Season's Greetings - Ask Santa for More Fleece!

Have you missed The Progger?  My apologies, I did indeed fall off the grid this past fall, but hopefully I'll be back on a more regular basis in 2011.

A few things to end out 2010.....first, a greeting card from all of us at Assateague Coastal Trust:

Next - has it been cold enough for you this December?   Well, here are some interesting blog postings from others that I think are worthy of re-posting for your reading pleasure.   Next time you're putting up with someone who pooh-poohs 'global warming' or 'climate change' just pass these along.

FROM MIKE TIDWELL, OF CHESAPEAKE CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK:
All,
See below some helpful blog posts explaining the recent cold weather in North America and Europe in the context of global warming. Turns out, the vanishing Arctic ice is creating a phenomenon similar to a refrigerator door being left open. The cold air is filling up the whole room but the refrigerator itself is being emptied of its vital coldness. The process is utterly unsustainable and leading to disruption and loss for the whole house.
Mike Tidwell
Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network
------------------------------------------------

From Eric Haxthausen of the Nature Conservancy:
The cold weather we have been experiencing on the East Coast is likely to sow further confusion in the minds of some Americans about whether the Earth is truly warming. I put together the blog post below to highlight some of the recent science about this, and thought it may be of interest. -Eric

http://change.nature.org/2010/12/15/with-all-this-global-warming-why-is-it-so-cold/

Well, this is why we now use the term climate  change
http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/


Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground has a good post on what is happening with our weather that is making it so cold
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1710&tstamp=&page=1

And  there is a good graphic at NOAA website that explains it.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/index_impacts.html


The explanation that is gaining currency among climate scientists is that low levels of Arctic sea ice during the summer are causing more heat to be absorbed in the Arctic during the fall, and changing atmospheric circulation patterns, driving cold Arctic air into Europe and the Eastern United States and funneling warm air up into the Arctic regions.

*This warm Arctic-cold continents pattern is likened to leaving the refrigerator door open. The room gets colder but the fridge warms up. *

This new pattern is very different from the one we are accustomed to. Case in point: the atmospheric circulation around the North pole actually reversed for a period of time last winter.
It also has the unfortunate byproduct that it generates a feedback loop that will tend to speed up warming, as it reinforces an atmospheric circulation that drives more warm air into the Arctic, melts more ice, allows darker land and water to absorb more sunlight, further warms the atmosphere in the Arctic, and thereby reinforces the new atmospheric circulation pattern.

So last night we had the unusual effect that the capital of Florida (Tallahassee) was colder (21° F this morning) than the capital of Greenland (with a low of 34° in the capital city Nuuk) or Iceland (43° in Reykjavik).

And as the globe continues to warm, we in DC and our counterparts in London might just need to get used to frigid winters.


*Eric Haxthausen is director of U.S. Climate Policy for The Nature Conservancy.*

MRS. CLEAN GETS RID OF DIRT AND CRIME

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS CONTACT: COASTKEEPER, BERLIN MD

ASSATEAGUE COASTKEEPER LAUNCHES AGGRESSIVE BAY CLEAN UP EFFORT

Ocean City, Maryland (EPI)- Coastkeeper Kathy Phillips, responding to criticism that she should, "stop suing people and just clean up the water," has announced an aggressive new campaign of water cleanup.


Noting the continued problems of agricultural, residential and industrial runoff, Phillips commented that, "It really is time someone rolled up their sleeves and cleaned up this filthy, filthy mess." Initially the cleanup will begin with the coastal bays surrounding Assateague Island, "They're the most accessible, I can wade right out and scrub away."

The cleanup campaign is not without its problems, however, with Phillips noting that, "This whole tide thing has me absolutely flummoxed. I no sooner scrub a section of the bay than it drifts off one way or the other and I can't really tell where I left off."

No matter, Phillips is known for her determination, adding, "If I can be accused of singlehandedly destroying the agriculture industry on the Eastern shore, this job should be a cakewalk."

#####

(Photos courtesy of Environmental Press International)

Jaws

The Natural Resources Defense Council released their 2010 "Testing The Waters" swimming beach water quality report yesterday, July 28, and that got me thinking about our Coastal Bays. NRDC's 'Testing the Waters' annual report is based on water quality data reported by municipalities and counties throughout the country, data that is required to be reported by the EPA for any entity that receives federal funding through the 'Clean Beaches Act' to be used for water quality monitoring.
Ocean City, which received a four star rating (out of a possible 5 stars) from the NRDC has a unique situation regarding its swimming beaches and the quality of the water its visitors swim in.

In California, New York, and indeed many Maryland swimming areas, stormwater runoff drains to pipes that empty into the same water body people are swimming in. After a rainfall, a lot of those swimming areas are closed because of high bacteria levels.

