The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers identified 3,840 candidate restoration projects for the Chesapeake Bay in a comprehensive water-resources and restoration plan released June 14. The plan is intended to help implement the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement’s goals to improve the 64,000-sq-mile watershed. Candidate projects include wetland or stream restoration, beneficial use of dredged material, fish passage, living shorelines, shoreline protection, emergency streambank protection, riparian buffers, acid mine drainage abatement and ecosystem resilience. The majority of the projects, 2,592, are proposed within Maryland, with another 881 proposed for Pennsylvania, 316 for the District of Columbia, 43 in Virginia, five in New York, two in West Virginia and one in Delaware. The Corps will accept comments and additional candidates for the plan through July 16. In related action, the Environmental Protection Agency this month sent letters to the states outlining what it expects from state and local implementation plans for the third phase of the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load program. States and D.C. are making progress on the first two phases of the program. The EPA wants all practices and controls in place by 2025 to reduce nutrient and sediment load to improve the bay’s water quality.