More than 16 million people now live in the broad watershed that drains into the Chesapeake Bay, where human waste, trash, runoff, and erosion caused by construction and land-altering activities have taken a dangerous toll on the Bay and its tributaries by disrupting the natural relationship between land and water. Healthy natural shorelines are a critical opportunity to help restore the Bay and reverse the decline of its living resources seen in recent decades, because the trees, plants, and soils along them help filter out pollutants and keep them out of the water. These shorelines along tidal rivers have been called the Bay's last line of defense. In 1984, the Maryland General Assembly enacted the Critical Area Law to protect these shorelines and promote their restoration, establishing criteria to promote water quality and habitat conservation while accommodating growth and development in an environmentally sensitive manner. The Nanticoke is one of 48 rivers that drain directly into the Chesapeake Bay, one of the world's largest and most productive estuaries, and these rivers are fed by many hundreds of smaller waterways, some reaching as far as upstate New York and the mountains of West Virginia.