of those plans has always fallen short, according to Rich Batiuk of the agency.
"We've made real progress, but it's not enough," he said.
The new plan, which is expected to be adopted by the end of next year, is the first that promises consequences for those states, counties and municipalities that fail to do their part in the cleanup effort.
What those consequences will be has not yet been determined, Koroncai said. Ideas on the table include federal opposition to requests for new permits to discharge nutrients and sediments into bay tributaries, withholding federal grants aimed at cleanup initiatives and assigning even more stringent pollution reduction requirements than called for by the plan.
In essence, Batiuk said, the plan seeks to establish a "pollution diet for the Chesapeake Bay."
If the amount of nitrogen being washed into the bay is reduced to 200 million pounds per year and phosphorous to 15 million pounds per year, Batiuk said, the algae blooms that suck all or nearly all of the oxygen out of parts of the bay should starve and dwindle.
Boosting the oxygen levels should lead to a resurgence of underwater grassbeds, oysters, crabs and other aquatic life that once thrived in the Chesapeake.
Currently, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous being washed into the bay each year is substantially higher than goals set by the EPA.
Under the cleanup plan, the total amount of each pollutant allowed into the bay will be divided among the six watershed states and the District of Columbia.
For Pennsylvania, the proposed annual levels are 73.64 million pounds of nitrogen and 3.16 million pounds of phosphorous.
Currently, Pennsylvania sends about 115 million pounds of nitrogen and 4 million pounds of phosphorous into the bay each year.
Those pollutants primarily come from farms, but wastewater treatment plants, stormwater runoff and rain carrying airborne contaminants also contribute.
The state Department of Environmental Protection will be charged with dividing Pennsylvania's pollution level among the counties, including Lancaster, that sit in the watershed area by the end of 2011.
Plans for individual tributary watersheds, such as the Conestoga River, will be created to manage the nutrients they deliver to the Chesapeake.
Reducing pollutants might require municipalities to upgrade their wastewater treatment plants and farmers to reduce the amount of manure they spread on their fields.
Logan Myers, chairman of the Warwick Township supervisors and a member of the Lititz Run Watershed Alliance, said nothing surprised him about Monday's presentation.
"I didn't hear anything that was alarming," he said.
Warwick is in the midst of a $14-million upgrade of its wastewater treatment plant to make it more environmentally friendly.
And the Lititz Run alliance has been working for years to improve the quality of that stream.
Myers said he supports the EPA's plan to take action against states that don't do their part in the cleanup.
"Coming down with some consequences at this time is needed," he said. "We've been talking about cleaning up the bay for 25 years and progress has been very slow."
Myers said he hopes EPA and DEP recognize the efforts of municipalities like Warwick Township that have been proactively cleaning up their local waterways for years.
"We don't want to be judged across the board as if we haven't been doing anything," he said.
