The last time Donald Trump was president, his administration attempted to cut federal funding for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay to zero.

The former president’s appointments to top regulatory posts also angered environmental advocates: His first director of the Environmental Protection Agency was a close ally of the oil and gas industry that openly denied the science of climate change. His successor was a former lobbyist for coal companies.

It’s unclear how Trump, who defeated Vice President Kamala Harris last week to win back the White House, plans to steer environmental policy this time around. Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman named this week by Trump as the new EPA director, a poor record on environmental issues, but observers expect a Trump administration start cutting regulatory jobs And roll back climate rules.

For some bay defenders, the clouds look rather ominous. Many are preparing for the worst, even as they express hope that things will be different this time.

Hilary Harp Falk, president and CEO of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said her organization is preparing for either outcome of the presidential election and stressed that the group’s mission is not shaken by a change of power in Washington.

“We will work with the new administration when we can and we will fight when we need to,” she said.

Falk nevertheless said the Trump administration’s record on the Bay was clear: deregulate and defund. Reducing regulations hasn’t just been a strategy for Trump, she added, “it’s a philosophy.”

However Trump runs his environmental and energy agencies this time around, he should benefit from Republican control in both houses of Congress, as well as a federal court system now filled with many of his appointees.

He will return to power at what Chesapeake Bay supporters recently described as a “crossroads” in their restoration effort.

The Chesapeake Bay cleanup dates back nearly four decades and required billions of dollars in public funding, but even its most ardent supporters admit they haven’t seen as much progress as they hoped. Although the bay recorded its highest environmental quality in more than 20 years this summer… a C+, according to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Studies — the restoration effort is close to missing a much-anticipated deadline to meet a long list of environmental goals by 2025.

Meanwhile, scientists advising restoration efforts have began to question a long-standing strategy of tackling problems in the Chesapeake’s deep waters, where the lack of oxygen has created what is called “dead zones” where wildlife like fish and crabs cannot survive. Instead, some prefer to focus on the shallower waters along the coasts and in the vast watershed that feeds the bay’s main channel.

Despite threats made by the first Trump administration against Chesapeake restoration efforts, the worst did not happen.

The former president attempted to defund the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program — the federally organized initiative that brings together bay watershed states and directs research and cleanup — in his first budget, proposing to eliminate its entire $73 million budget. He suggested similar cuts the following year, and the year after that. In all, Trump proposed significantly reducing program funds during the four years of his administration.

But every year, Congress blocked Trump’s attempts to gut the program. In 2019, lawmakers even approved an increase in funding for the Annapolis-based initiative, a boost that Trump ultimately signed into law.

That’s largely due to bipartisan support for Capitol Hill’s cleanup efforts, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who helped lead the congressional campaign to preserve funding for the Bay Restoration Program during the Trump years. .

The Maryland senator said he has established partnerships across both sides that will help protect Chesapeake Bay funding, naming West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito as one of the allies in the effort. and expressed optimism that lawmakers would once again be able to guard against a rollback. key moment of cleaning.

Of course, Van Hollen added, support for the Bay was easier under President Joe Biden’s administration, when Congress and the White House were generally rowing in the same direction. on this question.

Advocates have been able to build on the progress made over the past four years, Van Hollen said, rather than having to “spend all our time defending the progress we’ve made.”

As bay developers prepare for the 2025 deadline, they have developed contingency plans for restoration efforts in the years to come. This fall, the Chesapeake Bay program released its own recommendations for next steps, a plan titled “A Critical Path for the Chesapeake Bay Agenda Beyond 2025” should be discussed at a potentially crucial time meeting next month in Annapolis, where EPA leaders will meet with representatives from Chesapeake Watershed states, including Maryland Governor Wes Moore and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.

In a statement, Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson said the state will continue to work closely with the EPA under the new administration and noted that many states in the region worked together to advance common goals for the Bay.

“That won’t change,” he said.

It wasn’t easy the last time Trump was in office, said Kristin Reilly, director of the Annapolis-based Choose Clean Water Coalition, and advocates had to play a lot of defense, both in terms of funding and regulation. But they managed to preserve the bay’s federal funding stream and even scored occasional victories, Reilly said, such as the passage of a bipartisan conservation bill — signed by Trump — that included a program of grants specifically intended to improve Chesapeake wildlife habitats.

“We’re kind of built for these moments,” Reilly said.

Others are less confident.

Will Baker, the former director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation who led the group during the previous Trump presidency, said this second term could be disastrous for the environment.

Baker lamented what he considers a disappointing pivot from some Bay defenders in recent years. He’s not convinced environmentalists should admit so quickly that they’ve failed on the 2025 goals, and he doesn’t want to see his peers abandon the long-standing strategy to rebuild the bay’s deepest waters.

As for the incoming Trump administration, Baker is less concerned about funding the bay program than he is about Trump’s plans for environmental regulations — safeguards that environmentalists see as essential to defending and restoring fragile ecosystems like that of Chesapeake. Once ground is lost in cleanup efforts, it could be very difficult to make up for it, the retired environmentalist said.

People like Baker don’t dedicate their lives to environmental activism if they don’t think they can make a difference, and he said he tends to consider himself an optimist.

“I fear the worst and hope for the best,” he said. “But I fear the worst.”