The Progger

Taking Care of Nature

2012-01-26T04:48:00.000-08:00

On January 24 in Annapolis Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, with the Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network, addressed the 400+ people attending the 2012 Environmental Legislative Summit with the following remarks. She was sitting to my left and I watched her tweak her notes a few times, but I wasn't aware she was a speaker for the event. After she spoke, I thanked her for her truly inspiring words. And now I have the opportunity to share her words with you. Enjoy, and carry her thoughts with you going forward.

Environment Summit - 2012

Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin

January 24, 2012

We live in the midst of a 4-billion year old mystery, an on-going miracle that we call Earth. For all we know, no such miracle exists anywhere else. Whatever we may be skilled enough to find out there, there is likely not to be another Planet Earth, or another you, or another me, or another Bay or the parade of moonrises and sunsets, or the cascade of creatures that have filled our air and seas and land and made our world what it is today.

We are the chosen ones, blessed with being alive at this awesomely rich and perilous time. We didn’t ask for this moment, we didn’t create it, we did not earn it, and we don’t even understand it.

What we do understand, however, is that something very dangerous – even wicked - is happening out there – and we are doing our share to cause it.

But the good news is, we can do our share to stop it.

We are Earth’s most aware beneficiaries and its most powerful stewards.

We are not its masters, we are not its owners. We are its tenders. We are called upon to use it, take care of it, and give it – healthy and robust - to our children, just as our ancestors gave it to us.

Thomas Berry, the Catholic theologian – taught that each generation has a Great Work. It is a work that we do not choose, but that we are dealt by the hand of history. It is a work that drives our ultimate purpose and inspires our days, a work that all future generations will judge us by, a work that is bound to “the larger destinies of the universe.”

Our generation’s Great Work is to learn to thrive within life’s sustaining cycles. Our Great Work is to build a world that is resilient, ever new and ever fresh to each generation, that matches our desires and consumption, our use and our waste, our progress and our joys, to the untransgressible bounds of nature.

We must do this and we can do this, for we are not alone.

It is crowded in here.

It is crowded with your passion and persistence, your hard work and hopes, your wisdom and commitment.

And it is crowded with the concern and confusion, the hunger and the worry, the needs and prayers of hundreds more, thousands more, millions more who have never heard of you, but who depend upon you, and who need you to pursue this sacred work.

For all of us work on behalf of everyone who takes a breath of air, who wants a sip of clean water, who works to put food on their table, who takes refuge from the cold, seeks a good day’s work today and tomorrow, anyone who relies upon this awesome, giving world for their manifold, mundane needs. And that is everyone.

The names we use to describe our work might be throwing people off. It seems to me that Senator Carter Conway’s and Delegate McIntosh’s committees might need to be renamed:

Perhaps something like the: Education, Health and Environment, Economy, Jobs, Energy, Equity, Life’s Well-being, Earth Stewardship and Children of Tomorrow Committees.

The world of tomorrow will not be the world of yesterday. It will take more than science and knowledge, more than money and regulations to get us from here to there. It will take our trust, it will take our will, and it will take our faith.

We are not engaged in an us-vs-them agenda. It is not about jobs vs the environment; enviros vs progress, government vs the people.

Our task can be stated simply:

It is about us taking care of nature so nature can take care of us.

There is a great future waiting for us; we must find the way, and we must all get there together.

That is our Great Work.

That is our sacred work.

And that is why you are here.

Thank you!

You can follow her Blog in the Baltimore Jewish Times

New Year Resolutions

2012-01-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

The Progger is back. 2011 was a lost year for my blogging efforts. With so much activity on our Clean Water Act citizen lawsuit against Perdue, I was advised to keep a low profile and so I did.

But this is a new year, and as it is the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act! I am making a 2012 New Year Resolution to keep this blog active and get back to the business of progging about and exposing the good and the bad of my watershed.

This past fall the Coastkeeper was 'shadowed' for a week by a photo journalism student, resulting in a senior project titled "A Day In The Life Of The Assateague Coastkeeper." Meaghan Morgan-Puglisi, of Bennington College in Vermont, contacted me last July. She's a Maryland resident with a love of Assateague Island and the Coastal Bays. Sitting in my office today, I realize it won't be long until it's time to put the boat back in the water. Here's a few of her images from last August.

Here's to a new year working towards clean water that is swimmable, fishable and drinkable! Happy Birthday Clean Water Act.

Watch the new CWA40 Waterkeeper Alliance PSA here!

It IS The Economy, Stupid.

2011-04-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Coastkeeper has been negligent for months and has ignored her blog. Not the best way to keep my followers following. Please accept apologies.

The 2011 Maryland General Assembly began it's session shortly after the new year. I had intended to post updates, news, information about all the exciting environmental bills that were introduced this year, keeping you informed and asking for help with letters/emails/phone calls when needed.

But this year's Session turned into a real slogfest (is that word?) and it was all I could do to take care of matters from my desk and in Annapolis, leaving little time to even try and create a blog posting or two. Hopefully most of you caught my cries for help on the Coastkeeper Facebook page and I thank all who did write letters, make phone calls or sent emails to their legislators when I asked.

2011 will go down as one of the worst legislative sessions for the environment in history. Our legislators, who all ran on a 'green' platform promising to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and our other waterways, caved to industry lobbyists on every important environmental bill.

~Despite all the testimony, facts and an incredibly successful campaign in Washington, DC our lawmakers decided it was ok to keep all those plastic bags flying around our roadsides, forests and in our waterways in Maryland because the plastics industry cried 'foul.'

~Despite peer reviewed studies, facts and analysis presented by scientists and researchers who were experts, but apparantly were NOT highly paid Industry witnesses, our legislators decided it was ok for the chicken produced in Maryland to have arsenic in it when the chemical companies cried 'fowl.'

~And with incredible lack of long term vision, our legislators decided it was ok to burn trash as a 'renewable' resource but offshore wind was going to have to wait.

~State funding to preserve agricultural land was deeply slashed, in a wonderful little bit of budget trickery in which millions of tax dollars that were paid into a dedicated fund for land preservation were robbed because a loophole allows the State to transfer the money at will into the General Fund in order to 'balance' the budget.

~One bright spot, of sorts, was the passage of a watered down (sorry, pun intended) fertilizer bill that is a good start at reducing phosphorus loads to our waterways.

And while most of the hand wringing and furrowing of eyebrows in the General Assembly these past two months was because all these decisions were made in the 'best interest of the economic situation in Maryland' or because it was feared there would be 'impacts to jobs' in the State, any bill that smacked of regulation was passed down to Committees like a hot potato to be killed by inaction. (Sparing our legislators having to get involved in messy stuff like debate and voting.)

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently published Briefing Paper #305, written by Isaac Shapiro and John Irons, titled: 'Regulation, Employment and the Economy - Fears of job loss are overblown.'

Shapiro and Irons state in the opening Executive Summary of the report, 'In the first months since the new Congress convened, the House has held dozens of hearings designed to elicit criticisms of regulations, introduced legislation that would dramatically alter the regulatory process by requiring congressional approval of all major regulations, and passed a spending bill that would slash the funding levels of regulatory agencies and restrict their ability to enact rules covering areas such as greenhouse gas emissions.'

They further noted, 'In support of each of these steps, opponents of regulation argue that agency rules are damaging to the economy in general and job generation in particular. Some say specific regulations will destroy millions of jobs and cite a study (critiqued later in this paper) purporting to show that regulations cost $1.75 trillion per year. Regulations are frequently discussed only in the context of their threat to job creation, while their role in protecting lives, public health, and the environment is ignored.'

