Bay Daily

A Game of Chinese Chicken With Perdue. Will The Bay Lose?

If you try to make me clean up my pollution, I’m going move my business out of your state – maybe even out of the country. And I’ll take all my jobs with me.  So back off!

It’s a threat (usually vacant) that industries have made repeatedly over the decades to try to scare government officials away from imposing common-sense rules to protect our environment.

And now we’re hearing a similar tune from big poultry business interests and other representatives of industrial-style agriculture.  The Salisbury, Maryland, based Perdue Farms Inc., the third largest poultry company in the U.S., is fighting hard against the most important legislation in a generation for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act would create legally-binding pollution reduction targets for the Bay area states, increase federal oversight, and threaten federal penalties if states fail to keep their cleanup promises.

My Road Trip To A Strange and Wonderful City of Oysters

I took a road trip to a strange and wonderful landscape recently.  Thousands of soft-edged rectangles, all lined up, floating in green. It looked like the cells of a gigantic leaf, as seen under a microscope.  Inside the cells were thousands of simple organisms, each a tiny pollution-eating machine. 

It was an oyster farm in the Choptank River near Cambridge, Maryland. And it could be a vision of the Chesapeake's future.

Bad Acid

Talk about a bad acid trip.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced today that a pair of natural gas drilling companies had spilled 295 gallons of hydrochloric acid used in hydraulic fracturing, and the state is fining the companies $15,557 each.

Protecting An Oyster Reef Is Like Saving a Forest

After hearing Gov. Martin O’Malley’s plan last week for reviving the battered Chesapeake oyster, I thought I’d talk to one of the foremost scientific experts on the iconic species.

So I drove out to the University of Maryland, College Park, and spent this morning in the lab of Dr. Kennedy Paynter (photo at left), Director of the Marine and Estuarine Science graduate program.

Dr. Paynter, who has been studying oysters in the Bay for 20 years, praised O’Malley’s proposal to expand no-harvesting oyster sanctuaries. They are set to more than double, to 24 percent of the viable oyster bars in Maryland's portion of the Bay, up from 9 percent today.

Expanding sanctuaries is vital to restoring oyster populations, Dr. Paynter said, because harvesting not only removes some mollusks that could otherwise reproduce. More importantly, dredge equipment knocks down three-dimensional reefs that serve as shelters for fish, crabs and other aquatic life forms.

Low Carb Diet For The Bay

What kind of diet should the Bay go on?  Atkins?  South Beach?  Low carb? How about low nitrogen and phosphorus. And add a spunky new wardrobe of underwater grass skirts and oyster necklaces, please.

The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) is planning public hearings next Tuesday (December 8) in Baltimore and Friday (December 11) on the Eastern Shore to discuss how strict a pollution “diet” the state and federal government should impose on the Bay. 

Just as you and I take in too many calories (sorry, I’ll leave you out of it – but I know I certainly do, especially after the kids and wife go to bed, for some reason), the Bay swallows way too many nutrients, namely nitrogen and phosphorus. This over consumption makes the waters fat with algae, which devour oxygen, causing dead zones.

Sweeping New Protections for Chesapeake Oysters

The beleaguered Chesapeake oyster has a new protector: Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

During a pearl of a press conference on the Annapolis waterfront, O’Malley unveiled a sweeping new plan to more than double the no-harvesting oyster sanctuaries in the state’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The state is also beefing up efforts to encourage oyster farming.

The broad picture is that Maryland is moving away from the hunter-gatherer model of oyster harvesting that has ruled the Chesapeake’s waves for centuries, and inching toward a more privatized model in which aquaculturists cultivate oysters in underwater farms.

Important Announcement Today on Bay

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is scheduled to make an "important announcement" about the Chesapeake Bay today at 11 a.m. at the Annapolis Maritime Museum.  Stay tuned.  Bay Daily will cover the event and report back.

Decision on Sprawl Highway Delayed for Third Time ... Threatened Species In Headlights

Three strikes and you’re out.  Please, umpire Martin O’Malley, finally call an out on the Sprawl Highway project in Southern Maryland. 

Yesterday (December 1) was supposed to be the deadline for the Maryland Department of the Environment  to make a decision on whether to grant Charles County a permit to destroy seven acres of wetlands to build the Cross County Connector.

But in response to a question about the decision, the state agency yesterday afternoon emailed Bay Daily a letter indicating that the state has granted a third extension of the deadline.  State officials want more time to look for threatened plant species (like Dwarf Iris, pictured at right) in the path of the roadway and examine information about the project that Charles County sent in just before the deadline.

Farm Industry's Attack on Clean Water Legislation

Big agriculture industry groups have come out against the most important clean water legislation in a generation.

The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act, recently introduced in Congress, would for the first time create legally-binding pollution reduction mandates for Bay area states.

The latest volley in the battle over this critical legislation will erupt tomorrow. The  Virginia Farm Bureau is planning a press conference in Richmond to spell out their opposition to the bill, according to an Associated Press report. Basically, the Farm Bureau is claiming that the bill will put farmers out of business by smothering them with expensive regulations.

Animated Video Tells Story of Bay

Check out this cool animated movie about the complex relationship between fishing, pollution and life in the Chesapeake Bay.  Especially telling are the descriptions of the decline of oysters and the recovery of striped bass.