Virginia General Assembly in 1988 enacted “The Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act (Bay Act)” as a pivotal component of Virginia 's non-point source management program. The Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act led to the development of land use regulations which was adopted in 1989 and were amended in 1991, 2001 and in 2012 as part of the Integration Bill
The Bay Act program is designed to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and other waters of the State by necessitating the use of operational land management and land use planning. At the core of the Bay Act is the notion that land can be used and industrialized to curtail adverse impacts on water quality. The first sentence of the Bay Act serves as a theme for the whole decree:
"Healthy state and local economies and a healthy Chesapeake Bay are integrally related; balanced economic development and water quality protection are not mutually exclusive."
Virginia aimed the Bay Act to improve water quality and still allow sensible development to continue. The Bay Act even-out state and local economic interests and water
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The Act and regulations recognize local government responsibility for land use decisions and are designed to establish a framework for compliance without dictating precisely what local programs must look like. Local governments have flexibility to develop water quality preservation programs that reflect unique local characteristics and embody other community goals. Such flexibility also facilitates innovative and creative approaches in achieving program objectives. The regulations address nonpoint source pollution by identifying and protecting certain lands called Chesapeake Bay Preservation Areas. The regulations use a resource-based approach that recognizes differences between various land forms and treats them