Agriculture is destroying the Chesapeake Bay

Between 1950 and 1982, the amount of nitrogen from manure and fertilizer applied to bay crop land nearly doubled, reaching 960 million pounds annually, as farmland decreased by nearly half. Alarmingly, the average annual rate of nutrient reductions from bay region farmland has actually decreased since 2009.

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Report finds Maryland is lax in regulating poultry industry pollution

By Gerald Winegrad A new report, “Blind Eye to Big Chicken,” documents a near complete abdication by Maryland agencies of their responsibilities to enforce critical pollution control regulations to rein in massive poultry industry pollution. The report by the watchdog group Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) details how chicken growers continue to violate state laws with…

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Courts start to hold Big Chicken accountable, when will Maryland?

  By Gerald Winegrad: To paraphrase Shakespeare: Something is rotten in the state of Maryland — and all over the Delmarva Peninsula. And it is so rotten that it is contaminating the air people breathe, the water they drink, and the region’s creeks and the bay. The rot comes from major corporations’ industrialization of chicken…

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The Hudson/Perdue Chicken Waste Case — What We’ve Already Learned

A decision is expected soon in the highly publicized federal lawsuit Waterkeepers Alliance, Inc., vs. Alan and Kristen Hudson Farm and Perdue Farms, Inc. The outcome is anyone’s guess, but already testimony from the trial has made clear that Maryland’s effort to oversee and enforce nutrient management plans needs more muscle.

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Senior Scientists And Policmakers For The Bay Join With Other Conservation Groups In Urging Better Regulation Of Tons Of Raw Animal Manure.

After eight months of negotiations and efforts to strengthen the regulations as we have advocated in our Bay Action Plan, new regulations were proposed and published in the Maryland Register on June 29. These regs are still much too weak and fall well short of the Senior Scientists and Policymakers for the Bay science-based positions. Representatives of our group had discussed our positions in detail with the Bay Cabinet at a meeting last September. We have continued to advocate these common sense positions and members of our group sent detailed letter to the Governor and published an Op-ed in the Baltimore Sun detailing the need for better management of animal manure and other nutrients.

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