They stated, 'Well-designed and strongly enforced regulations are often necessary for the economy to operate effectively, a proposition supported by the history of regulation.....' and pointed out how lax regulations have resulted in such economic disasters as our recent financial market meltdown, major food poisoning outbreaks, and the mother of all environmental and economic crisis - the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The report is not very long and very worth the read.

But let's bring this back to Maryland's 2011 Legislative Session. Taking a lead from their Federal counterparts, environmental regulations or programs at the State level were labeled as a threat to the economy and a job killer. It has long been a favorite activity in Annapolis to plunder funding sources for the Maryland Department of Environment or attempt to take regulatory oversight away from MDE and place the control in another agency that has no enforcement authority.

So this leads me to a final question - how often do you follow what is happening in Annapolis during the legislative sessions each year? Do you know who your District Delegates and Senators are? Do you ever write to them, or call them, or better yet pay a visit to them in Annapolis? The second most important thing to an elected official is YOUR VOTE (the first most important thing is the industry that contributes the most to their campaigns and the lobbyist representing that industry.) If your elected officials are hearing from industry lobbyists on a daily basis, who will continue to foster this myth that regulation results in job loss, it just might be a good idea for greater numbers of ordinary citizens to make their voices heard during the sessions.

Our great natural resources-water, forests, wetlands and the air we breath do not have a voice. They don't have a highly paid lobbyist. They can't vote. You must be their voice and speak out, not only by paying an annual membership to your environmental group of choice or showing up at the polls, but by making your voice heard in person with some face to face time with your elected officials. Make yourself heard!

Season's Greetings - Ask Santa for More Fleece!

2010-12-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

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

2010-08-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-29T05:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-06T10:10:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-31T09:45:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-03-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-03-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-02-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-02-15T06:53:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

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'

2010-01-31T13:32:00.000-08:00

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.

What does the TSA have to do with water quality?

2009-12-30T17:53:00.000-08:00

A recent story in the New York Times about the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airliner got me thinking. The story indicated that the bomber's access to the flight was due to a series of failures in the system that is supposed to protect us from events just like this.

In fact, the bomber was actually subdued by a passenger. Not by any agent or security official. This is a perfect example of how citizens often have to step forward and take action when the agencies responsible for protecting us fail to do their job.

Ironically, the same passenger who subdued the would-be bomber was hailed as a hero.

Why isn't the same standard applied when a citizen environmental whistle blower points out that a factory, a farm, or a developer is polluting our water?

Oh sure, the results of an airplane bomb are much more spectacular. Three hundred people die in a fiery crash. CNN has news fodder for days. Wolf Blitzer brings in a sleeping bag and camps out in the 'situation room.' Fox News commentators positively squeal with glee as they report how the Obama administration is responsible for the deaths of these god-fearing Americans.

So what happens when a polluter increases nutrient levels or bacteria levels to our waterways, in numbers that are dangerous to the public health?

A physteria bloom, temporary perhaps; fishing and recreation closures; commercial fisheries shut down; hotels and motels suffer a loss of business for years to come. Fisheries are possibly damaged for years to come. And it's conceivable the drinking water for communities along the waterway will be affected.

Twenty five years ago, the Chesapeake Bay was screaming out for help. It was dying. Legislative programs were put in place to rectify the problem. In those twenty + years the health of the Bay has actually declined. All these good intentions went to waste simply because the agencies charged with enforcing the laws which would improve the Bay's health have not been doing their job any better than the TSA screeners for Northwest Flight 253.

In effect, I would be out of a job as a Waterkeeper if the agencies charged with enforcing the laws that would protect our waterways had been doing their job all along.

I have to tell you, it doesn't look like I'll be retiring anytime soon.

Poop is Poop - No Discharges!

2009-12-23T05:32:00.000-08:00

Astonishing Admission by Perdue Follows December 17th Notice of Intent to Sue Perdue, Hudson Farm in Berlin, MD.; Fecal Coliform Level “Hundreds” of Times EPA-Permitted Level for Treated Human Sewage Deepen Concerns About Threat to Maryland Waterways and Human Health.

We are appalled to learn from Perdue’s public statements that it now admits importing human sewage into the Alan and Kristin Hudson Farm – a chicken factory farm located in Berlin, MD. Our initial assumption was that the only manure problem polluting Maryland waterways and endangering human health at the facility was related to chickens. It now appears that the ‘off the charts’ readings we detected for fecal coliform likely are also related to the human waste that Perdue has acknowledged is being shipped into the site and stored in an unsafe manner.

If Perdue and Hudson try to claim that human sewage trucked into the farm is a safe Class A biosolid, then they need to explain why we found fecal coliform levels at 100-200 times what the EPA allows for Class A biosolids. The levels we detected are comparable to what you would find in a pit of raw, untreated sewage still in liquid form.

It is mind boggling to us that a Maryland farm would be viewed by anyone as an appropriate dumping site for human sewage in any form. This is particularly true when the same farm is already the site of what appears to be an out-of-control situation with animal waste. This seems like the very definition of making an already bad situation worse, with Maryland’s waterways and residents paying the price at the expense of their health.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing with Hudson Farm – piles of uncovered waste sitting in open fields, alongside drainage ditches that carry pollution to the area’s streams and rivers, and eventually to the Bay – is commonplace throughout the Eastern Shore. Until this industry takes responsibility for its waste, and state environmental agencies get serious about protecting our waterways, no amount of taxpayer money, ongoing study or well-intentioned legislation is going to fix the Bay’s problems.

BACKGROUND
The Hudson Farm and Perdue Farms, Inc., were the recipients on December 17, 2009 of a notice of intent to file suit for violations of the Clean Water Act at the Eastern Shore facility consisting of an 80,000-bird Concentrated Animal Feed Operation (CAFO). The factory farm is is owned by Alan Hudson, a contract grower for Perdue Farms.

The legal action against Hudson Farm and Perdue was the culmination of several years of intense scrutiny of the Maryland CAFO industry for its contribution to the ongoing decline in health of the state’s local waters. The results of recent water sampling from ditches that ran past an extensive, uncovered waste pile on the property show high levels of many toxic pollutants, including fecal coliform, phosphorus and nitrogen.

In addition, photographic evidence taken from both the ground and the air over the past few months clearly shows the runoff from the manure pile to the surrounding ditch drainage areas. The facility discharges pollution into the Franklin Branch of the Pocomoke River, which then empties into Chesapeake Bay. Both the Pocomoke and the Bay have been listed as impaired for nutrients under the Clean Water Act.

Corporate-owned, large-scale factory farm facilities in Maryland and other states nationwide produce a significant amount of waste, including manure and slaughter byproduct. This year, Maryland’s Department of the Environment finalized a state Maryland Animal Feed Operation, or MAFO, permit for some of these facilities which allow for piles of manure to sit in open fields for up to 90 days. The federal CAFO permit that Hudson Farm applied for by filing a Notice of Intent with MDE allows for stockpiling of manure for a 14-day period.

Under either the federal and state permitting system, however, discharges from manure piles are illegal. As a result of inevitable discharges from manure stockpiling, these growing operations continue to pollute drinking and recreational water supplies by fouling rivers, lakes, streams and underground aquifers with untreated livestock manure.

You can read more here, and see photos.

No Money? No Excuse to Pollute!

2009-12-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Voice of America recently launched a five part series on their website about the state of the Chesapeake Bay. Their reporter, Rosanne Skirble, assigned to cover the recent Obama Executive Order to get the Bay cleaned up.

The full report is interesting to watch, but what caught my attention was the part about municipal wastewater and our waterways.

