Lee Zeldin was in Annapolis on Friday.

If you’ve never heard of him, he’s the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Zeldin, an agency spokesperson said, visited the Annapolis Maritime Museum to tour nearby living shorelines and learn about “efforts to restore aquaculture and the oyster industry” along the Chesapeake Bay.

The visit came days after President Donald Trump had threatened 65% cuts to the EPA, presumably including its bay program.

Was Zeldin the ax man — come to town to size up some necks?

Draconian cuts could certainly knock out Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts. Combined with state plans to cut millions more from bay programs, Friday’s visit crystalized a moment of peril for the environmental community.

“It’s hard to look into the future and see who will step up to lead environmental restoration across the mid-Atlantic if Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Program and Annapolis step back,” said Matt Johnston, executive director of the Arundel Rivers Federation.

As much as I feel for the oyster and the crab, as much as I want the rockfish to thrive, I worry more about how this will affect the people.

“That’s what I’m calling the Chesapeake economy,” Johnston said.

From science and policy experts to instructors who teach kids about eelgrass, from nonprofits that buy up sensitive land to business owners who barge oyster shell — a whole culture centered in Annapolis is at stake.

“I don’t know if there’s a similar community of its size and dimensions around a regional water body,” said Don Boesch, the retired president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “It is centralized in Annapolis, but it has far-reaching components.”

Another name for it is the blue economy, said Allison Colden, Maryland director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

She estimated that spending $1 million on restoration creates 30 jobs. Across all sectors, 115,000 jobs are linked to the bay, with an economic impact of $10.2 billion.

“Investing in restoration creates jobs,“ Colden said. “They are local jobs, skilled jobs, anything from construction workers to engineers to landscape architects to scientists.”

Academic centers focused on the bay have been around since the 1920s. Boesch has a new book out on the 100 years of Maryland’s environmental science center.

In the 1970s, however, groups like the bay foundation and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay began to change what it meant to focus on the bay’s health. Today, hundreds of local, state and federal agencies, plus a network of nonprofits, exist.

It was intentional.

Will Baker, the retired president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a Baltimore Banner donor, said in the years that President Ronald Reagan’s EPA was burying bay cleanup initiatives, environmentalists hoped for a network that could build momentum.

It reaches into Maryland schools, where outdoor educators help fourth graders understand the Chesapeake and its significance.

It’s in places like the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, where generations of scientists keep the world’s longest-running experiment on climate change going.

It’s even at the Bay Journal, a newspaper focused exclusively on environmental news.

It’s all in limbo, waiting until funding and “what’s next” becomes clear.

When Zeldin visited that living shoreline in Annapolis, the heads of other federal agencies working on the bay weren’t invited, nor were leaders of state agencies, the mayor of Annapolis or members of Congress.

It matches the “no one knows” vibe of the moment.

“The communication has been paused; they don’t know, they don’t have guidance,” Colden said. “This is really throwing a wrench into restoration.”

Two wrenches.

Gov. Wes Moore’s budget calls for shifting $255 million in the coming fiscal year from the three departments that oversee bay cleanup to cover the state’s gap between revenue and spending.

The Department of Legislative Services went further; it recommended cannibalizing four funds dedicated to bay programs and using the $180 million a year through 2029.

“I can tell you that organizations will fight like hell to keep the Chesapeake Bay economy going,” Johnston said.

If the federal and state money both vanish to the worst degree possible, some of that fighting will be among the network of nonprofits suddenly scrambling for the same dollars.

There are other ways of looking at this.

That network Baker wished for has become a bureaucracy — one that isn’t always great at getting things done. The struggling rockfish is still waiting for a rescue plan even through there is plenty of evidence one is needed.

“We used to say God, protect me from what I want,” Baker said.

Trimming might be a good thing, just not with a chain saw.

State lawmakers could take a middle path to cuts, leaning more toward Moore’s proposal. Some federal programs in Annapolis are required by law, so the Trump administration might not work to kill them right away.

U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman relaunched the bipartisan Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force, a congressional advocacy group. It includes U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, the Maryland Republican who leads the budget-cut-loving Freedom Caucus.

Maybe he’ll champion the blue economy.

In Zeldin’s visit to Annapolis, he wasn’t seeing his first living shoreline.

A former Republican congressman from Long Island, his district, like Annapolis, has been prone to flooding from rising sea levels.

When the Army Corps of Engineers launched a $2.4 billion plan a few years ago to protect thousands of homes along 83 miles of Long Island coastline, he supported it. It will raise homes and create dunes — living shorelines — intended to absorb flooding.

“This is an historic day for Long Island as we take the most significant step yet toward making a reality this long overdue effort to improve and secure the long-term health and viability of Long Island’s environment, economy and coastal way of life,” Zeldin said at the time.

So maybe he isn’t the ax man.

But for the moment, there are a lot of necks in Annapolis feeling very stretched as they wait to find out.