Bay Daily

It's Not About Family Farms. It's About An Industry Trying To Protect Its Exemption From Pollution Law.

It's all about exemptions from pollution control laws.

I've come to this conclusion as I reflect on the nuclear attack that industrial-style farm group lobbyists have launched against important new federal legislation to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Clean Water Act, pending in Congress, would for the first time set in law binding pollution reduction goals for the Bay area states, and threaten federal penalties to states if they fail to meet these cleanup targets.

Big agricultural business groups have been frightening their members, falsely claiming that the bill will bankrupt family farmers.  But oddly, they have also been saying that they don’t know exactly what the bill will require for farmers.

A Chesapeake Nutcracker, With a Pinch of Crab

Swirling jellyfish, tumbling crabs, a committee of scientists -- and a biologist, stuck in the middle, head in her hands, wrestling with a nightmare about it all.  These are the features of a high-energy dance about the Chesapeake Bay that was performed Friday at Roland Park Elementary School in Baltimore.

The dance, called "A Scientist's Nightmare," was choreographed by my wife, Liz Pelton, who runs the dance club at our local school.  A friendly neighborhood biologist, Dr. Eric Schott, brought a bunch of live blue crabs to the dance studio, so the dancers could observe their movements and imitate them on the dance floor. As might be predicted, the kids love to pinch each other.

Petition Asks EPA To Seize Control Over Maryland Environmental Programs

The Waterkeepers Alliance this week filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanding stronger enforcement of water pollution laws in Maryland.

The legal action asks EPA to seize control of the water pollution permitting program at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), which the Waterkeepers charge is not inspecting or fining  polluters often enough.

The Waterkeepers deserve a lot of praise. Not only are they great boots on the ground (acting as citizen inspectors of waterways), but their legal action shines a helpful spotlight on the importance of having effective and well-funded state environmental agencies.

A Game of Chinese Chicken With Perdue. Will The Bay Lose?

If you try to make me clean up my pollution, I’m going move my business out of your state – maybe even out of the country. And I’ll take all my jobs with me.  So back off!

It’s a threat (usually vacant) that industries have made repeatedly over the decades to try to scare government officials away from imposing common-sense rules to protect our environment.

And now we’re hearing a similar tune from big poultry business interests and other representatives of industrial-style agriculture.  The Salisbury, Maryland, based Perdue Farms Inc., the third largest poultry company in the U.S., is fighting hard against the most important legislation in a generation for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

My Road Trip To A Strange and Wonderful City of Oysters

I took a road trip to a strange and wonderful landscape recently.  Thousands of soft-edged rectangles, all lined up, floating in green. It looked like the cells of a gigantic leaf, as seen under a microscope.  Inside the cells were thousands of simple organisms, each a tiny pollution-eating machine. 

It was an oyster farm in the Choptank River near Cambridge, Maryland. And it could be a vision of the Chesapeake's future.

Bad Acid

Talk about a bad acid trip.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced today that a pair of natural gas drilling companies had spilled 295 gallons of hydrochloric acid used in hydraulic fracturing, and the state is fining the companies $15,557 each.

Protecting An Oyster Reef Is Like Saving a Forest

After hearing Gov. Martin O’Malley’s plan last week for reviving the battered Chesapeake oyster, I thought I’d talk to one of the foremost scientific experts on the iconic species.

So I drove out to the University of Maryland, College Park, and spent this morning in the lab of Dr. Kennedy Paynter (photo at left), Director of the Marine and Estuarine Science graduate program.

Dr. Paynter, who has been studying oysters in the Bay for 20 years, praised O’Malley’s proposal to expand no-harvesting oyster sanctuaries. They are set to more than double, to 24 percent of the viable oyster bars in Maryland's portion of the Bay, up from 9 percent today.

Low Carb Diet For The Bay

What kind of diet should the Bay go on?  Atkins?  South Beach?  Low carb? How about low nitrogen and phosphorus. And add a spunky new wardrobe of underwater grass skirts and oyster necklaces, please.

The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) is planning public hearings next Tuesday (December 8) in Baltimore and Friday (December 11) on the Eastern Shore to discuss how strict a pollution “diet” the state and federal government should impose on the Bay. 

Sweeping New Protections for Chesapeake Oysters

The beleaguered Chesapeake oyster has a new protector: Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

During a pearl of a press conference on the Annapolis waterfront, O’Malley unveiled a sweeping new plan to more than double the no-harvesting oyster sanctuaries in the state’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The state is also beefing up efforts to encourage oyster farming.

Decision on Sprawl Highway Delayed for Third Time ... Threatened Species In Headlights

Three strikes and you’re out.  Please, umpire Martin O’Malley, finally call an out on the Sprawl Highway project in Southern Maryland. 

Yesterday (December 1) was supposed to be the deadline for the Maryland Department of the Environment  to make a decision on whether to grant Charles County a permit to destroy seven acres of wetlands to build the Cross County Connector.

But in response to a question about the decision, the state agency yesterday afternoon emailed Bay Daily a letter indicating that the state has granted a third extension of the deadline.  State officials want more time to look for threatened plant species (like Dwarf Iris, pictured at right) in the path of the roadway and examine information about the project that Charles County sent in just before the deadline.