Ocean City, on the other hand, dumps all of its stormwater runoff straight into the bays, so its oceanfront beaches remain protected.

No wonder, year after year, Ocean City gets to claim it has the cleanest beaches in Maryland. Yet thousands of visitors to Ocean City and Worcester County also swim, fish and recreate in the water of the bays and creeks behind Ocean City, without knowing what the quality of the water is from week to week.


Remember the movie "Jaws?" The movie was set in Amity - A town so dependent on tourism the town fathers decided it was ok to let the big white shark pluck a few juicy tourists off their inflatable mats from time to time rather than announce the problem and shut the beach down.

So how would you feel if you knew the beach towns all over the country were doing the same thing? OK, so it's not sharks and the danger may be more related to skin rashes and ear infections, but the fact still remains that _______________(insert the name of your local beach here) doesn't want anyone to know that the water might contain any type of hazard.

When I announced the Assateague Coastkeeper's "Swimmable Bays" program for the summer of 2010 you would have thought I was standing on the bridge screaming "Sharks!" at every passing car. No one actually wanted to know just how swimmable the waters of our Coastal Bays are. In fact, one business owner actually said, "Don't test the water near me, you'll put me out of business."

Worcester County regularly monitors the swimming pier at Public Landing for bacteria levels. Bacteria levels in 2006 exceeded EPA swimming beach standards so many times, Worcester County made the Natural Resources Defense Council's "Testing the Waters" list of worst swimming areas in the State of Maryland.

The county had known there was a problem in the water at Public Landing for years. Besides a small community of homes on aging septic systems with non-existent nutrient reduction technology, the worst offender seemed to be the large paved parking lot, that attracted seagulls and dogs, drained all rainwater runoff directly into Chincoteague Bay right next to the pier.

The county had been sitting on plans (and funding) to retrofit the parking lot storm drains with filters and install a vegetative buffer between the lot and the bay, but had relegated the work to the bottom of the to-do list. With pressure from the Coastkeeper and the funder after the release of the NRDC 2007 report the work was finally completed in 2008 and current testing by the county shows a marked reduction in unsafe bacteria levels in 2009.

State regulations only require Worcester County to monitor bacteria levels at 'public swimming beaches' and in the entire Coastal Bays watershed, only the pier at Public Landing is considered a 'public swimming beach.' In 2009 the County also began to monitor the water in Sinepuxent Bay adjacent to The Castaways Campground. Ocean City monitors the ocean swimming waters along their shoreline, and the State Park and National Park Service monitors their oceanfront shorelines.

Yet every summer, thousands of people swim or recreate in the waters of Herring Creek, Turville Creek, the St. Martin River, and Isle of Wight, Assawoman and Sinepuxent Bays. Kids are towed on floats, people jet ski or waterski, private campgrounds provide private swimming beaches in these waterways. Not exactly a 'public swimming beach', but these ARE our local water holes, after all.

Interestingly, all of Ocean City's stormwater runoff from streets, parking lots, roof-tops, storage lots drains straight into Isle of Wight and Assawoman Bays. None of this chemical/oil/bacteria/trash laden soup flows into the ocean waters off OC's pristine beaches. Lucky for Ocean City! If their stormwater drained to the ocean side, like so many other coastal towns, mandatory testing would cause swimming beach closures after heavy rainfalls.

Oddly, I don't actually expect to find the bay waters to be in bad shape, my expectation is that, except for a few places where there are problems related to things like lawn runoff or street runoff after storms, the bays will test out pretty well.

But who will know unless someone does this monitoring? My project has been funded by the Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore and other private funders. I've taken EPA and State courses on water sampling protocols. The actual analysis will be done at a lab, and I had hoped to partner with Salisbury University's lab for that part of the project.

However, even after a successful presentation of my project to the lab's directors and a plan ready to execute I found myself back to square one after the Directors of the SU lab informed ACT they would not be able to do the project with us. (** see my added comment, below.) 

And while I was assured it had nothing to do with the fact the lab is also partially funded and used by MDE for a source tracking project, it did make me realize this might have put them in an awkward position since my main objective over the last two years has been to attempt to get MDE to actually do the job they are charged with. Waterkeepers Chesapeake and Coastkeeper have been taking MDE to task for lax enforcement of state discharge permits and our legal challenge against MDE's poor administration of construction site stormwater management permits was settled with MDE improving many aspects of that program.

My "Swimmable Bays" project may have a delayed start this summer, and it may take on a different scope, but it will happen thanks to additional private funding to help pay for lab analysis of the samples.

Of course I'll be making this information public by posting to the Assateague Coastkeeper's website. Look for the launch of the Coastkeepers' 'Swimmable Bays' pages at www.assateaguecoastkeeper.org soon!

