MFB, DPI deny charges made by enviro-activists

By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor

BALTIMORE — The vision of M&T Bank Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, overflowing with chicken litter, a vision painted on Baltimore television stations by a group of young eco-activists known as Environment Maryland, continues to draw the ire — and forceful rebuttal — of the poultry industry.
The vision emerged from an Environment Maryland press release headlined “Groups use stadium to highlight massive chicken problem, as state wavers on stronger Bay cleanup rules.”
The group alleged that “Each year, Maryland produces enough chicken litter to create a pile across the field at M&T Bank Stadium that’s twice as high as the stadium itself.”
Environment Maryland urges Gov. Martin O’Malley “to show the kind of leadership in reducing phosphorus pollution that he’s shown with clean energy production, energy efficiency and land preservation. We encourage him to show that kind of leadership by using any new regulations to make the needed improvements in our manure management rules.”
Queried by The Delmarva Farmer about Environment Maryland’s sustained attack on the poultry industry, Tommy Landers, campaign manager for the group, filed this response.
“The Bay is polluted from a number of sources, the largest being runoff from urban and farmland runoff. 
“To restore the Bay, every source needs to do their fair share to clean up, which is why over the past few years we’ve worked to limit pollution from urban stormwater, residential lawns, farm fields and poultry operations in particular.
“Now, especially as the governor considers stronger rules to reduce pollution from animal manure, we wanted to highlight how the current regulatory framework for manure management has not adequately dealt with the problem.”
Maryland Farm Bureau and Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., immediately filed point-by-point rebuttals with the television stations which aired the M&T Bank stadium allegations and staff an interview with Environment Maryland.
Bill Satterfield, DPI’s executive director, said Environment Maryland’s “publicity effort ... is another misguided effort in an on-going series of attacks upon the Delmarva Peninsula’s chicken industry and farmers throughout the region who rely upon chicken manure, a locally produced organic fertilizer created by the chickens that is a valuable fertilizer that helps sustain conventional farming in the region.”
Maryland Farm Bureau president Patricia Langenfelder added: “Farmers in every county are working with their local WIP planning group and are committed to implement the Best Management Plan options laid out in each county.
“New regulatory proposals short-circuit the TMDL/WIP process. Farmers are frustrated by the whittling away of their ability to make farm-specific decisions to be productive, while meeting nutrient reduction goals. The speed at which Maryland is placing mandates and restricting farm practices makes it impossible for good scientific research and cost/benefit analysis to be conducted.”
The releases said that Maryland State Sen. Roger Manno, D-Dist. 19, “joined the conservation organization in calling for updated commonsense changes to reduce pollution from agriculture.”
In a subsequent conversation with this newspaper, Manno said that “their report documented the volume of manure being used. Can we roll back that number? I’m not a farmer. I know we use buffer zones. We’re working on that right now but I’m not trying to put agribusiness out of business.”
Manno said even organic farms use chicken waste. He said he realizes that there are a lot of phosphorus sources that reach to the Chesapeake Bay, and a new law to strengthen penalties for phosphorus pollution.
“We’re on a learning curve and we have to figure out how to address it,” he said. “It’s not just chicken waste. We’ve never been here before. It’s all uncharted territory. Ag is just a small source of it.
“We all love the Bay and we need to figure it out together.”
Manno said in 10 years, he worried that the death tax would eliminate farms altogether.
“We need to repeal it. Hopefully, when our kids make the legislation, they won’t still be working on these same issues,” Manno said.
Sen. Richard Colburn, R-Dist. 31, says he intends to take Environment Maryland’s continuing pillage of the Delmarva poultry industry to the next meeting of the Eastern Shore legislative delegation.
“All the farmers I talk to,” said Colburn, “tell me the allegations are either half-truths or total lies.”
“There is no doubt,” he added, “that Environment Maryland has a vendetta against the poultry industry on the Shore. They don’t care if they destroy a $2.5 billion industry and 25,000 jobs.
“Their mission,” he said, “is to drive the poultry industry off Delmarva and they don’t care what it costs.”
Dr. Anne Marsh, Project Director of The Heinz Center in Washington, D.C., spoke with The Delmarva Farmer on Jan. 5. She said she checked all of the sources and computations and then wrote The Delmarva Farmer that the following statement is accurate: “Each year, Maryland produces enough chicken litter to create a pile across the field at M&T Bank Stadium that’s twice as high as the stadium itself.”
(Editor’s note: Staff reporter Michel Elben contributed to this story.)