My take:

Moore just appointed the former executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (which is a legit conservation organization) to head Maryland's Dept. of Natural Resources. ORP and other fisheries groups flipped out because they don't want actual regulations and environmental laws might prevent them from making the maximum amount of money.

This is Moore throwing them a bone.

Eh...

ORP is a consortium of fisheries associations, very closely affiliated with Delmarva Fisheries and various watermen's organizations. They also will donate a good amount of this $9.1 million to the political campaigns of local and state level elected officials.

ORP is not a conservation association. Their mission statement and goals are couched in the language of conservation, but their aims are to maintain the commercial oyster fishery, not to restore the Chesapeake. Much of ORP's leadership are former Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources employees. DNR has previously awarded numerous no-bid contracts in the 7-8 figure range to ORP, without State oversight or accountability. A lot of this taxpayer money was ending up in the coffers of industry lobbyists who went back to Annapolis to give it to Delegates asking for them to keep the checkbook open. Its a circular process and it's pretty ugly. There's no oversight on the money once it's in their hands. There is also extremely lax/nonexistent contract management for the actual recovery work, ie, dredging projects, spat-on-shell, etc. No State officials are monitoring progress. We take their word for it.

Source: I am a Maryland state employee intimately familiar with the local "Old Boy" network. I can see the ledger, in short. DNR was told by the previous Board of Public Works to stop giving Sole Source (No Bid) contracts to ORP. Moore just gave them 9 million dollars. This is not a conservation victory.

They're also incredibly noisy. Passengers would need hearing protection.