Just expect a typical response from business and government, "Pay no attention to that mangled corpse. It was just a boating accident!"

Pancake Syrup and BP

This morning Jeff came back from surfing with a hunger for pancakes, so I was forced into domestic duties at the kitchen counter which was actually a nice respite from my preparations for the annual Waterkeeper conference this coming week.

He walked in as I was keeping pancakes warm in the oven while cooking more on the stove top. "You're warming up a pitcher of pancake syrup in a hot oven without a saucer under it? What? Do you work for BP??," my husband said to me in a pretty irritated voice.

He was extremely upset that I had obviously given no thought as to what would happen if all the syrup spilled in the hot oven.

And I have to admit, he's right. What a mess that would be. It would be impossible to clean it up. I'd have a ruined oven on my hands, and there's little room in our budget to replace the appliance, so my only option would leave me with many, many hours to clean the oven by hand, scrubbing, dismantling, and in the end have to leave much of the syrup in there, to eventually burn away (while smoking up the house and affecting taste of food cooked in the oven.)

And so our breakfast conversation was dominated by the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

I deal with the consequences of unenforced environmental laws and lack of government oversight on a daily basis. So what has happened in the Gulf does not surprise me in the least. It was only a matter of time.

But I'm still plenty angered. At least now the rest of the country is getting a quick education into how those who are supposed to protect us spend most of their time looking for ways to circumvent environmental assessment procedures, dream up waiver schemes to weaken environmental regulations, and oh, so easily give in to industry lobbyists.

They do all this with absolutely no 'what if' contingency plans in place. In this country, heck even here in Maryland and my own local county, action is ONLY taken when there is a crisis. Those of us in the community who ask our officials to be pro-active are usually scoffed at with attitudes like "why scare the public?....we'll deal with it when it becomes necessary…we don't have the resources to do this."

What is frustrating is that whenever someone suggests that industry should be watched or regulated, there is always some fool "standing up" for the business community. I think that those of us who call for regulation understand better than anyone else that the bottom line drives business decisions. Regulation is the only thing that will keep business from feeding our pets poisoned food, our children poisoned baby formula, giving our children toys painted with lead based paint, or feeding us food tainted with e-coli, salmonella, or mad cow disease.

The BP crisis is example of why more than ever, we can clearly see that shortchanging environmental protection in the name of free markets, deficit reduction or economic growth will inevitably backfire with disastrous consequences for everyone.

Some statistics about the environmental infrastructure of the State of Louisiana (from the NWF):

• 40% of US oysters
• 50% US shrimp
• 35% US blue claw crabs
• 40% of US wetlands.

The economic impact of the BP oil spill on the US economy based on these numbers alone is staggering. And note that I haven't even mentioned the impact on tourism which provides thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to those who live on the gulf coast.

 And why could we lose all this? We could lose it because some lobbyist convinced a legislator to weaken a regulation, or a regulatory authority made a decision to relax their responsibilities, all for the cause of improving the "bottom line."


We are to blame as much as BP - we need oil for our cars and to power our insatiable energy needs.  That is why we must be more vocal and demand of our government (state and federal) more sustainable options, more oversight for industries that can pollute on this level, and then we must elect people who have the political will and the stomach to do this.


Folks, you've got to think about the consequences of every action before you take it - and if the consequences are as bad as pancake syrup spilled in a hot oven you probably shouldn't do it.

(AP Photo/
Charlie Riedel)

The Governor's Love Affair With Big Chicken and Big Development

Governor Martin O'Malley claims he's all about helping to protect and improve the Chesapeake Bay.  He wrote, in The Daily Times, on April 3, 2010:

"We cannot afford to exchange our family-owned farms in Maryland for massive housing development projects. It wouldn't be good for the Chesapeake Bay or for our economy. It would be damaging to our agricultural community and to our state's future."
But let’s see – its ok to

• exchange our family farms for huge factory CAFO’s instead

• put the family farm under contract with corporations like integrator Perdue, causing the family to mortgage the family farm to the hilt in order to meet the chicken house specifications of the integrator's contract

• make the family farmer solely responsible for managing the waste that comes from the corporation’s product (a little trick that saves companies like Perdue millions of dollars each year, and let's them claim to be such generous souls they'll give this priceless commodity to the farmer for free so he can use it as a free fertilizer- which actually works up to the point that too much of it is produced and too much of it goes on our farmlands to wash into our waterways.)

