By Gerald Winegrad 

Nutrients and sediment from Maryland’s 2 million acres of farms covering 32% of the state are the largest pollution source and the most unregulated. (Chesapeake Bay Program)

After spending 50 years fighting for the Chesapeake Bay, anger and sadness grip me at collapsing restoration efforts. Flesh-eating, life-threatening diseases pose threats to humans from bay water contact, major fisheries have collapsed or are collapsing and only marginal water quality improvements have occurred.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has allowed this to happen without any consequences — except a polluted Chesapeake. The states were given 15 years in 2010 to make major reductions in the main culprits of deterioration — nitrogen and phosphorus — but just 42% of required nitrogen and 64% of phosphorus will be achieved by 2025 under current scenarios.

The EPA joined recalcitrant states in burying restoration by postponing compliance with the result that necessary nutrient reductions likely will not be achieved for many decades.

This is the third time a cleanup deadline has been missed without sanctions as Clean Water Act violations by the states are ignored by the EPA and no new regulatory and financial initiatives are required.

At the root of this failure is agricultural pollution. We have allowed agribusiness to lather 25% of the bay watershed with millions of tons of fertilizers and animal excrement from 83,000 farms. Agriculture has become the largest and least-regulated source of bay pollutants: 50% of nitrogen; 45% of phosphorus; and 60% of bay choking sediment.

As a young, rookie member of the House of Delegates, I successfully pressed for controls on polluting stormwater runoff, the major source of pollutants from my urbanized district centered in Annapolis.

This resulted in the landmark 1982 Stormwater Management Law that regulates polluted runoff from new development and is still a touchstone of Maryland environmental law. During this effort, I learned that farm pollution was a much bigger problem bay wide.

This occurred before the Bay Program began. I knew there was little hope for enacting a law requiring farms to meet strict nutrient and sediment reductions. Instead, I worked to gain passage of the 1982 Maryland Agricultural Water Quality Cost-Share Program.

This voluntary program has paid farmers $200 million for as much as 100% of the cost of installing conservation measures, known as best management practices (BMPs), to prevent soil erosion, reduce nutrients and safeguard water quality.

Coupled with federal grants under the U.S. Agriculture Department, more than $5 billion has flowed to bay watershed farmers. These voluntary carrots have not come close to meeting the mandated nutrient reductions and never will.

It is abundantly clear that without mandatory requirements (sticks) and shifts in agricultural policy the bay will never be better than it is now. My biggest failure in the legislature was in not gaining sensible requirements to control farm pollutants.

Here is a recipe to assure our Chesapeake is finally restored:

1. Regulate raw animal manure land disposal the same as treated wastewater biosolids:About 250,000 tons of raw chicken excrement were land applied in Maryland in 2022, mostly on Eastern Shore lands. This is equivalent to the weight of 5,000 Boeing 737s. The Eastern Shore comprises 7% of the bay watershed but receives twice as much nitrogen and phosphorus per area as the rest of the watershed.

Raw animal manure applied to land must be subject to the same requirements in effect since 1985 for land application of advanced wastewater treated human biosolids.

These common sense measures include working manure into the soil the same day as applied or within 24 hours and establishing at least 100-foot setbacks from all waterways. Also, biofilters on poultry house exhaust fans should be required to reduce ammonia emissions and hence nitrogen.

1. Enforce/enhance current manure regulations: A 2021 Environmental Integrity Project report Blind Eye to Big Chickendocuments a near complete abdication by Maryland agencies of their responsibilities to enforce critical pollution control regulations to rein in massive poultry industry pollution. This must be changed and regulations should be tightened as in No. 1.
2. Require forested buffers around streams: Buffers of at least 100 feet can control 90% of the nitrogen and sediment leaving a farm field, making them one of the best management tools we can use.
3. Require and enforce advanced nutrient management plans on all farms exceeding 100 acres:Such plans should be developed by farm experts and all farms inspected periodically for compliance by independent assessors. All agricultural grants should require advanced NMPs.
4. Monitor effectiveness of BMPs: While billions of taxpayer dollars flow to farmers to implement BMPs, there are no inspections by independent evaluators of their proper implementation or effectiveness. This is a glaring hole in bay restoration acknowledged by agricultural experts.
5. Stop funding farmers to keep land in polluting operations:Under the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation, farmers have been paid more than a billion dollars to prevent development of their farms. The average payment has been $400,000 a farm.Nutrients and sediment from Maryland’s 2 million acres of farms covering 32% of the state are the largest pollution source and the most unregulated. (Chesapeake Bay Program)

These farms might be highly polluting operations. Even Program Open Space funds are taken from park acquisition to preserve farms. The program should be revamped to assure clean farming and to pay farmers only to protect and preserve forest and wetlands on their properties and to plant 150 foot forested stream buffers.

1. Use state and federal funding to buy corn and soybean cropland and concentrated animal farmland, converting it back to forest and wetlands: The top bay gurus know that doing this will yield tremendous water quality benefits as most all farmland once was forest or wetlands. Scientists tasked with compiling Maryland and Pennsylvania’s required EPA 2025 cleanup plans proposed taking agricultural production land out of production and reforesting it, especially buffers.

The Maryland expert once told my bay course graduate students that the way to assure restoring the bay involved protecting forests and instead converting farmland to other uses.

1. End the ethanol mandate:This insanely stupid boondoggle forces us to burn ethanol for 15% of gasoline while using 45% of all corn grown. This results in increasing global warming gases by 24% and pouring more nitrogen into the bay while increasing food prices.

Forbes calls this 15 billion gallon mandate entirely political pandering to agribusiness and calls for an end to false claims that ethanol is cheaper than gasoline.

1. Gain environmental community support:Led by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the environmental community has been missing in action in this fray choosing instead to continue throwing more money at farmers.

This is despite agricultural specialist PhDs calling the assumption false that more money equals progress and insisting that relying on voluntary BMP implementation has not and will not succeed. CBF has reaped at least $21 million in federal grants to make nice with farmers as it has gone soft on farm pollution.

Changing the paradigm on these agricultural policies is our last and best hope to turn around the decline of the Chesapeake Bay as global warming adds to the difficulty.

I fully realize that in daring to promote these changes, I will be seen as heretical by agribusiness and even some so-called environmentalists. But the U.S. Constitution protects me from being burned at the stake.

This may be the last Hail Mary pass for the Chesapeake I cherish and want to leave it better for my grandchildren.

Gerald Winegrad represented the greater Annapolis area as a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate for 16 years. Contact him at gwwabc@comcast.net.