Posted under Chesapeake Bay & Environment
Agricultural runoff is the single largest sources of nutrient pollution in the Bay. Much of the agricultural nutrient pollution comes chicken excrement that runs into the Bay from large poultry farms on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Currently, Maryland only has voluntary and ineffective regulations to limit agricultural nutrient pollution.
That was supposed to change last Wednesday. The Maryland Department of Environment has issued regulations that would have required Maryland’s largest poultry farmers – those with 125,000 or more birds – would have been required to certify they were talking the necessary steps to ensure animal waste does not get into the Bay. Under the regulations, “Farms would have had to pay an annual fee of up to $1,200, submit reports and be subject to state inspection.”
But now, the regulations are on hold because they’ve been legally challenged by a chicken farmer who “argues that the state’s requirements are ‘unscientific’ and will hurt his business.” (The regulations are also being challenged by an environmental group who claims the regulations are not strict enough.) The regulations cannot become final until the legal challenges are resolved.
Dr. Howard Ernst talks about the difficulty of implementing regulations and laws that reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay in his excellent and prescient 2003 book, Chesapeake Bay Blues. One of Dr. Ernst’s main points is that, although it’s clear we need to reduce nutrient pollution to clean up the bay, interest groups find ways to create barriers to action. That’s a big reason why, 25 years after the effort to save the bay started, the Chesapeake Bay is as polluted as ever.
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