In her special report segment on urban pollution,  Snow Hill, MD Mayor Stephen Matthews talked about the problems with the town’s ancient combined sewer/stormwater wastewater treatment plant and admitted to Skirble and the entire world that every time it rains hard in Snow Hill they have no choice but to open the ‘flood gates’ and let raw, untreated sewage flow into the Pocomoke River.

If this horrifies you, welcome to the club. This is something we’ve been aware of for quite some time and now it’s time for more people to know.

Human waste, unlike farm animal waste, by law must be treated before it can be discharged into our waterways or applied to the land. This law also requires that those who do the discharging or application must have a federal permit under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.)

In Maryland, this federal program is administered by the Maryland Department of the Environment. Twenty years ago MDE entered into an agreement with the EPA to issue/renew the permits in Maryland, inspect the permit holder facilities, and enforce any violations of the permit through fines or legal actions.

But if you read between the lines of this VOA report, you quickly realize that Maryland has done little to force Snow Hill or Worcester County to stop polluting the Pocomoke River.

You'll especially like the part where Skirble & Matthews reveal a little known secret about the Snow Hill treatment plant - Worcester County actually pays Snow Hill tens of thousands of dollars a year to 'treat' waste runoff water that accumulates at the County land fill - a watery goo of landfill toxins and heavy metals that the Snow Hill wastewater treatment plant does not have the capacity to treat or filter, so it all goes into the river.
And where is MDE in all of this?   The NPDES wastewater permit the State has issued to Snow Hill is expired. The State has given the County/Town extensions so the plant can continue to operate. The NPDES wastewater permit issued by the State does not cover the pollutants coming from the landfill waste.

This is one of the many reasons Waterkeepers Chesapeake, today December 7,  is asking the EPA to look into Maryland's failure to adequately oversee the permitting program entrusted to it by EPA.

Read more about Waterkeepers' 58 page Citizen De-Delegation Petition, which outlines hundreds of examples of poor oversight by MDE, on the Assateague Coastal Trust website....http://www.actforbays.org/

Chickens or.............

2009-11-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

A recent Opinion Editorial in The Daily Times (Nov. 6) bemoaned the fact that the EPA may be unfairly targeting the poultry industry on the Eastern Shore as it begins to finally do its job and regulate pollution sources to the Chesapeake Bay.
You can read the entire OpEd here

A paragraph or two in the editorial piece bothered me:

"The bay needs to be protected. The question is whether Maryland's poultry growers will able to meet the new restrictions and remain competitive with farms across the country."

"While the bay more than merits our concern, we must also not lose sight of the impact of poultry operations on Maryland's economy, particularly on the Lower Shore. If there were no longer a viable poultry industry, the impact would strike far beyond the loss of growers and processing plants."

The editorial piece ended by stating, "The EPA and the state must be prepared to offer whatever assistance growers require to enable them to comply with the new restrictions and remain economically viable."

The EPA is going to regulate the larger CAFO (confined animal feeding operations) facilities in Maryland and require a tighter control on the amount of water discharges from these operations through more stringent permitting, monitoring, and reporting.

The editorial was implying that if the EPA further regulates the industry in Maryland it may over-regulate them out of business.

I felt compelled to post a comment to their on-line editorial. It was posted 11/11/2009 at 10:55:44 AM. Interestingly, I just noticed tonight that my comment is no longer posted, while five other comments still remain on The Daily Times website editorial page.

What I wrote was that it is irresponsible to put this in an 'either-or' context. Wastewater is wastewater, whether it comes from humans, manufacturing, or chickens. Stormwater run-off is stormwater run-off, whether it comes from poultry operations or urban development.

Should we say our county taxes are too high and we should not have to pay for the permits, inspections and enforcement of our wastewater treatment facilities? Let's dump raw human sewage straight into our creeks, rivers and bays because it is simpler, cheaper and less time-consuming? (Gee, that is exactly what USED to happen before this country drafted federal pollution laws!)

Like it or not, the poultry industry on the Eastern Shore is just that - an industry. These corporations are just the same as if they were producing automobiles, furniture, clothing, or paint.

The difference in the state of Maryland is that the poultry corporations are allowed to pass off the cost of environmental pollution on to the backs of the contracted growers who work for them, and on to the communities that surround these industrial facilities.

A great little video from The Sierra Club - fun to watch even though it's a bit dated.

click here to watch it

It is time the State of Maryland requires the corporations that own the chickens to accept responsibility for the waste these chickens produce, and share that responsibility with the growers who contract to work for them.

The industry's excuse that the chicken poop is a valuable commodity to the grower (it's used by the grower to fertilize his own crop fields or sold to another row crop farmer) can no longer be allowed to excuse them from accepting responsibility for the waste.

The fact is, larger and larger facilities are popping up all over the Eastern Shore. They are quickly replacing the small long narrow chicken houses you remember from your drives down Rt. 113. Every time I see a Perdue tractor trailer go down Rt. 113 with the pretty little farm house depicted on the side I have to laugh.

In reality, your chicken dinner is being grown in shiny silver 20,000 - 30,000 square foot buildings, usually 6 - 12 together, and in one case as many as 26 at one facility. These larger buildings can house up to 25,000 birds at one time, and sometimes five flocks can be cycled through in a year.

Mountaire CAFO in Somerset County - 26 30,000 square foot buildings

Here in Worcester County, despite some officials who claim the county's zoning laws will not allow such large CAFOs to be built, we are seeing a dramatic increase in these larger production facilities.

From Berlin, drive out Rt. 374 towards Powellville and just before you get to the little bridge over the Pocomoke River take a look to your right. What was once a scenic little farm (my artist friend painted the scene one year when the crop fields were golden yellow and the sun lit up the classic red barn,) is now a row of alien looking giant silver poultry houses. Where's that idyllic Perdue 'family farm' now??

Or take a back road tour down to Five Bridges Road in lower Worcester County, across the road from Dividing Creek. This huge facility will produce somewhere around a quarter of a million birds, tons of manure, and nearly half a million pounds of nitrates from the ammonia emissions coming out of those buildings.

So this brings us back to the EPA permitting and regulations. Where once there were crop fields, forest and upland wetlands to capture the rain water and infiltrate it back into the ground before it reached Dividing Creek, now we have thousands and thousands of square feet of hardened surface. Roof tops, cement pads, outbuildings, driveways. Stormwater run-off from these surfaces picks up whatever pollutants are on the ground of these facilities and carries it off to the nearest stream.

Manure that is loaded with e.Coli and coliform bacteria, nitrogen, phosphorous, arsenic, other heavy metals - not to mention the pharmaceuticals that are used to keep 25,000 closely confined animals living.

Until the politicians and agency heads in this state develop the political will to require the poultry corporations to accept responsibility for the waste their industry is producing, then the EPA will have to come in and do it for them. And in this state, that puts the burden on the contracted grower (the family farmer.)

Worcester now, and in the future....

2009-11-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

This is a beautiful view of the area around Bishopville Prong. Unfortunately this area was upzoned to rural residential which will allow slightly denser growth, all on septic, outside of the Comp. Plan's recommended growth areas.

Let's hope the county enforces use of 'best technology' septic systems, strong stormwater management, and critical area protections so our waterways will not be severely impacted.

Critical Area buffers like these help to protect the quality of our water. When these buffers are illegally cleared we need county compliance staff to not only require mitigation but to assess fines, follow up and make certain the buffer is replanted.

