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