• continue subsidy programs that benefit the corporate integrator and leave the small, independent farmer out of the money stream

• put roadblocks in the way of organic farming, farm co-ops, and local small scale processing plants

And while telling us how farming is better than development on the Eastern Shore, our Governor did NOTHING to prevent legislatve Emergency Regulations this session from rolling back Bay protections in the 2007 Stormwater Management Act by allowing nearly 1500 new developments to be built in Maryland in the next 3 years that will be grandfathered in under the old stormwater regulations, which are FAR LESS protective of the Chesapeake Bay.

so which is it, Gov?

Game of Chicken

I'm probably not going to write my own comments about Perdue's efforts in Annapolis the past few weeks to influence State Legislators on matters related to private citizens and small non-profit organizations using the U of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic to help further their efforts to protect Maryland's waterways from pollution, but I think I will post links to various editorials and blogs so my readers can be more aware of what is going on.

I do have to make one point, however.    My lawsuit against Perdue and it's CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) located near Berlin, MD is an action taken to stop a point source pollution discharge to the Pocomoke River from a single source.  

The river can not speak for itself.   Coastkeeper is acting as the River's 'proxy' to protect it and stand up to the polluters who are threatening its well-being.

All this other stuff is just smoke and mirrors to divert attention away from the real problem.

Center For Progressive Reform blog - March 31, 2010

Baltimore Sun Article - March 27

Baltimore Sun Editorial - March 2010

National Law Journal -

 I may come back from time to time to add other links related to Maryland's lawmakers attempt to influence judicial matters outside a court of law.

A Little Arsenic With Your Glass of Water?

I've been thinking lately that perhaps a 3month session of the Maryland General Assembly is not the way to govern this state?   In the time frame of mere weeks, over a thousand attempts to create new law are submitted by our lawmakers and more than a few (LOL) never make it to a vote.

A great number of the ones that do make it to a vote, come to the floor of the General Assembly with little public input.  Don't get me wrong, they do come to the floor after A LOT of input from lobbyists, PACs, special interest groups (for all sides) and from time to time an administrative push from the big guy living just off State House Circle.

But each time I sit through a committee hearing, waiting my turn to speak either as a guest on a panel, or as a concerned individual, I marvel at how difficult it must be for a legislator to make an informed decision about anything that comes through the session.

Take HB953, introduced this year by Delegate Tom Hucker to ban the use of arsenic in poultry feed.  Seems like a no-brainer doesn't it?  Why allow a known carcinogen, a toxic poison, to be part of our food chain?  Thank you Delegate Hucker, for making a valiant attempt at a sane piece of legislation.

Then you listen to the heated debate between the State Attorney General and the Poultry Industry.  One says it's perfectly safe, the other says its a poison going into our water and onto our farmlands.

Guess which side won?

In case you don't know -  the Poultry Industry has been adding arsenic to poultry feed for years, as a fast way to increase the weight of a bird and to also combat the diarrhea type illness the bird will most likely contract from spending its short 5.5 week life walking around on top of and eating its own poop while squeezed into a 30,000 square foot house with 29,999 other birds.

One woman, during a hearing, actually said it would be cruel to not feed them the arsenic - we don't want these poor little birds to suffer with explosive diarrhea while we're cramming them into dusty, ammonia ridden houses that are artificially lit 24/7 so we can make them grow to 5.5. lbs in less than half the time it would take them to get there naturally.  Yeah, that would be cruel.

Some of our State Delegates and Senators were quick to point out that the arsenic being fed to these chickens is non-toxic and perfectly safe.  Why, one gentleman exclaimed, "arsenic is listed in the Periodic Table of Elements" and his face positively glowed from his apparent extensive knowledge of chemistry (or coaching from poultry insiders just before the hearing.)

Um, let's see - we have Uranium, Cobalt-60, Thorium, Chromium, Cadmium, and Lead just to name a few in the Periodic Table of Elements.  Want these little gems in your diet?

Hey!  Let's all sing along with Tom Lehrer, ok?  here you go- click here for his 'Elements Song' !

Point of fact is, while arsenic going in one end is non-toxic, when it comes out the other end it has converted to a toxic form of arsenic.  So the arsenic that stays in the chicken is toxic (like to fry those little chicken livers up in a pan? Heavy amounts stored there!)  The majority of the arsenic that went in comes out in the poop as a toxic form of the heavy metal.  (not to be confused with Slayer.)

And what happens to the two billion tons of chicken poop produced in Maryland each year?  Most of it goes onto farm land, to grow more corn and soybeans that will be made into more arsenic laced chicken feed.  Problem is, the farm land soils on the Eastern Shore are very high in phosphorus and arsenic does not bond with phosphorus.

So all that toxic arsenic on our farmlands now washes into nearby ditches and streams with the rain, or passes through the soils and into our groundwater.

