The consent decree stems from a 2016 investigation by the US Department of Justice into the BPD.

The consent decree is a federal court order saying “BPD Must do these things because they’ve been the bad boys(and girls)”

The BPDs progress on the items from the decree (another commenter explained those well) are monitored by a group of experts and a federal judge.

If you mean the EPA/sewage one, same thing but insert EPA instead of DOJ, and insert city of Baltimore instead of BPD