WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen and Congressmen Steny H. Hoyer, Dutch Ruppersberger, John Sarbanes, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie Raskin, David Trone and Glenn Ivey (all D-Md.) announced $10,000,000 in federal funding for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to construct approximately 50 acres of reefs within existing oyster sanctuaries in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.

The restored reefs will provide habitat for the Bay’s diverse wildlife while bolstering the local oyster population and improving water quality. In addition, oyster restoration in the Bay has been linked to increases in other commercially-valuable species like Blue Crab and White Perch.

“Increasing the Bay’s oyster habitat and population not only improves the health of the Chesapeake Bay, it also supports the thousands of Marylanders whose lives and livelihoods depend on the Bay. We fought to pass the infrastructure modernization law and the Inflation Reduction Act to deliver investments like this that both support our environment and bolster our economy,” said the lawmakers.

This federal funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through the Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience grant program. The grant program was supported by funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which the lawmakers fought to pass.

###