So back to that 'debate' between our Attorney General and the Poultry Industry folks.   AG Doug Gansler would like to build incinerators to burn chicken litter (poop + shavings) to create electricty.  A plausible solution to the excess manure problem.  But you can't burn arsenic laden poop, because now you're going to shift all that heavy metal (not Slayer) into the atmosphere.   And Lord knows, we already have enough problems with all the ammonia emmissions coming out of those chicken houses.

So if Perdue Farms says they don't use arsenic in their chicken feed (and they are still able to grow fat birds in a short time frame,) and the State wants to help create more jobs in the construction of and operation of these power producing incinerators, and chicken growers might actually one day be able to create their own inexpensive source of electricity to power their chicken houses from small scale power plants on the farm, why you ask did our state lawmakers put one more roadblock in the way of dealing with Maryland's #1 agricultural pollutant - chicken shit.

Maybe they just needed a little more time to get educated on the topic, instead of eating lunch with the Poultry Industry while allowing the public only a few seconds to speak at a hearing in Annapolis.

Bet those chicken nuggets at lunch were tasty little morsels.......pass the arsenic, please.

No One!

Question: What would get a former Republican Congressman to join a former Democratic Governor of Maryland, a former Dem. U.S. Senator and a former Dem. MD State Senator all in the same room together at the Maryland State House today?


Answer? A Dirty Water Bill in the Maryland legislature that rolls back all the good work these men accomplished for clean, healthy, safe waterways in Maryland.

Thirty + years of work on the part of these lawmakers gave Maryland one of the strongest clean water stormwater laws in the country, the 2007 Maryland Stormwater Management Act. This is a law that addressed the problem of rainwater rushing off of developed land, carrying sediment, pollutants, toxins, bacteria and heavy metals into the Chesapeake Bay, the Coastal Bays and other waters of Maryland. It is a law that requires developers to design sites to retain and reuse rainwater on site.

And now the Maryland Legislature is attempting to weaken, destroy, and generally screw around with the original intent of this law, to the point that the law will have no teeth and developers will be able to continue to build, or redevelop, with all the old stormwater guidelines the SWM Act did away with - the conventional "Pave It, Pond It, Pipe It" method of stormwater control which had failed to prevent the death of local streams and waterways in Maryland.

Does anyone remember the reports that said the Chesapeake Bay is in trouble? All you have to do is google the words 'Chesapeake Bay is in trouble'. I got 5,590,000 hits! I'm sure the watermen know about this, as well as the recreational fishermen, the boaters, the swimmers, and all those who live along the Bay and its tributaries, but somehow members of the Maryland legislature who are sponsoring (and supporting) HB1125 have managed to miss it.

Or is it that they know all about it? Could it be that they just don't care? I doubt it, apathy is not enough to make someone write or sponsor a piece of legislation. Something or someone has to want that legislation badly enough to pressure the legislators to create it. And the legislators, well they just have to be fearful or weak enough to respond to that pressure, even to the point of going against the best interests of their constituents (the watermen, fishermen, etc. I mentioned above).

Those former lawmakers I mentioned above? They came to Annapolis today, March 24, 2010, to speak out. In an effort to make their concerns known to our current lawmakers, they signed up to speak during a hearing on bad amendments being added to the bad Dirty Water Bill HB1125 in the House Environmental Matters Committee. Committee Chairwoman, Del. Maggie McIntosh denied their request. She denied a former Governor of Maryland just 60 seconds to speak his thoughts. I think I need to say this again, she-denied-a-former-GOVERNOR-60 seconds to speak.

Another question: How is it in the best interest of anybody in the state of Maryland to increase the level of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay -who could possibly benefit from that?

Answer: No One.

Worcester Likes To Do It In The Dark

Remember last summer when ACT filed a complaint with the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board because Worcester County was taking important votes behind closed doors?



The Open Meetings Compliance Board agreed with ACT and found the county was in violation of Maryland Open Meetings policy.
Now Worcester County is about to create its own law that will allow the Commissioners to take important votes behind closed doors - in direct defiance of the Open Meetings Compliance Board's decision, they have created a bill that will allow the Commissioners to vote behind closed doors on matters concerning how our government operates.

And most other counties in this state consider these types of votes public matters, open to public comment. Once again, Worcester County wants to operate out of the light of public review.


To make matters worse, this 'public hearing' is going to be held at 11am on a weekday - Tuesday, March 16.  And equally wrong is the fact that this public hearing will not be audio taped, or video taped, for public review later.

Our County Commissioners need to hear from you - tell them holding PUBLIC Hearings at a time when most of the PUBLIC is not able to attend because we all work for a living is irresponsibility at it's highest.

Tell them if they insist on holding public hearings at 11am in the morning on a week day, then the citizens of Worcester County demand accountability with recorded proceedings made available to the public.