This proposed development in Public Landing (below) illegally cleared several hundred yards of protective buffer along Paw Paw Creek. The developer was issued a warning, a 'gentleman's agreement' was reached in which he would replant the shoreline and no fines were issued. According to County officials, the developer was required to mitigate by planting a substantial new buffer of trees and shrubs, which has been done. According to this official, the new plants are thriving. I still continue to respectfully disagree with the County on this approach. Had the County issued a hefty fine AND a firm mandate for mitigation, other developers would not be so quick to strip a shoreline in order to open up water views and hasten the sale of their property. And our waterways would benefit by not losing mature trees and shrubs, only to be replaced with young plants that won't afford the same protections for many years.

Clean Water is what brings us all to Worcester County. Healthy water provides safe habitat for fish, crabs, wildlife. Healthy water provides recreational opportunities. Healthy water keeps our families healthy. Let's continue to work together to keep Worcester County a healthy place to live, work and recreate!

3.5 Years to Adopt a Zoning Plan

2009-11-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

Nearly four years after the Worcester County Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2006 by the County Commissioners, its implementation has finally been voted upon...well, sort of.

While missing the mark on many aspects of the Comprehensive Plan, (and thus these award winning concepts such as TDRs, Impact fees, alternative energy initiatives, and protection of flood plains from development were not implemented) the County's new zoning code and zoning map was approved on November 3, 2009.

With very few changes to the text of the Zoning Code, and one or two strange (?) changes to the Comprehensive Zoning Maps – the Worcester County Commissioners, in spite of themselves, voted unanimously to adopt the new zoning ordinance. Cowger was the lone dissenting vote to approve the Zoning Maps.

Assateague Coastal Trust's efforts to strengthen the language in the code for protection of our waterways and our natural resources remained as suggested in our public comments and as amended by the Planning Commission and Staff.

Our efforts to better protect our waterways through more protective zoning districts were for the most part incorporated into the new land use zoning maps.
Our efforts to force this Board to deal with the elimination of the Estate (E-1) zoning, as called for in the Comp. Plan, and place these flood prone areas into more protective zoning did not succeed. Commissioner Gulyas seemed to think the Estate Zoning was some live animal that would (in her words!) ‘die a slow death if we just leave it alone.’

While this means large areas of South Point and the Rt. 611 corridor will not be up-zoned to more dense residential but will remain Estate zoned, some areas of E-1 were indeed given higher density zoning - Gum Point Road and the Bishopville Prong area were both given R-1 zoning.

Commissioners Cowger and Church, obviously uneducated about the zoning and the code, made fools of themselves arguing moot points about how much money a certain developer had paid for a proposed project. Both Cowger & Church kept loudly arguing, mistakenly, that the Commissioners were ‘down-zoning’ the man’s property.

Commissioner Bud Church practically shed tears during his plea to the audience that a huge mistake had been made. What these two Commissioners didn't seem to understand is: 1. The parcel started as A-1 and stayed as A-1; and 2. Comprehensive Re-zoning is not determined by how much money a land speculator wants to gamble on future projects.

In another zoning map change, all the Commissioners voted to leave two parcels along Rt. 589 as A-1 zoning, against Planning Commission recommendations to change the agricultural zoning to residential R-1. The Commissioners argument for this was they did not want to add to the traffic congestion on Rt. 589 so they wanted to leave the two parcels at the current zoning.

What they were oblivious to, however, were the several hundreds of acres of E-1 zoned parcels along Gum Point Road, adjacent to and just behind the two highway fronting parcels. All that area was being recommended to go up to R-1 and they left it that way!

So somehow all this new residential traffic coming off of Gum Point Road onto Rt. 589 is not going to be as detrimental to the highway as that one little parcel of A-1 they fought so hard to keep A-1……..go figure?

They did not support a motion by Commissioner Shockley to add 2 more building lots to the already permitted 5 lots allowed per parcel in the A-1 zoned areas. They did however, support his text amendment to increase the total square footage allowed ‘by right’ for commercial buildings on an A-1 parcel from 600 sq. ft to 3,000 sq. ft.

Without adequate time to consider all the ramification of this major change, and under pressure by the Commission President to wrap things up, it remains to be seen what impact this will have on types of commercial businesses in our A-1 district throughout the county. At the very least they should have agreed to the 4,400 increase by ‘special exception’ review only.

Most disturbing about yesterday’s meeting was the total lack of assistance by the County Attorney to guide the Commissioners through this process, keep them focused and help them not make mistakes like they did on Rt. 589 and possibly to the A-1 district allowable uses. In my opinion he has proven himself, once again, to be lacking in the skills to adequately advise our Commissioners and this county.

The icing on the cake was the vote. Commission President Gulyas insisted on raising hands to signify yea or nay. She had to continually ask for people to keep their hands up for an official count, sometimes questioning if someone’s hand had been raised or not, they were all talking at once, Cowger wanted to continue his rant about the Sea Hawk Road property…..it was embarrassing.

What the heck happened to taking a roll call voice vote, right down the line, and make each Commissioner speak his/her vote? Very unprofessional behavior yesterday, but then that is what we have come to expect.

The Arm Chair Lawyer

2009-11-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

As the TV commercial says, "I'm not really a lawyer, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night!"

I wish I had pursued an education in studying law. I find it fascinating. As a Waterkeeper I absolutely believe in enforcing the law. A wise friend once said, "If there's a law that is not enforced, then there is no law."

I served on Worcester County's Ethics Board in the 90's. This Board was advised by a former county attorney and I learned a lot from him. I didn't always agree with him but I respected his knowledge of the law, of the county laws, and admired his sense of what was right and what was wrong.

In my previous life (before Waterkeepers) and in this life, I've worked with and have been advised by lawyers regarding all sorts of issues - corporate law, environmental law, non-profit law, tax law, civil laws, ethical laws. All boards I've ever served on included attorneys certified in many different areas of law, always there to give us sage advice.

As a result I feel I have a fairly solid sense of understanding when something is right and when something is just plain wrong.

And so in May 2009 when the County Commissioners held their now infamous closed door meeting and four Commissioners voted behind closed doors to dismantle a nationally admired Planning Department and emasculate one of the most educated and talented planners this county had ever had the privilege to employ, and humiliate one of the most knowledgeable zoning administrators in county history, just because one south county commissioner desired to help his buddies get their permits faster, easier and without as much scrutiny, I clearly knew something was WRONG. So did three other Commissioners. So did the public who were in attendance at that May meeting.

Yet four Commissioners and one County attorney had no qualms putting lipstick on this pig and contemptuously tried to dupe the citizens into believing this was being done for the good of the citizens and the county, as a cost cutting effort and nothing more.

Assateague Coastal Trust questioned the County Attorney, who arrogantly replied we didn't know what we were talking about. ACT could not stand by without some attempt to substantiate our outrage. Under guidance of our capable attorneys, ACT drafted an appeal to the Maryland Open Meetings Act Compliance Board to right this wrong.

I was scoffed at by the County's attorney as being an 'arm chair lawyer'. He advised the Commissioners not to worry. He wrote a lengthy rebuttal to the Compliance Board and defended his advice to the Commissioners.

On October 27, 2009 the Maryland Open Meetings Act Compliance Board, advised by the State Attorney General's Office, agreed what had happened was wrong. And not just a little bit wrong, on October 27, 2009 the Compliance Board issued a finding that the County violated the Open Meetings Act on every single count.

I found it most satisfying that the AG's office used the County Attorney's legal argument, in which he states the County's actions were an 'Administrative' prerogative versus a 'Legislative' responsibility, to substantiate their opinion that indeed the action of consolidating the government departments was 'legislative' and therefore in violation of the Act.

