On September 16, the White House signed an executive order that partially rescinds the 2009 Chesapeake Bay cleanup order and, in the same breath, tells federal agencies to encourage states and localities to repeal their stormwater management fees. For Pennsylvania communities that use those fees to pay for flood reduction and clean water projects, that is not an abstract Washington story.
A September 16, 2026 executive order partially rescinds Executive Order 13508, the 2009 Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration order, and directs federal agencies to assess the financial burden of stormwater fees on residents and to encourage the repeal of stormwater fees imposed by states or localities. Pennsylvania authorized local stormwater fees between 2013 and 2018.
What the order actually does
The order pulls back part of the federal framework that has guided Chesapeake Bay restoration since 2009. Its stated reasoning is that the 2009 order was connected to communities adopting local stormwater fees, even while conceding that, in the White House’s own words, nothing in that order required or explicitly justified such measures. Beyond the Bay rollback, the order instructs federal agencies to study what stormwater fees cost residents and to press states and localities to repeal or rescind them.
Why those fees exist in the first place
Stormwater fees are one of the few dedicated funding tools local governments have for a problem that keeps getting worse. Pennsylvania gave municipalities and authorities the ability to charge them in a series of laws passed between 2013 and 2018, and communities across the state, including in our corner of it, use the revenue for flood reduction projects, pipe and culvert upgrades, and water quality work. After a summer that brought repeated flash flooding to western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and West Virginia, the need behind those fees is not hypothetical.
“Dismantles a key part of the federal-state framework that helped drive that progress.”
Chesapeake Bay Foundation, its president, on the partial rescission of the 2009 Bay order
Why it matters for the rest of us
None of our watersheds drain to the Chesapeake, but the fee language in this order is national. If federal agencies begin leaning on states to unwind stormwater fees, the municipalities and stormwater authorities in the Upper Ohio basin that rely on them could see that revenue put in political play. Watershed groups should keep an eye on their local councils and authorities in the months ahead, be ready to explain publicly what the fees actually pay for, and document the flood and water quality projects that would go unfunded without them.
Source: PA Environment Digest, September 17, 2026, reporting on the executive order signed September 16, 2026.