Please try to attend this hearing on Tuesday, March 16 at 11am in Snow Hill in the Commissioners chamber. If you are comfortable doing so, please sign up to speak.

Tom Toles cartoon-Washington Post 3/8/10

There was also a timely article in the Washington Post on March 1, by David Fahrenthold -  "Manure Becomes Pollutant As Its Volume Grows Unmanageable."

If you want to read more about the Assateague Coastkeeper/Waterkeeper Alliance lawsuit against Perdue Farms, Inc. and Hudson Farms -visit the Assateague Coastkeeper website

Say It Ain't So, Joe!

Yesterday, there was an article posted by 'marylandreporter.com' on The Daily Record, a non-profit news website covering state government and politics.  In this article, the following quote was attributed to State Senator Richard Colburn:

Republican Sen. Richard Colburn from Cambridge said he believes “river keepers,” environmentalists who watch over particular waterways, are dictating business on the Eastern Shore. He compared them to watermelons: “green on the outside and red or socialist on the inside.”


A strange accusation considering that what the Waterkeeper Alliance is advocating is an enforcement of existing state and federal laws. The laws call for measures that will reduce the pollution that has severely damaged the Chesapeake Bay.

• The number one source of nitrogen pollution to the Bay comes from agricultural runoff, which contributes 40 percent of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus entering the Chesapeake Bay. 
• In Maryland, manure and waste from chicken production plays a big role in agricultural nitrogen loads to the Bay. Chickens outnumber people approximately 1,000 to 1 on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
• In the Shenandoah and Potomac watersheds, large-scale poultry operations produce more waste than hog, cattle, or dairy farms, and up to 150 percent more nutrient pollution than that generated by human waste in the same area. In addition, poultry waste creates four times more nitrogen and 24 times more phosphorus than hog waste in Virginia.

                           -Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Water Pollution Facts

The Daily Record news article stated that "raising chickens and processing them for sale is a billion-dollar business on the Shore."


However, according to an article in Science Direct addressing the benefits of water quality policies, "The monetized annual boating, fishing, and swimming benefits of water quality improvements in the Chesapeake Bay range from $357.9 million to $1.8 billion"   And this is just an estimate of the direct value from water related recreation. It doesn't even take into account the value of commercial fishing or real estate.

Communist, commie, pinko, socialist. Did I enter a time warp? Is Sen. Joe McCarthy out there waving a list of communists in the Waterkeeper Alliance?

"The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."

 -Joseph McCarthy

I've been called a communist before, but that was during the 60's when I was working in opposition to the war in Vietnam. At that time many people advocated civil disobedience, disobeying the law using passive resistance to foster a change in the laws themselves.

Now I'm working to make sure that laws are enforced. Yes, you heard me correctly; laws are enforced. And I'm being called a commie again! How does that work?

In reciting the information from the Lee list cases, McCarthy consistently exaggerated, representing the hearsay of witnesses as facts and converting phrases such as "inclined towards Communism" to "a Communist."

 -Joseph McCarthy, Wikipedia

Fortunately, the hyperbole, the bombast, the pure bullshit wears on people and, like the boy who cried wolf people just stop listening. I don't think the names carry the same weight they did in the cold war. Really. Maybe these guys should look into some new slurs. How about, "liberal?" Nah, that doesn't work. Sissy? Might work if we weren't already kicking their collective asses. Fag? Nope. How about "Environmentalist?" Yeah, that's the stuff. Boy, I really hope they don’t start using that one on me.

In the 1950 Maryland Senate election, McCarthy campaigned for John Marshall Butler in his race against four-term incumbent Millard Tydings, with whom McCarthy had been in conflict during the Tydings Committee hearings. In speeches supporting Butler, McCarthy accused Tydings of "protecting Communists" and "shielding traitors." McCarthy's staff was heavily involved in the campaign, and collaborated in the production of a campaign tabloid that contained a composite photograph doctored to make it appear that Tydings was in intimate conversation with Communist leader Earl Russell Browder. A Senate subcommittee later investigated this election and referred to it as "a despicable, back-street type of campaign," as well as recommending that the use of defamatory literature in a campaign be made grounds for expulsion from the Senate.

-Joseph McCarthy, Wikipedia

There was a time when Maryland could be proud of its legislators. I wonder if that time will ever come again.

What's Surfing Got To Do With All This Snow?

It started as a joke in an email thread among members of the Ocean City chapter of Surfrider Foundation - wisecracks about all the snow at the beach and in the D.C. area with suggestions that global warming is a myth.      


I almost replied to the thread, reminding these watermen and women of the strange weather patterns we experienced during last summer. I had an urge to remind them of the unusually high tides in the back bays for almost 60 days (due to a slowing of the offshore Atlantic currents,) more persistent northeast winds, disappearance of our normal summer sand bars just off shore. But for the sake of my sanity I refrained from jumping into the 'conversation' knowing that a post on an internet forum always results in painful consequences.

