MARYLAND AND PHOSPHORUS
What's the big fuss all about?
What's the big fuss all about?
Our coastal watershed, the Chesapeake Bay and all Eastern Shore waterways have a phosphorus problem, there is too much of it.
Over saturated farm fields and their crops can't use all of it, so the excess is running off into our waterways causing algae blooms that cause 'dead zones,' suffocate underwater vegetation, and harm fish and crab stocks.
After ten years of intensive scientific study, and four years of legislative process, Maryland is finally ready to take the most important step to control this excess nutrient in 30 years - adopting the Phosphorus Management Tool or the 'PMT.'
The PMT is a phosphorus pollution reduction tool that farmers and soil conservation officials will use to determine where phosphorus rich poultry manure can be spread on farm fields and where it can't.
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Fields on the lower shore are most heavily saturated with Phosphorus. Click the map to read an important Report from Environmental Integrity Project about this.
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Learn more about the PMT here. Call or write your Legislators and tell them it is long past time to implement the PMT. Don't let the Farm Bureau and Big Ag delay this any longer.
23 comments:
Boohoo. Fact is, the Wicomico is the most polluted river in Maryland. It's long overdue for the entire Shore to clean up it's act. From those that overuse fertilizers for their yards, to farmers, and those that raise chickens.
What about all the Sewage running down into the C. Bay from Philly and Wilmington.
Don't we need to fix that as well??
Asinine!!!!!!!!!!
1:15 lets see where your getting your facts from. The Wicomico River is not anywhere the top when you Google most polluted rivers in Md. #1 is held by the Patapsco River. Your just another typical liberal who spews opinion and not fact!
Before you shut down farming, the food they produce, and the additional downstream income; look at the sewage leaks and industrial polluters in DC, Baltimore, and PA.....
Keep going the way you are headed and more jobs will be lost on the shore and your food prices will skyrocket!
I am a Physicist/Chemist at SU. I believe that the phosphorus problem can easily be remedied by adding a small quantity of baking soda, and, copper sulfate additives to each chicken houses water reservoir. This will help to neutralize the ammonia excrement from their droppings - and might very well improve the air quality at the same time. The problem is - I really don't know what other feed additives - (steroids) - are being used. This could compound the problem and might possibly result in the production of 'lighter birds' and/or longer maturation process.
I hope this helps to answer some of your questions.
Conawingo dam sediment prevents sea grass growth in half the bay causing low oxygen levels, or "dead zones", but hey, that's the power grid fighting back there. Can't win that one, so we go after those who can't afford to fight back.
To 2:10 Poster
Having been born & bred an easternshoreman, my feelings are the same as George Patton as he stated in his infamous speech to his soldiers;
EXTRACT FROM GEORGE PATTON's SPEECH TO THE 3rd ARMY;
'Then there's one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you're sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, 'What did you do in the great World War Two?' You won't have to cough and say, 'Well, your granddaddy shoveled chicken shit on Maryland's easternshore.' No sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say 'Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Third Army and a son-of-a-godd...d-bitch named George Patton!'
I'D ALSO LIKE TO ADD . . . THE CHICKEN INDUSTRY IS ONE STINKING BUSINESS.
The pollution came from Purdue and the Western shore and the old Tillman fertilizer plant.
The biggest thing that needs to be done to help the bay is stop OMEGA from harvesting menhaden. Menhadens are very good filter feeders, Adult menhaden can filter up to four gallons of water a minute, OMEGA is demolishing the population and that is one of many reasons the bay is polluted
Theses comments are totally off the wall. This PMT is not only bad for the ag industry but terrible for John Q Public, the citizen. First, Kathy Phillips is a dirtball idiot who has an agenda that is not left wing, but is fatalistic. Next, one poster indicates the pollution coming from Wilmington & Philadelphia, that ain't gonna fly pal. That waste will go primarily to the Delaware Bay. Yes, the Potomac, the Patapsco, the Susquehanna, any estuary coming from a metro area is contributing at least as much and probably FAR MORE than the ag industry. You all hate the chicken industry but you continue to want the wings, the fried chicken, the McNuggets, the tenders, you still want the chicken but you don't want the industry. Figure it out people. If you want cleaner water with good, cheap food....then get in the fight to fix the WHOLE problem, not just a little piece of the problem. Use your heads not your wagging tongues.
To 2:30 Poster regarding George Patton's speech to the 3rd Army.
That is just too funny - but so true. The last time I entered a chicken house, after the chicken flock was removed, I almost passed out from the Ammonia. It was in the spring and the fans were off and the doors shut. I actually didn't think I would make it out of the exit
why doesn't the map you click on show any effects from delaware or the western shore?you know they are not innocent
if the eastern shore chicken industry is killing the bay then why does the lowerbay have the most oysters the most crabs and the cleanest water. you get above the bay bridge and the bay is 90% dead no oysters, less crabs and water that is never clear and always has a strange color and odor.
I know what all of the pollution is from all the bulls#!T spewing from tree hugging liberals
2:10, You are certainly not a chemist. Ammonia is NH3 and has zero posphorus., therefore your suggestion that using baking soda to remove ammonia will solve the phosphorus problem is idiotic at best.
Actually baking soda in the bedding has long been known to reduce ammonia levels. And, it is not the Baking soda itself, but the chemical reaction that does it. I have no idea what reaction would take place with phosphorus but since it is an element and not a compound, benefits would be questionable at best.
I'm with 906, and looking at what the map does show, it looks like Assateague all the way up through Rehoboth beach have the highest concentrations. How many tons of poultry manure is spread on the crops on Assateague?
Crops on Assateague? Gee, you don't suppose there's phosphorous in the ocean, do you? I mean all those sparkly and glowing worms and organisms glowing in the water at night all use electricity from the Grid, don't they?
Bottom line, there is no study that proves where it ALL comes from and what damage it is causing all by itself. And if you're going to paint a picture, paint the whole thing; otherwise it means nothing.
All of the chicken plants and farms need to be shut down on the shore and moved to New Jersey, the state with the most toxic dumps and trash.Then close it up.
Did you know that the city of DC's sewage treatment is in need of upgrades and as a result dumps billions of gallons of improperly treated waste water into the Chesapeake Bay every year? Seems ironic especially since it is not reported to us living on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay.
All you really need to know is that the Bay flows mainly south and that the population centers are to the north of the Eastern Shore areas under discussion.
If 'they' cleaned up their act we'd be in a much better position to determine what best practices here might be, and what effect they have. And given population densities up north and on the western shore that's where you'd get most bang for your (our) buck.
Not a farmer or waterman; just use common sense. Would be nice if the self-appointed experts would try that some time.
To 2:10, 7:31, 8:31 Posters - Ammonia, Baking Soda
After reading all of the above opinions, one thing is quite obvious - no one really knows the real answer to the overall problem. It sounds just like the decades old debate on whether or not carbon emissions result in higher global temperatures.
What I do know is this - that -20 degrees F is cold, -40 degrees is colder. All of the temperatures in between doesn't really make a difference as the entire range is cold period.
If a little baking soda will result in a less fowl odor - that is fine to because chicken manure just flat out stinks.
1:22 -- Hey, genius, Philly and Wilmington don't discharge into the Ches. Bay.
2;10 -- your BS is why you are at SU not MIT or a real university.
1:15 the Patapsco river is the most polluted due to the chemical factories (like Grace) spewing benzene into the water and other pollutants. I used to live there. They actually moved a whole community (Fairfield) because it was so bad. That area of North Anne Arundel and South Baltimore has the highest cancer rate in the state. Not to mention all the runoff into the river due to economic growth.
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