The overall health of the Chesapeake Bay has stagnated the last two years, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reported last week, with upticks in water quality offset by a worrisome decline in striped bass, the popular finfish known regionally as rockfish.

In its State of the Bay report for 2020, the environmental group rated the Chesapeake’s health a D+. That’s the same grade the group gave it in 2018, even though its overall score on a variety of indicators has actually slipped by a point, to 32 out of a possible 100.

Foundation president Will Baker called the continuing low grade “a sober reminder that the road ahead remains steep and the clock is ticking.”

He criticized the Trump Administration, saying it had rolled back dozens of air and water regulations and undermined federal protections for wetlands and forests, which he warned would increase pollution to the bay in coming years unless they are reversed. He called on the incoming Biden Administration and watershed states t...