While everyone has been digging out, two environmental writers in the region have posted interesting opinion pieces in both the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post that deserve some attention.

Mike Tidwell, founder and director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network , had this to say in his Baltimore Sun Feb 14 op-ed which makes the point our weird winter weather is due more to high moisture levels rather than lower temperatures.

Tidwell wrote, in part, "Water vapor in the global atmosphere jumped by about 5 percent in the 20th century, reported P.Y. Groisman and his colleagues in 2004. This while there has been an observed, significant uptick in heavy winter precipitation events in the Northeastern U.S., according to a 2006 study. And all the while, global temperatures have risen sharply, including an average warming of 4 degrees F in the Northeastern U.S.

Consider further: We've had "Snowmaggedon" I, II and III this winter not because of record cold weather. The temperatures in our region have been only moderately colder than normal for the Mid Atlantic winter. No, it's because of record amounts of *moisture* here, pushed into our region by repeated Nor'easters. This historic wetness from the south has met cold-enough temperatures here to produce snow levels that neither science nor old-timers can recall.

Just last fall, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, established by Congress in 1990, predicted more violent storms in the Northeast due to climate change. "Strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights," the agency said. So, yes, we are getting record winter precipitation events here even as overall temperatures are rising."

Then there was Bill McKibben's op-ed in the Washington Post this week, which furthers the connection between our weird weather patterns and the fact that Global Warming is here to stay.

McKibben commented, "In most places, winter is clearly growing shorter and less intense. We can tell, because Arctic sea ice is melting, because the glaciers on Greenland are shrinking and because a thousand other signals send the same message. Here in the mountains of the Northeast, for instance, lakes freeze later than they used to, and sometimes not at all: Lake Champlain remained open in winter only three times during the 19th century, but it did so 18 times between 1970 and 2007."

McKibben further noted some tasty tidbits from Weather Underground blogger Jeff Masters, who wrote last week that a record snowstorm requires a record amount of moisture in the air. "It is quite possible that the dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures," Masters wrote.

So let's cut out the jokes and take this seriously. Here on Delmarva one of our greatest contributors to global warming is our use of electricity. Our electric power comes from coal generated power plants. Every time you turn on an electric switch, look to the north and watch for the smoke pouring out of the stacks at the NRG plant in Milford, DE.

If we don’t urge our elected officials to support the construction and implementation of an offshore wind farm here in Maryland and get this project moving forward, then all the Surfrider folks might as well kiss those warm summer south swells breaking on outside sand bars goodbye and get used to surfing NE slop on steep beaches.

Congratulations to Tom Patton - 2010 Osprey Award Recipient

One of my favorite people is getting some well deserved attention this month. 

Assateague Coastal Trust founding member, long time Coastal Bays watershed activist and historian Tom Patton of South Point is being recognized by the Maryland Coastal Bays Program with their prestigious Golden Osprey Award on February 18 in Berlin, MD.

Tom, who has lived along Sinepuxent Bay for 75 years and is one of ACT's earliest members, as a member of The Committee to Preserve Assateague Island (which later evolved into ACT.)  He was one of those rare conservationists on the Eastern Shore in the 60's, before the phrase "environmental activist" had been coined.  A waterman and a hunter, he was an advocate for responsible land development long before anyone had mouthed the words "smart growth," and continues to advocate for it today.

My first meeting with Tom was in 2007.  Jim Rapp, ACT's new President was chairing our March Annual Meeting.  It was my first ACT Board meeting as its new Executive Director and as its new Coastkeeper.  The tiny little 'board room' (a dining room in the house that is ACT's office,) was crammed with Board members many of whom I was meeting for the first time.  

Tom arrived a few minutes late and took a chair in the living room just out of my view.  Jim and I had carefully prepared an agenda consisting of elections, committee reports, program reports, old and new business related to ACT, Inc.  Somewhere way down the agenda was a spot for the Coastkeeper report.

About 25 minutes into the reports, a voice boomed out of the living room, "Could we please just dispense with all this drivel and move to more important business - the Coastkeeper report!"   Tom continued, "I mean, why is all of this stuff more important than what we are going to do about cleaning up the coastal bays?"

He then reminded the Board that ACT had been around for over 35 years, Maryland Coastal Bays Program for nearly 10 years, Lower Shore Land Trust for over 10 years and the coastal bays watershed was in worse trouble now and were continuing its slow decline.  He demanded to know what ACT was going to do about it!