The Compliance Board, in their ruling, stated: "The County Commissioners’ focused on the executive nature of the consolidation and that no county services were changed. The complaint, however, focused on the potential impact of the consolidation on land use decisions and environmental consequences that flow from such decisions, and argued that the decision was a policy matter subject to the Act. We accept as a truism that a consolidation or reorganization of departments at any level of government may well impact the manner that decisions are made and what priorities might be established.....Based on the information offered by the Council, we find that the Council’s action failed to qualify as an administrative function."

What I find less satisfying is that our County Attorney continues to publicly use his excuse about "protecting the privacy of our 'soon to be fired' employees," when within hours desks were being packed up and these folks were out on the street, and everyone knew about it.

Indeed, the Open Meetings Act Compliance Board stated the following: " In response to our request, the County Commissioners provided us with a copy of its minutes for the closed session. In fact, part of the closed session qualified as a personnel matter in that it concerned the ability of a particular employee to retire. However, other matters were discussed, such as a suggested severance package, when the decision affecting the employees should be implemented, available alternatives such as furloughs, and the merits of reorganization in general. To the extent discussion extended beyond the status of a single identifiable employee, we find that the Commissioners exceeded the permissible bounds of the personnel exception, thus, violating the Act."

While none of this will bring back an independent Planning Department to our County Government until hopefully after the next election, for a few hours this weekend I plan to sink down into my overstuffed armchair and soak up some of the warm sunshine.

The Coastkeeper and GOP Rep. Joe Wilson

2009-10-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Coastkeeper took a long awaited vacation, came home totally relaxed, recharged, renewed, calm, focused and ready to get back to work.

Then I attended the Worcester County Commissioner's work session on Tuesday, Oct. 20 and all that stuff I mentioned in the first line was gone...poof....back was the brain strain, the twitchy eyeball, the muscle cramp just above that left shoulder blade.

How can elected officials, who are responsible for the well being of our wonderful Worcester County, be so off base, so uninformed, so willing to publicly flaunt their ignorance and incompetence??

The work session was for the purpose of the county staff to go over the recommended changes to the draft Zoning District Maps (based on public comments received during the open comment period this past June) with the County Commissioners- all part of the process as the County finally gets around to implementing the 2006 Comprehensive Plan.

For the past 3 months, county staff and the Planning Commission have taken time to go over every submitted public comment regarding the proposed new zoning code and the proposed zoning districts and they suggested changes when they felt your public comments warranted the change. Some public comments were debated at the numerous Planning Commission/staff meetings and it was deemed not appropriate to recommend any changes. And some changes just seemed to appear out of nowhere - like that off-site septic system exemption I mentioned in my previous posting, which is now in the code but wasn't there when the public was given the chance to review the new code and make comment.

I sat in on most of those Planning Commission work sessions. I watched and listened to the debates, the advice offered by county staff; observed the time taken to consider each request and come to a consensus.

Guess how many County Commissioners attended these meetings? ....and the correct answer is.....one.   During a number of these meetings I observed County Commissioner Linda Busick taking notes, sitting there in the peanut gallery with the rest of us.   Kudos, Commissioner Busick. Was my County Commissioner there, Mr. Church, at any time? .....and the correct answer is....no (that wasn't very hard, was it?)

So back to Tuesday, October 20, 2009.    I could count the number of citizens in the audience observing this meeting on two hands.   Good golly Miss Molly, did you ever miss the show of the year if you weren't there! If this county ever needed to have public meetings televised, or at least have a tape recording of every word said, Tuesday, October 20, 2009 was the day to do it. Folks, it was absolute chaos up there on the dais.

County staff had prepared a rather large packet of information, I believe a thick notebook, that had been given to the Commissioners in advance of these work sessions, to allow them to read and see what had been done over the past three months. (I'm sorry I have to keep saying County staff, but that's my only option these days. This new consolidated 'department' doesn't have a name. I can't refer to County Planning Director because we don't have one anymore. There is a new 'Director' and a new 'Deputy Director' but I don't know what they are Directors of... but when I refer to County staff I mean Director, Deputy Director, and their staff.)

It was very obvious from the get-go that most of the Commissioners sitting up there either did not have the book in front of them, or had not even read the book to prepare themselves for this meeting.

What was supposed to be a discussion about proposed changes to the Draft Zoning Maps to reflect the Land Use elements adopted by most of these VERY SAME COMMISSIONERS in the 2006 Comprehensive Plan became a chaotic, uncontrolled display of total ignorance of the subject matter and absolutely total ignorance of the job at hand.

Commissioner Cowger admitted (knowingly but more likely unknowingly) that AFTER the public comment period had closed he had discussions with land owners along Rt. 589 who want to see their parcels upzoned to a Commercial-2 District (not as heavy commercial as to allow big box stores, but almost.)

This is wrong on soooo many levels. First, Mr. Cowger, apparently some people in this county are allowed to continue the public comment period even now, when the rest of us adhered to the legally set deadline of June 12.   And this might be a good place to note that while I was a good girl and adhered to the rules of the meeting President Gulyas set - no public participation during the proceedings - how is it that not a single Commissioner, and especially Ms. Gulyas, did not bat an eyelash when Mark Cropper, noted attorney to most every developer in the county, walked up ON TO THE DAIS during the meeting and whispered sweet nothings into the ear of County Attorney Sonny Bloxom??? I can only imagine what would have happened had I sauntered up to the dais and approached Mr. Bloxom during the meeting.

Second, Mr. Cowger, this is not about zoning parcels of land to accommodate the wishes of the property owner. This is about planning a balanced use of ALL the land in Worcester County to assure the land will provide economic viability for the County, pleasant areas to live in, protection of environmentally sensitive areas, and a use of the land that will assure us the same Worcester County we enjoy today (the same Worcester County citizens, stakeholders and County Commissioners pledged to protect in 2006) will be there for future generations.

I watched incredulously as the Commissioners began to debate, argue and interject their views about this parcel, and that parcel, and actually NAMED property owners....oh my gosh, they were actually talking about how to zone parts of this county because 'so and so' owned the property.

This meeting was no longer about land use planning and zoning. It was now about 'how can we accommodate this person and that person?'

What was so amazing to me is that everything the Planning Commission and County staff had prepared for them, which served to answer a lot of their questions, was totally ignored.   Some Commissioners did not even have these documents in front of them. How incredibly rude, how incredibly inconsiderate to those who had prepared them. How flat out IRRESPONSIBLE to the citizens of this County!!!

Worse - the reality is this, these elected officials who are going to vote on a new Zoning Code, Subdivision Development Regulations, Commercial Development Regulations and a new Zoning District Map don't have a clue what is in there. They haven't read it.

And you know what is really laughable, if one can laugh at this point? I'm willing to bet next week's pay check that every single one of our County Commissioners has at one time or another complained that our Congress is about to vote on a Health Care Bill that the elected officials in Congress have not read.

Ok, I guess at this point some of you are wondering about the title of this blog post? Here's the reason: on October 20, 2009 during a County Commissioner work session I almost shouted out at the top of my lungs "stop this madness! It's embarrassing!"

I truly did, in fact I felt I was so close to getting out of control I had to leave the Commissioner Chambers, go outside, bang my head against the cement pillar at the top of the steps, and talk aloud to myself like some homeless person in San Francisco (you know what I mean - you're on Columbus and watching some guy having a conversation with another homeless dude across town on Van Ness who is also talking into his shirt.) I literally had to talk myself down, get composed, and go back inside to take my seat and adhere to the rules, and not say a word.

And now I can close my very public diary, hit 'publish', and go to bed. But I haven't slept well since Tuesday, October 20 and I don't expect to sleep well tonight. There is much to research, attorneys to consult, and strategies to plan with my Board. There is serious trouble in River City folks and we need to pay attention.

