EPA
The Pollution Diet and Environmental Arbitrage
(Posted by Bob Gallagher.)
After decades of dissembling and broken promises, the President’s Executive Order 13508 and the implementing “pollution diet” proposed by the EPA represent the best chance we have had in a generation to actually start cleaning up the bay. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that corporate polluters have ramped up their opposition to the pollution diet to unprecedented levels to include massive spending on media advertising, lobbying, campaign contributions, litigation and scientific dirty tricks.
Read MoreFracking in Maryland: Proceed with Caution
(Posted by Sen. Brian Frosh.)
You may have heard reports that oil and gas companies have leased about 90,000 acres of land in Maryland for drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that undergirds the Appalachians from Virginia to Southern New York and is thought to contain trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.
Natural gas offers tremendous opportunity. It is the cleanest burning fossil fuel and can heat homes, run utilities, power vehicles, and help free the nation from foreign oil. It also promises significant economic benefits for western Maryland, as it rests under parts of Garrett, Allegany and Washington counties.
Read MoreCongressman Goodlatte and You
(Posted by Doug Siglin.)
Perhaps you read in the papers that the Goodlatte amendment to withhold funds from implementation of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL (Total Daily Maximum Load) is dead for the moment. But don’t bother to celebrate: It or something similar will be offered again not long after the spring rains.
Read MoreGoodlatte Amendment Is A Travesty for the Bay
(Posted by Gerald Winegrad.)
In the anti-regulatory fervor prevailing in the House of Representatives, Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) succeeded in gaining the adoption of an amendment that would prevent the EPA from implementing the long-awaited, court-ordered Chesapeake Bay restoration plan known as the Chesapeake TMDL (total maximum daily load). The amendment was attached to the continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating. It was adopted on a vote of 239-185 on February 19, 2011, mostly along party lines and would block funding for overseeing the pollution diet that caps Bay-killing nutrients and sediment. Worse yet, all federal funding for the states to implement their pollution reduction plans through watershed implementation plans also would be blocked.
This rider was one of dozens of anti-environmental riders attached to the must-pass resolution to keep the government open. The pollution diet under the TMDL was necessitated by the Bay states repeated failures to meet agreed upon reductions for nutrient and sediment pollutants so as to clean-up the 90 percent of the Bay that is so polluted that it violates Clean Water Act standards. The Goodlatte amendment could actually block more than $300 million in federal funding to curb agricultural, sewerage, and urban runoff pollutants. The language provides:
Read MoreIndustrial Agriculture Is Killing the Bay
(Posted by Tommy Landers.)
Agriculture is not a monolith. It’s important to make a distinction between farmers who work the land and agribusiness interests who work the political system.
Read MoreChesapeake Bay: An Open Toilet
(Posted by Scott Edwards.)
The old grey mare just ain’t what she used to be. And for that matter, neither are those chickens. Or the cows. And you just wouldn’t recognize the pigs. Even if you could see them. But you can’t. Because they spend their entire, short life in darkened, crowded, filthy sheds. Nope, farms just aren’t what they used to be. In fact, they aren’t really even farms anymore. They’re factories. Every bit as much a factory as a papermill. Or a chemical processing plant. Put away your pastoral picture book – there’s nothing quaint or country about them.
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