Well, so much for our carefully prepared agenda.  There I was, thinking, holy crap - I've only been on the job a few weeks, I hardly know the names of everyone in the room much less have a plan of attack to clean up the water.  Heck, I hadn't even attended my first Waterkeeper orientation yet. 

But Tom gave me my marching orders and I've been following his lead ever since that cold evening in March 2007.  And yes, from that point on the ACT Board meeting agenda has always placed the Coastkeeper report right near the top immediately following the Treasurer's Report.

Here's an article that appeared in our Fall 2009 Newsletter about Tom's environmental and historic conservation efforts.  ACT's Board members had attended a recent fundraiser for Tom's non-profit Rackliffe House Trust, which is restoring the former plantation house located on Sinepuxent Bay into a coastal heritage museum.

Please read on and learn a little something about Tom.   Congratulations Tom - you most certainly deserve the Golden Osprey Award!

Read about Tom in ACT For Bays, the official newsletter of Assateague Coastal Trust.  The story is on the front page, lower left column.

A Different Breed of 'Environmentalist'

Two interesting editorial pieces ran in the The Daily Times recently. 

On December 28, 2009 an Opinion piece on the subject of the Coastkeeper/Waterkeeper Alliance notice of intent to sue Perdue Farms, Inc and a Perdue chicken grower for illegal polluted discharges attempted to dismiss the legality of the situation and called for a fireside chat around the kitchen table as a reasonable solution to the problem.

The editorial further chastised Waterkeeper Alliance for taking what the editor deemed to be too harsh an action.  After all, what's the rush in stopping this poultry facility from filling our waterways with unsafe levels of fecal coliform and e.coli, as well as arsenic, nitrogen and phosphorus?  Let's just talk about it for awhile.  Given Delmarva Poultry Industry (DPI) efforts the past few years to equate the word 'Waterkeeper' with the devil, I'm sure this poultry grower would have welcomed us to his kitchen table with open arms.

And why not talk about it?   After all, that's pretty much what everyone's been doing for the last 25 years and we can all see the benefit of that approach when it comes to the health of the Chesapeake Bay, which is worse now than 25 years ago.

Then, on January 27, 2010 a column in The Worcester County Times attempted to distance one local environmental group from another local group.  It was not unexpected, at least to me, given the past year.  The Maryland Coastal Bays Program has probably more than once had to explain that Assateague Coastal Trust or the Coastkeeper is not part of its organization.

 I'm glad the Maryland Coastal Bays Program (MCBP) approached this matter head-on  with it's January column in The Worcester County Times, and finally said what's needed to be said for a long time about the differences between Assateague Coastal Trust and MCBP.

First - both of these outstanding organizations have a clear and definite purpose in this watershed.   Let me be perfectly clear on this point.

MCBP has the government funding, the staffing, and the mission statement that allows them to  bring diverse stakeholders together.  They are 'the safe green group', the group who can make a developer, a farmer, an elected official, a government agency staffer feel comfortable in the room together.....get them around 'the kitchen table.'

In that role, MCBP is extremely effective in helping to create policy for our watershed that will preserve our current environmental resources and restore those resources we have lost as a result of previous poor environmental policies.   Every watershed needs a group like Maryland Coastal Bays Program.

But there are times when the good intensions of those diverse stakeholders, the will of those politicians and the ability of those government agencies fail.

That is when the need for a 'darker green' environmental watchdog is needed. An organization that does not accept government funding and therefore is not afraid of losing that funding if it takes too strong an advocacy role.  A group that is not afraid it will make it's Board members angry by taking a strong advocacy stance.  A group that is not afraid to speak truth to power.

And every watershed needs one of those groups too!

Assateague Coastal Trust (ACT) is the organization in this watershed who's job it is to speak truth to power.   ACT began nearly 40 years ago when Judith Colt Johnson, Ajax Eastman, Bill Dwight and others stood up to the federal government and a wealthy developer, and said NO to the planned commercial development of Assateague Island.  

ACT took action in the 80's when Ilia Fehrer stood up to Worcester County officials and more big developers and said NO to the loss of thousands of acres of coastal natural resources along Chincoteague Bay.  Her actions led to ACT expanding its mission to the preservation of all of Worcester County.

ACT again expanded its mission in 2002 when it took on the Assateague Coastkeeper, part of the national Waterkeeper Alliance program.  This on-the-water advocate provided a voice for our coastal bays, creeks and river; someone who would stand up to polluters and use the power of the Clean Water Act laws to protect the health and safety of our waterways.

So don't lump us in with all the other environmentalists.  ACT and the Coastkeeper are a different breed.  Some may find our advocacy role too harsh, but given the pending death of the Chesapeake Bay and the deterioration of our Coastal Bays our supporters understand the need for citizen activism, enforcement of the laws, and a loud voice when one is needed.