Important County Commissioner meeting Oct 20

2009-10-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

The COASTKEEPER wants to remind you about the County Commissioner work session Tuesday Oct. 20, at 1:30 pm at the Govt. office building in Snow Hill.

The October 20 work session will be to review the revised ZONING MAPS, based on input that was given to the County during the Public Hearing in June and based on your written comments.

The Planning Commission is submitting some very good changes to the proposed zoning districts, particularly more protective zoning for the Sinepuxent Road and Holly Grove Road areas, which are the headwaters to three very important creeks (Ayers, Trappe, Herring.) Based on ACT’s comments and yours, this area will now see a larger land area protected as a Resource Protection District.

We are also pleased with the inclusion of more protective language/text regarding our impaired waterways and the development along these waterways.
Significant changes have also been recommended for the Rt. 611 corridor and for South Point, and also down in the Stockton area.

Thanks to unprecedented public participation and support, Assateague Coastal Trust is generally pleased with the revisions being proposed to the Draft Zoning Code and Land Use Map.

Those of you who live in the South Point area might want to review this observation made by County staff to the Planning Commissioners regarding the revised E-1 zoning districts in South Point and along the Rt. 611 corridor:

"Even though the requested retention in the E-1 Estate District is not consistent with the Comprehensive Plan, the staff and Planning Commission have no objection to doing so and would therefore recommend that the E-1 Estate District be retained in the MD Rt. 611/South Point area. However, the citizens do need to realize that in the next planning period the E-1 Estate District will need to be abolished and another zoning designation placed upon the area. The citizens should give serious consideration to what type of zoning classification is most in keeping with the area without creating extensive non-conforming lots or uses or having unanticipated adverse impacts to themselves".

While it’s humorous that County Staff uses this instance to note the E-1 District is not consistent with the Comprehensive Plan when it was County Staff that recommended the Commissioners RETAIN the E-1 zoning, it should also be noted the 2006 Comprehensive Land Use Map adopted by the County does indeed indicate a zoning district designation for the eliminated E-1 districts – look at the 2006 Land Use Map - all E-1 districts have been reverted to an Agricultural designation. Furthermore, if you read the ‘Watershed Characterizations’ in the land use section of the 2006 Comprehensive Plan, there is a very clear direction on what should be done!

At recent meetings with County staff, Ed Tudor has pointed out that perhaps residents in current E-1 Districts might not like to have a chicken house built next door to them. If you read the proposed zoning District definitions, you will see that the Proposed A-2 agricultural zoning district and the current E-1 zoning District share the same allowed uses, including poultry operations, animal waste storage lagoons, aquaculture operations, and other agricultural uses, and while the A-2 District might allow for a more commercial use these are by special exception only, so the public would have an opportunity to question those uses.

There was a reason the 2006 Comprehensive Plan called for the elimination of the E-1, which the current County Commissioners have refused to deal with, and the reason was because most of our E-1 zoning districts are in the flood plain, Critical Area, or resource sensitive areas. Up-zoning these remaining E-1 Districts to higher density uses is not sound land planning if they are located away from public services such as water and wastewater, so the Comprehensive Land Use maps recommended an agricultural zoning designation.

You can read Mr. Tudor’s full comments to the Planning Commission on the ACT website, here. The zoning map comments are located near the end of the document. ACT does not have a copy of the most current recommendations from the Planning Commission to the County Commissioners, however this document is fairly representational of those recommendations.

Assateague Coastal Trust agrees with Mr. Tudor’s assessment that the citizens in the E-1 Districts should give serious consideration to the zoning designations during the next Comprehensive Planning round of re-zoning. This is only a year away, ironically, since it has taken the county so long to get around to implementing the 2006 Comprehensive Plan. ACT will keep you updated on the next round of zoning updates so you, the public, can have adequate time to become involved in the process.

Meanwhile- A show of citizen support at the Commissioner’s work session on October 20 will help ACT keep the pressure on so the Commissioners will accept the Planning Commission recommendations and not try to weaken these recommendations.

I know it’s difficult to attend these day time meetings on a work day. And we are sorry we don’t have a way to post actual word for word transcripts so the public could read what was said and what happened at these public meetings.

Perhaps someday, with enough citizen input, the County will schedule these types of meetings for the evening so that greater public participation or observation may take place. Or perhaps one day the County will actually consider live video presentation of their public meetings on a public access cable channel! Something to push for during the next election cycle??

Thank you again for your participation this past summer in the drafting of our new zoning code. We made some significant changes for the better and we need your help to keep the County Commissioners committed to keeping these changes!

Promises and Threats

2009-10-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

In an article posted Oct 1 on delmarvanow.com a reader, "Hadley", said this about the resignation of Sandy Coyman, Planning Director for Worcester County: "Developers & Realtors, draw up those contracts; contractors, man your backhoes; carpenters, fire up those air nailers and skill saws: Happy Days are here again, Kelly is "liaising” with tech stuff and keeping track of ID badges, and ding-dong, Sandy’s gone. Kathy P and other Coastal Bay Untrustworthies-- cry me a river."

On Oct. 8, Mr. Coyman was quoted in a Worcester County Times article, referring to the 2006 Worcester County Comprehensive Plan, "A comprehensive plan should really be a compact between elected officials, county government and the citizens to let them know where we are all trying to go and how to get there, its something to be taken very seriously."

Both of these quotes explain what has happened in Worcester County.

If you attend Commissioner Meetings in this county you would know that County Counsel Sonny Bloxom and County Commissioner President Louise Gulyas didn't respect the intent of the Comprehensive Plan. They both said publicly that "a plan is just that, a plan, and plans are made to be changed." Gulyas supported the dissolution of the County Planning Department.

On their lead, Commissioners Purnell, Church and Cowger joined the effort to break this compact between the county and its citizens in favor of assisting a few businessmen who wish to further jeopardize the future of Worcester County for their own monetary gain.

I Bottle My Own

2009-10-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

While paddling on Pamlico Sound yesterday I drank cool tap water from my water bottle and thought I should post a note on my blog about why I fill my own water bottle each day.

During the 2009 WATERKEEPER Alliance annual conference, the COASTKEEPER viewed a 2008 Sundance Film Festival documentary selection “FLOW– How DidA Handful of Corporations Steal OurWater?”, an investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st century.
This documentary deals with the increasing privatization of the world’s disappearing fresh water supply and brings to the forefront how politics, human rights, pollution and in some cases downright theft of aquifers is all tied up in this industry. Not to mention the other issue, which is the millions of plastic bottles ending up in our landfills each year.
Inspired by this wake up call, the Assateague COASTKEEPER took an idea from the NY/NJ BAYKEEPER Program and ordered up a batch of stainless steel re-usable water bottles that declare “I BOTTLE MY OWN.”

Now you too can own one of these beauties! Each bottle comes with a carabiner clip and a little compass. Please send $15.00 (which includes S/H) to ACT, PO Box 731, Berlin, MD 21811; or stop by the ACT office in Berlin and pick one up for $12. Not only will you be helping to save the world’s fresh water supplies, you can also help to promote the Assateague COASTKEEPER Program! Order yours today. ACT hopes to bring a special viewing of “FLOW” to our watershed this fall. Watch our website and your emails for an announcement.
Less Plastic - More clean water!

Quiet time

2009-10-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Progger is taking some down time to herself. Will post things of interest, but maybe not every day. Still wondering if anyone is reading this? I know I have two Google 'followers'....but hope some of my FB friends are coming over here once in a while to see what I've posted.

