State officials looking to clean up the Chesapeake Bay are weighing a series of new restrictions on how and when farmers can fertilize their fields — and on when municipal sewage treatment plants can spread their sludge on farmland.
Draft regulations drawn up by the Maryland Department of Agriculture are drawing fire from farmers and local officials, who say the limits being proposed are onerous, costly and unwarranted. But one scientist said they are backed by research and needed to reduce the pollution fouling the bay.
The rules, which have yet to be formally proposed, would, among other things, curtail the practice of fertilizing grain crops that are planted in the fall. They would also require farmers to keep livestock and fertilizer from 10 feet to 35 feet back from streams, ditches and ponds. And they would bar wintertime spreading of animal manure or sewage sludge, unless it's injected or worked into the soil to keep it from washing off.
this should be banned forever! nothing worse than spreading sh@t throughout the environment!
ReplyDelete8:34
ReplyDeleteJust move here? Where do you think your feces ends up?
What about DP&L and the PCBs they dumped in the Chesapeake Bay for years? Takes 1000 years for 1 PCB to breakdown and DP&L used it as their dumping ground for transformers for years. How much do they have to contribute to the clean up effort? Hate to tell you idiots, but without the farmer you do not eat. I know a lot of you believe that the groceries in the store just magically appear.
ReplyDelete8:34 Where the hell do you think all the animals and birds in the forest and on the bay crap?
ReplyDeleteWhere does all that end up? Oh yeah, in the bay and OMG it is not even treated by a sewage treatment plant.