Casco Bay Plan

SEE OUR GOALS

MANAGEMENT PLAN

The Casco Bay Plan, a “Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan” or “CCMP,” guides the work to maintain and improve the ecological integrity of Casco Bay. The Plan was first written in 1996, subsequent to the 1990 designation of Casco Bay as an estuary of national significance, and it was updated in 2006. The current 3/4/2024 Draft Plan has been approved by CBEP’s Management Committee and awaits EPA approval.

READ THE FINAL CASCO BAY PLAN 2024

2016 Casco Bay Plan

Casco Bay is changing rapidly—with warmer waters, a changing mix of species, more intense storms, and changes in land use around the watershed. Through a collaborative process, the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership invited public input in developing priority actions to help protect the Bay in the future. The Casco Bay Plan (2016 – 2021) was developed in association with many partner organizations and agencies, and outlines goals, strategies and actions for the coming years.

Goal 1

Goal 1

Protect, restore, and enhance key habitats that sustain ecological health.

CBEP commits to conserving priority undeveloped shorelines, protecting and restoring vital habitats such as eelgrass beds and tidal mudflats, enhancing connectivity among aquatic habitats, and stengthening the capacity of Casco Bay ecosystems to accommodate change.

Goal 2

Improve Casco Bay’s water quality by reducing nutrient pollution and its impacts, including coastal acidification.

CBEP promotes practices that reduce nutrient pollution, support public funding for improved stormwater management, and assess the dynamics of how nutrients enter and move within Casco Bay.

Goal 3

Foster resilient communities and their connections to Casco Bay.

CBEP seeks to increase public engagement with Casco Bay and to support collaborative initiatives that illuminate the region’s ecological and economic interconnections, celebrate the Bay’s importance, and help citizens and leaders increase the region’s resilience in the face of climate disruptions.

Goal 4

Mobilize collective knowledge and resources to support Casco Bay.

CBEP serves as a convener and catalyst, mobilizing scientific, financial and human resources to help residents throughout the watershed effectively address the complex and evolving challenges facing Casco Bay.

CBEP Equity Strategy

The purpose of the CBEP Equity Strategy is to ensure that CBEP is reviewing potential projects that use Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funds through the lens of equitable and fair access to the benefits from environmental programs for all communities. This equity strategy outlines how BIL funds will be used to sustain and increase investments in underserved and underrepresented (UU) communities (including tribes), and the benefits that flow to them.

This CBEP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Environmental Justice Statement, adopted by the CBEP Management Committee on September 14, 2022, reflects our current thinking and approach. It may be adapted and revised in the future as our learning and programming evolves.

Clean water, clean air, and access to natural spaces are necessities for human health and well-being. Historic and ongoing water pollution, habitat degradation, and climate change disproportionately affect people of color and other marginalized groups. Casco Bay Estuary Partnership (CBEP) recognizes and acknowledges that those systemic inequities have an enduring negative economic and social impact on communities of color and other marginalized groups, including but not limited to the Wabanaki peoples of Maine, low-income communities, people with disabilities and the LGBTQIA+ community within and outside the Casco Bay watershed.

As an organization CBEP will strive to inform, empower, and connect individuals, partners, and communities to conserve and protect the ecological integrity of the Casco Bay watershed while also addressing the environmental justice needs of people of color and other marginalized groups in the watershed. Our hope and vision contemplate a future with clean water, healthy ecosystems, and thriving communities. CBEP must become its own catalyst for a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and welcoming organization for people of color and other marginalized groups and interact with these new partners on the same basis of equality and respect we extend to our current partners.

CBEP is committed to identifying and addressing systemic inequities within our own organization and its work-related practices. We will allocate human and financial resources to develop an active dialogue with these new partners and to encourage the adoption of mutually beneficial solutions both to address nagging water pollution challenges and the degradation of the watershed’s habitats, and also to build community resilience to mitigate the consequences of climate change.