Co-Opting the Message

2009-09-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

Last week 1000 Friends of Maryland launched their newest campaign around land use, a campaign targeted at Maryland's agricultural lands. Their goal is to keep farmers 'farming' and stop the continued sell-off of our rich agricultural lands to subdivision development.

A worthy goal and one vested in their mission statement. Unfortunately their media materials contained some language that I would like to debate.

A section of their publication stated "The growing divide between the agricultural community and the environmental community threatens to further alienate farmers in the public eye. The most volatile area of conflict has been around regulations on runoff from poultry farms, and there are indications that the divide may become more pronounced as the EPA and states struggle with failed bay cleanup goals. 1000 Friends of Maryland can help to bridge the divide among interest groups and communities in all parts of the region..."

Now besides the fact I met with these folks prior to the publication of these materials and I thought we had specifically addressed this language, the fact that they could not tell me how they planned to 'bridge' this gap leaves me disturbed. The reference to environmental laws and regulations as the reason for this great divide brought to mind a column I wrote for the ACT newsletter about a year ago.

And so I have dusted off that old 2008 column and post it now on my blog, because it is still so very relevant!! Read on......

I recently represented Assateague Coastal Trust at a one day retreat of Eastern Shore environmental groups, hosted by the MD League of Conservation Voters. Our goal for the day was to find a way to strengthen our influence in Annapolis by coming together as a unified voice for the Eastern Shore.

Not surprisingly, WATERKEEPER Alliance's effort to bring about more transparency in the CAFO permitting process quickly became a topic of discussion among a few of the groups and at first I was not bothered by direct and indirect comments on the perceived folly of our effort.

I became increasingly alarmed as the other environmental advocates spoke using expressions like "partnership with the farmers" and "protecting the family farms." What alarmed me about this discussion was not that these land conservation advocates needed to work cooperatively with our Maryland farmers, but rather that these environmentalists had been using the very phrasing developed by the poultry industry to fight regulation.

If you've ever heard the term “co-opted” used and didn't know exactly what it meant, this was a perfect example. One way or another, these environmental groups had been duped into speaking the language of the Poultry industry, language that seeks to dissemble and misrepresent the issues that we as environmental groups must pursue. By using this language, these people were unwittingly supporting the very group that fights so hard to prevent the regulation necessary to protect our drinking and recreational waters.

Do you ever get angry when you see someone throw trash on the beach at Assateague? Would you stop someone from dumping waste oil down a storm drain? Do you think it's OK for people to throw garbage from their car windows?

The fact is, the issue that seemed to alarm them the most was that WATERKEEPER wanted the poultry industry, like every other individual and industry in the country, to obey the laws which were written to protect the environment. This is what WATERKEEPER Alliance is asking the state to do by requesting transparency.

This is not new law or new regulation, it is simply saying, "You must tell us what you are doing." For too long now the poultry industry has been exempted from the same requirements that other industries must follow; providing specific information on how they handle runoff and waste.

Then there's the persistent myth of the "family farm." I've been to family farms, I know farmers who run their own operations on their own land, and I know the difference between that type of operation and a factory farm (which are family farms about as much as the Sopranos were a "family").

The poultry industry likes to portray these issues as hurting the family farmer when the real truth is that the poultry industry itself is more of an enemy to the family farm than any current form of state or federal regulation. The advantages they seek for these businesses, things like tax breaks, environmental waivers and zoning exceptions uniformly advantage only the largest corporate operations.

In fact these advantages the corporations seek usually result in an unfair competitive advantage for the large operations, an advantage that all too often results in the loss of family farms as profit falls and costs rise.

So don't tell me that by fighting to make others obey the same laws we all have to obey I'm hurting someone. And don't tell me that by protecting the water you play on, swim in, fish in, and drink I'm somehow doing the devil's work.

IMPORTANT WORCESTER COUNTY MEETING OCT 6

2009-09-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

Please be advised!   The Planning Commission has turned over a 'final draft' document of the revised County Zoning Ordinance, Subdivision Regulations and Zoning Map (based on public comment submitted this summer) to the County Commissioners.

The Commissioners will hold two work sessions to review these changes and prepare to adopt a new Zoning Ordinance, new Zoning District Map, and new Subdivision Regulations. The first is Oct. 6 at 1:30 pm in the Government Office Bldg. in Snow Hill. The second work session will be Oct. 20 at 1:30pm, same location.

It is imperative concerned County citizens attend these work sessions to listen and be seen**. No further public comment can be made and these work sessions, while open to the public, will not be open to public comment.

Through Assateague Coastal Trust, ACT attorneys and I helped to draft our written comments earlier this summer and they were submitted to the County by ACT's President Jim Rapp on behalf of the ACT Board of Directors.

Many of our comments regarding identification of impaired waterways, incorporation of better TMDL protective language, a more protective zoning district for the Holly Grove Swamp, (which in turn will protect the water quality of Herring, Turville, Trappe and Ayers Creeks,) were indeed drafted into these new documents.

In addition, per our comments, improvements to various definitions regarding environmental resources and environment features were written into the code. However, despite our pressure the County chose not to address the abolishment of the Estate Zone, nor did it chose to deal with another progressive Comp. Plan program - Transfer of Development Rights - to keep commercial development in the commercial zones.

I have to admit I was greatly surprised by this. After all, there was a huge hullabaloo in June after the public comments were received by Permitting Dept. Director Ed Tudor and assistant Phyllis Wimbrow (yes, it was Permitting Staff writing the new Code, not Planning....go figure.) And then of course, just after the public comment period, the entire government structure was overthrown and Permitting became King, with Planning and Environmental Programs kicked out of the sandbox.

Wimbrow publically berated ACT, the Coastkeeper, Maryland Coastal Bays Program and even the Maryland Department of Planning (!) during the June Planning Commission meeting, accusing us of not knowing what we were talking about.

Well, I'll admit I don't have an undergraduate or post graduate degree in Planning....but wait, neither do those two!

Oh, but I digress. Let me get back on track.

So imagine how thrilled I was to find some of our suggested language drafted into the revised code and subdivision regs.

My issue at this point is new language in the revised draft of the Code that now specifically exempts Rural Cluster Subdivisions and Consolidated Development Rights Subdivisions from the previous requirement to contain all their wastewater treatment on-site.

Offsite septic waste disposal systems and off-site location for drain fields is not good! There are a number of these in the county already. If they aren't providing a great location for people to drive down the dirt access road into the woods to dump their garbage, these off-site systems are prone to lack of monitoring, inspection and maintenance. Which means pollution to our streams, creeks and groundwater.

Another problem with this new language in the Consolidated Development Rights Subdivisions is that if off-site sewage disposal is allowed, the lot size is allowed to be smaller, which can potentially increase the number of lots to the maximum of 20 allowed. If the septic sewage had to be treated on each lot, the lots are required to be larger, thus limiting the total number of houses built.

Look folks - if the land you want to put a housing development on cannot handle the waste generated by the occupants - then it should not be allowed to be developed into subdivisions!! End of story.

That's why we are supposed to have 'growth centers' - because there are PUBLIC SERVICES within these growth centers. That's why Worcester County's Comprehensive Plan specifically designated 'growth areas', and these were not in the middle of our rural woods and agricultural lands.

If you agree with me - call your County Commissioners.   And don't let them tell you it's too late to comment..."the public comment period is closed," they love to use this cop out.

This specific language that gives an exemption for off-site sewage disposal for Rural Cluster Subdivisions and Consolidated Development Rights Subdivisions was not in the draft of the Code we, the public, were given. Therefore we were not able to comment on it. Tell them that.

