A Little Arsenic With Your Glass of Water?

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

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

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

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

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

Guess which side won?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No One!

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer: No One.

Worcester Likes To Do It In The Dark

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



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

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


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

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

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


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

Tom Toles cartoon-Washington Post 3/8/10

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

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

Say It Ain't So, Joe!

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

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


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

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

                           -Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Water Pollution Facts

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


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

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

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

 -Joseph McCarthy

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

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

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

 -Joseph McCarthy, Wikipedia

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

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

-Joseph McCarthy, Wikipedia

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations to Tom Patton - 2010 Osprey Award Recipient

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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