Agriculture
Maryland’s Outsized Manure Problem
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)
Today, standing in front of the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, to represent the enormous amount of chicken litter produced each year in Maryland (a pile twice as high as the stadium!), Environment Maryland released a new report detailing the problems with Maryland’s current manure regulations and, in particular, with too much phosphorus in our soil and our waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay.
Read MoreSenior Scientists & Policymakers Continue Press for Revised Nutrient Management Regulations
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is generally viewed as a friend of the environment. He has championed initiatives on growth, wastewater treatment, renewable energy, climate change, funding for environmental programs and other issues. He earned a grade of B+ from the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. But, many believe that the Administration has done too little to address Chesapeake Bay pollution from the agriculture sector, which accounts for nearly half of the pollution entering the bay.
A revision of rules regulating the spreading of manure on farmland is long overdue. Here is a recent letter from the Executive Committee of the Senior Scientists and Policymakers for the Bay urging the Governor to issue rules that treat manure in much the same way as sewage sludge.
Read MoreGilchrest: Jobs & Clean Water for Rural Maryland
(Posted by Dawn Stoltzfus.)
Check out this great op-ed piece that ran in Sunday’s Easton Star Democrat, authored by former Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, a member of the Senior Bay Scientists & Policymaker’s Executive Council. As Maryland Senator Pipkin’s “war on rural Maryland” naysayers gather on Lawyer’s Mall in Annapolis this morning, to decry policies that benefit both urban and rural areas, these words of common sense couldn’t be more timely.
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Jobs and clean water for rural Maryland
By WAYNE T. GILCHREST
Peaceful. That’s the word that came to mind on this December afternoon as I looked across Kent County’s rolling fields. Many of them glowed with the soft, new-green growth of recently planted wheat, barley and rye.
Then, the decidedly unpeaceful rhetoric of some of my representatives to the General Assembly came to mind. They say there’s a war on rural Maryland. If this is a land at war, it is the most enlightened conflict I’ve ever witnessed. We are being bombed with efforts to create jobs, build healthier streams and rivers, and ultimately to improve our fisheries.
Read MoreKeeping CAFOs Undercover: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell & Keep Polluting
(Posted by Scott Edwards.)
Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. In the four decades since this seminal water protection legislation was passed, there has been tremendous headway in controlling many of the worst sources of industrial toxics in our nation’s waterways, particularly from those end-of-the-pipe “point sources.” Unfortunately, though, there’s one industrial point source that continues to evade any meaningful CWA regulation — Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. Now, after many years of failing to implement effective CWA provisions to clean up this highly polluting industry, the Environmental Protection Agency is engaging in an information gathering process to consider how best to regulate the country’s tens of thousands of industrial animal farms. Sadly, all indications are that EPA is still not taking its mission seriously when it comes to CAFOs.
Foundation Among Critics of O’Malley’s Law Clinic Interference
(Posted by Jeanne McCann.)
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s attempt to get the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic to drop its water pollution case against Hudson Farm has drawn criticism from a long list of environmental, legal and news organizations. Joining the list is a somewhat unexpected institution – the Town Creek Foundation.
Foundations don’t regularly take public stands on policy, but in this case Town Creek has sent a letter to Dean Phoebe Haddon of the University of Maryland Law School expressing thanks for the Dean’s strong response to the governor and the foundation’s continued support for the law clinic’s work.
Read MoreO’Malley Piles On
(Posted by Tom Horton.)
Governor Martin O’Malley presumably thinks he’s helping Maryland poultry growers and processors by pressuring the University of Maryland’s environmental law clinic to drop out of a lawsuit aimed at stopping chicken farms from polluting.
But the pollution is real, it’s substantial and it’s not going to get better until the governor and agricultural interests acknowledge we have a problem with too much poultry manure.
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