And go to the meeting on Tuesday, October 6 at 1:30pm in Snow Hill at the Govt. Building behind the Courthouse.   If our elected officials do not see their voting public out in the audience, who will they see?

(**and now the disclaimer - the Coastkeeper is out of the state on Oct. 6. But several representatives from Assateague Coastal Trust will be in attendence.   I'll be back in time for the second work session.)

Trees - Who Needs 'Em?

2009-09-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

I'm talking about trees - you know, those obnoxious tall things that send out roots under your driveway, drop leaves and needles into your gutters, block your view. Who needs 'em? Let's get rid of them.

That seems to be the way Worcester County thinks about trees. Oh sure, county Planning Commission members will talk a good story - "trees are necessary to take up nutrients out of the groundwater, trees keep our parking lots cool and reduce radient heating, trees are important environmental features and must be protected. Especially large, established trees."

But sit at a few Planning Commission meetings and you soon learn they could care less. At the September 17 Planning Commission meeting, a new restaurant that will be built on Rt. 116 in West Ocean City was on the agenda. The PC had almost completed its review of the project, everyone had contributed their two cents worth and approval was eminent. Then suddenly an almost offhand comment by one of the Planning Commission members brought the two large, mature maple trees into the discussion. Now you have to realize, the property owner/business owner and his attorney had said nothing about these trees. These folks were just sitting there ready for the Commission to approve the project.

And with a flip of her hand, one Commissioner said "oh, its ok if you want to cut them down." That was it - the Planning Commission said go ahead and get rid of these two, mature - HEALTHY - trees if it will make it easier for the business owner to design the layout of the parking spaces!

I could not believe my ears. I could not speak up or object. They were just...gone.

So keep an eye out for it, folks. Across Rt. 611 from the Green Turtle, there's a small white house sitting back off the road on a wooded lot. When the construction begins, say goodby to those two large maples.

Oh, but don't worry - that particular Commissioner thought the whole design of the diner style restaurant was 'cute', so who needs the trees?

We can now drive down Rt. 611 just south of Sunset Ave. and where we had the opportunity to keep two more trees in this rapidly developing commercial zone, trees which will help to control stormwater, lower the ambient temperature in the area, and just do their simple job of providing oxygen - kiss 'em goodby.

Even more sad, when I spoke to this Commissioner on the street a week later, she didn't even realize she was the one who had done this!

Swim - Fish - Drink

2009-09-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Swim- Fish-Drink was the theme of the design on the t-shirt at a WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE conference a couple years ago. It's one of my favorite. Not just because it was a very trendy drab green color, but rather because these words ran across the chest, with an appropriate graphic of a swimmer, a fish and a glass of water above each word. Very simple, yet these 3 images and 3 words told a huge story about a single character - water.

Swim - Fish -Drink. That water theme sums up Worcester County in a nutshell. Tourists and residents alike flock to Worcester County to swim, jetski, water ski, wade in the county's water. Tourists and residents alike come here to boat, fish, clam, crab in the county's water. And we all drink the water here - well water or city water, it all comes from our aquifers that are fed from the groundwater, and that groundwater is recharged from whatever water can make its way through the soil.

'Stormwater' - plain and simple: any water that runs off a roof, a driveway, a patio, a lawn, a field.   Stormwater carries any and all pollutants it picks up along its journey from rooftop, etc. to the nearest receiving body of water (your creek, your river, your bays.)

And so I found myself on Wednesday, September 23, sitting in a meeting room for seven hours overlooking Back Creek in Annapolis, MD, a member of the Maryland Stormwater Consortium, with two dozen other environmental advocates, scientists, lawyers, engineers and land planning consultants to exchange ideas and formulate a communication strategy about the new Maryland Stormwater regulations that will go into effect early 2010.

The Maryland Stormwater Consortium formed almost two years ago, after the State Legislature passed the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007 - probably one of the most progressive pieces of environmental legislation to ever come out of Annapolis because it mandated that county and municiple land use and development codes must incorporate ENVIRONMENTAL SITE DESIGN (ESD) into the earliest planning stages of development/redevelopment.

ESD says that after the construction phase is complete, all stormwater must be kept on the development site to the maximum extent practicable and what does run off must be very close to what ran off the natural site before it was developed. Redevelopment regulations now require improvements to how stormwater is controlled so that the new building and parking lots actually do a better job of keeping the water runoff on site than the old building did. (are your eyes glazing over yet?)

The Consortium positioned itself to advocate for the strongest regulations possible as the state's old regs began a transformation that would turn the building community upside down. The paradigm shifts!

Old skool:   water is 'waste'- move it, pipe it, steer it by curb and gutter; whatever it takes to get it off the land as fast as possible. Dump it out into the closest body of water to the job site.

New skool: water is a 'resource' (wow, what a concept!)  Capture it, infiltrate it, re-use it, keep it on the land, filter it and let it recharge the ground water.

So now 'old skool' county/city codes must change. Familiar, easy, 'been doing it this way for years' methods are out the window. Old dogs must learn new tricks. Fortunately there are a number of new dogs in town too, so in some cases the transition will not be so difficult.

The Coastkeeper, and other Maryland Riverkeepers have challenged Maryland on sediment erosion control laws. Now we are preparing a review and possible challenge to the weakest elements of the new stormwater regulations.   Between the Waterkeepers and the Consortium, good citizens are working hard (and making our state/local agencies eat lots of antacids!) to enact the best possible regulations in order to protect THEIR water - YOUR water - OUR water!

We all want to Fish - Swim - Drink clean, healthy water. ESD will help keep pollutants and sediment to a minimum, if we can convince our elected officials to adopt strong local regulations.

To 'Prog'

2009-09-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

I wish to use my first post to thank Tom Horton for the inspiration that led to the name of my blog.

In his 1996 book 'An Island Out Of Time', about Smith Island on the Chesapeake Bay of Maryland, Tom wrote the following passage: ...."And among them, a transcendent few are proggers, existences webbed wonderfuly into this waterland. Their gleanings and discoveries continually enhance and reforge the bonds between human and natural communities here...A true progger loves, above all, to roam the edges where land and water merge."

Further along, he quotes an Eastern Shore waterman who says, "Proggers just go out to see what we can see, find what we can find."

How perfectly these words describe who I am and what I do. I am the Assateague COASTKEEPER and I am one of over 200 passionate WATERKEEPERS (of the WATERKEEPER Alliance) who speak for the waterways we are assigned to protect and defend.

I spend my days 'progging' my way around the Coastal Bays of Maryland, on a small 17' Carolina Skiff, keeping an eye out for pollution discharges, buffer clearing, construction, or marsh damage that can cause harm to the waters of Assawoman Bay, Isle of Wight Bay, St. Martin River, Herring Creek, Turville Creek, Sinepuxent Bay, Newport Bay, Chincoteague Bay and all the little creeks, guts and ditches that feed into them.

I also spend my days 'progging' my way around the halls of Worcester County government, challenging when necessary, to make sure County and State environmental laws are enforced and to ensure County policies will protect and enhance the health of our waterways and natural resources of Worcester County.

These waters can not speak for themselves. They need a voice. The Assateague COASTKEEPER is that voice.

So thank you Tom, for the blog name. Thank you Assateague Coastal Trust for your support of the Coastkeeper program. Thank you Waterkeepers everywhere around the globe for your guidance, inspiration, and dedication.

My posts, from this point on, will hopefully make residents of and visitors to Worcester County aware of what is going on - whether this is happening in public forums, in legislative forums, behind closed doors, or out in the open - waiting for a progger to come along and find it.