Action Plan
Big Poultry Needs to Clean Up After Itself
(Posted by Scott Edwards.)
As of 2008, despite the trumpeting of significant progress made in agricultural discharges of nutrients into the Bay, the industry was still pumping 100 million pounds of nitrogen and over 8 million pounds of phosphorus per year into the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Read MoreMaking Conservation Pay
(Posted by Bob Parks)
Many on the Western Shore of Maryland assume that the Eastern Shore is all chicken houses, but of course that’s not the case. The Upper Eastern Shore is, in fact, primarily grain farming. The Clean Water Act, however, does not regulate grain farming. Simply put, grain farming is the ultimate nonpoint source of nitrogen and phosphorus. You cannot identify (or regulate) the farmer whose field is sending nitrogen into the ground water that ends up in the rivers and the Bay.
Read MoreAgriculture: No. 1 Bay Polluter
(Posted by Gerald Winegrad.)
After 27 years of formal recovery efforts under the Bay Program, the Chesapeake Bay remains severely degraded and bay recovery is failing. About 90 percent of Bay waters remain impaired in clear violation of the Clean Water Act with collapsed fisheries, including oysters and shad. We have so poisoned our waters that reports abound of serious infections in humans who come in contact with Bay waters. Catfish in the South River have cancerous lesions and male bass from the Potomac are turning up with female egg sacs.
Read MoreSeptic Solution for a Cleaner Chesapeake Bay
Posted by Sen. Brian Frosh.
Some of the best minds—including the diverse group of scientists and policymakers who are signatories of the Chesapeake Bay Action Plan—have devoted decades of study to determine the causes of the Bay’s decline and remedies for its revival. (If you haven’t already, check out the no-nonsense 25-Step Action Plan tab at the top of this page.)
Part of the Plan is to rein in nitrogen that now seeps from septic systems into the Bay and our groundwater.
We’ll take a significant step toward limiting nitrogen if the General Assembly approves a proposal by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to ban future installations of septic systems in most new housing developments throughout the state.
Read More“Smart Growth” in Maryland–Not So Smart
(Posted by Gerald Winegrad) No matter how one scores it, the Chesapeake Bay is still in trouble. We’ve done the easy things. Now, if we want to restore the bay and save our natural heritage, we must do the most difficult tasks. Among these critical elements are the necessity to limit population growth and related…
Read MoreIs Immigration Killing the Chesapeake Bay?
Posted by Tom Horton.
Stand back so you don’t get splattered. I’m going to talk about immigration, and I’m going to get right down in the sewer.
Are immigrants really responsible for degrading the Chesapeake Bay? It’s easier and safer, by far, of course, to say it is too much nitrogen, too much phosphorus, too much sediment, too much clearing and paving and filling—all the usual suspects.
All this, of course, is caused by people, and during the last decade, most of those people were immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children.
Read More