Hollow creek flows towards Bay.
Ever since the Environmental Protection Agency has started taking steps to enforce a clean-up of the Chesapeake Bay, industrial agricultural has been fighting back.
According to the April issue of the Chesapeake Bay Journal www.bayjournal.com, the American Farm Bureau Federation is suing to block the EPA from requiring states to set limits on the maximum amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that run into the Bay from their tributaries. This is a problem?
Apologists for old-time industrial agriculture like Carl Shaffer, president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, hide behind states rights to argue that “there is a gun being held to” the states’ heads “until they come up with a plan that the EPA feels is desirable.” Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte defends the rights of cattle feedlots to be free from federal regulation by the Clean Water Act.
Dave White, chief of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (talk about the fox guarding the henhouse!), before a U.S. House Committee hearing last March, actually praised the success of voluntary conservation programs which over generations have left the Bay a sewer.
Agriculture is the largest source of nutrient pollution feeding the dead zones in the Bay. Left to their own devices, there is no incentive for ignorant old farmers and money-hungry corporations – or money-hungry farmers and ignorant old corporations – to stop dumping cheap petroleum fertilizer and pesticides into our common watershed. If not this, what is the federal government for? Endless war?
Fight the power. Stop the polluters. They don’t have the right. Our watershed and the Bay should be protected for the people as a whole, not sold out to the ag. industry and developers.
In far western Albemarle County, Virginia, I’m writing and emailing Rep. Robert Hurt (hurt.house.gov)and Senators Webb (webb.senate.gov) and Warner (warner.senate.gov) to let them know where I stand.
Beech watch continues:
Hollow beech unfurls at end of April.