News
Fracking 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 MoreWhat Does Agribusiness Have to Hide?
(Posted by Scott Edwards.)
When it comes to big agribusiness and access to public information, the Chesapeake region is sadly part of a disturbing pattern that exists all across the country. And signs are it might be getting even worse.
Polluting industries are generally subject to a good amount of public transparency and disclosure about their practices, what types of materials they handle, how they dispose of their wastes, etc. Unfortunately, agribusiness has always enjoyed a level of state-sponsored secrecy that serves to undermine this general right of public access. The poor excuses for concealment offered by state departments of agriculture and environment and industry range from national security to trade secrets or, more often than not, no excuse at all.
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 MoreFertilizer and Waste Are Killing the Chesapeake Bay
(Posted by Tom Fisher.)
For the last 400 years agriculture has been an important component of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Wheat and other grains in the 1700s and 1800s led to widespread clearing of forests, but poor management practices resulted in soil erosion that left a clear signal in the sediments that is still visible in cores retrieved from the bay. The introduction of European soil conservation methods in the 1800s helped stabilize a denuded landscape, and abundant oysters and submerged grasses cleared the waters.
Read MoreChesapeake Bay Literacy Meets Chesapeake Bay Action
(Posted by Bill Dennison.) The seven essential things that one needs to know to become literate about Chesapeake Bay have been described in a previous post on the Integration and Application Network blog as the following: Chesapeake Bay is a large, shallow and productive estuary formed by a drowned river valley. The extensive Chesapeake watershed…
Read MoreThe Bay Is Not Improving
(Posted by Tom Horton.)
In recent weeks there’s been a two-pronged push by agricultural interests to credit farmers with already doing most of what’s needed to reduce pollution; also to discredit federal computer modeling that says farmers need to do a lot more to meet the Chesapeake Bay restoration goals.
The extra credit comes courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service; the challenge to EPA’s modeling effort comes in a lawsuit filed by the American Farm Bureau.
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