Perhaps a bit of a concern

3

3CATSAILOR

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PrchJrkr

PrchJrkr

Long Haired Country Boy
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3CATSAILOR said:
Well, this can be of concern. It may contribute to why the cancers are so high in Southern Maryland. There is not a limit in all areas. Just some so far. For some reason farmers are allowed to farm within only a few feet of the water. I I wonder what ends up going in it from the farms?

Contaminant present in fish: * Mercury Δ PCBs + Pesticides


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Shhhh! Now you're messing with my occupation for after the big one hits. :boxing:












Of course, if there's limited sources of protein available, nobody's gonna worry about PCBs or heavy metals.
 
T

tipsymcgee

Active Member
You're forgetting all homeowners who put fertilizer and other stuff on their lawns each spring and summer. It all goes back to the Bay in some percentage.

The deeper pockets of industrial companies in Baltimore and other areas will always be there because they have the money. Same with Perdue and chicken folks on Eastern Shore, same with farmers, same with power plants. Always has been. They're protected. Anything MDE puts out to the public is generally lip service. "We know what our decision is but we'll hold a public hearing for you to voice your concerns."
 
NorthBeachPerso

NorthBeachPerso

Honorary SMIB
tipsymcgee said:
You're forgetting all homeowners who put fertilizer and other stuff on their lawns each spring and summer. It all goes back to the Bay in some percentage.

The deeper pockets of industrial companies in Baltimore and other areas will always be there because they have the money. Same with Perdue and chicken folks on Eastern Shore, same with farmers, same with power plants. Always has been. They're protected. Anything MDE puts out to the public is generally lip service. "We know what our decision is but we'll hold a public hearing for you to voice your concerns."
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Farmers have an incredible number of hoops to jump through. From filing nutrient plans to no-till planting to required cover crops to fertilizer timing.

New houses/buildings for the last 10-15 years have been required to sequester all their runoff from roofs, sidewalks and parking lots on site. That's why you're starting to see so many planting areas and "decorative" ponds as well as rain gardens, swales and green roofs.
 
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Gilligan

Gilligan

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NorthBeachPerso said:
Farmers have an incredible number of hoops to jump through. From filing nutrient plans to no-till planting
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Back in the early 70s, the state pushed us to switch to "no till" for all of our corn. For the soil erosion benefits they said. They sweetened the pot by making processed human waste - "sludge" - available for free from the large facilities like those operated by Washington MetCom. They provided low-cost loans so we could buy the expensive waste-handling machines - massive flotation-tired Terragators. They provided guidance on the new array of weed-killing chemicals we needed to use to prepare fields for no-till planting. This included mixing said chemicals - Paraquat CL chief among them - with liquid high-nitrogen fertilizer which we had to lay down on every no-till field in massive quantities. We bought a tanker to haul the nitrogen just so we could afford it...I used to mix and then spray the 2000-gallon loads of those chemicals wearing a ball cap and a pair of jeans. On an open tractor usually. With the wind blowing.

And 50 years later they were screaming about the damage that agricultural runoff did to the bay. and Paraquat...and...

The state "experts" can go fawk themselves.
 
T

tipsymcgee

Active Member
NorthBeachPerso said:
Farmers have an incredible number of hoops to jump through. From filing nutrient plans to no-till planting to required cover crops to fertilizer timing.

New houses/buildings for the last 10-15 years have been required to sequester all their runoff from roofs, sidewalks and parking lots on site. That's why you're starting to see so many planting areas and "decorative" ponds as well as rain gardens, swales and green roofs.
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There may be more hoops, but they're still allowed to do it. And I think cover crops are incentivized in some way. My point is not against the workers, my point is the MDE or EPA are rarely ever going to implement something truly effective to help the runoff, the Bay, the waterways. All those things are buzz words. Swales, rain gardens, rain catchers, retention, management plans.

25 years ago they wanted to harden the rules on chicken feeding operations, called it CAFOs. Had public hearings all over the Eastern Shore with tons of farmers in attendance against it. The CAFOs didn't happen, needless to say. I even had an MDE guy tell me, "what are you going to do, chickens are the lifeblood of the majority of the shore." Watermen and Save the Bay just can't compete on a level with the other industries. JMO.
 
TPD

TPD

the poor dad
tipsymcgee said:
There may be more hoops, but they're still allowed to do it. And I think cover crops are incentivized in some way. My point is not against the workers, my point is the MDE or EPA are rarely ever going to implement something truly effective to help the runoff, the Bay, the waterways. All those things are buzz words. Swales, rain gardens, rain catchers, retention, management plans.

25 years ago they wanted to harden the rules on chicken feeding operations, called it CAFOs. Had public hearings all over the Eastern Shore with tons of farmers in attendance against it. The CAFOs didn't happen, needless to say. I even had an MDE guy tell me, "what are you going to do, chickens are the lifeblood of the majority of the shore." Watermen and Save the Bay just can't compete on a level with the other industries. JMO.
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There are regs for CAFOs.

Animal Feeding Operations

An official website of the State of Maryland.
mde.maryland.gov mde.maryland.gov
 
Gilligan

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tipsymcgee said:
Yes but not as originally proposed 20 or so years ago and not the first time through. It always gets more watered down. First CAFO reg didn't come into effect until 2009.
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Simply stated, if the regs they had proposed were implemented in total, it would have meant the certain end to much of the agricultural activity on the eastern shore..and the end of the chicken industry there.

Compromise was necessary.
 
NorthBeachPerso

NorthBeachPerso

Honorary SMIB
Gilligan said:
Simply stated, if the regs they had proposed were implemented in total, it would have meant the certain end to much of the agricultural activity on the eastern shore..and the end of the chicken industry there.

Compromise was necessary.
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"I always wanted to live rural but here's what I don't like that has to change".

The reality is that industrial runoff, point source pollution, is relatively easy to monitor and control. Another reality is that almost all industrial processes produce some sort of pollution.

The main source of problems now (not the percentage but the downstream impact of the clear cutting of forests to build them) is residential subdivisions and all the crap people have Jose and his crew put on their lawns to keep them golf course green. not to mention that everybody who moves to one of those subdivisions just has to get at least one dog that they then let run loose to crap everywhere it goes.

Every 5000 sq. ft. house, every driveway, every massive parking lot for all the amenities people demand, every road to get to those amenities feed into the problem.

Due to the Clean Water Act local and state governments are now being held to a Total Maximum Daily Load limit and are required to mitigate the pollution. Back when it was adopted the 20 year cost estimate for just Calvert County was $2 billion.
 
T

tipsymcgee

Active Member
Gilligan said:
Simply stated, if the regs they had proposed were implemented in total, it would have meant the certain end to much of the agricultural activity on the eastern shore..and the end of the chicken industry there.

Compromise was necessary.
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Correct. I remember them saying how Delaware had done something similar and lost many of their farms or farmers moved to new states. I am just pointing out that compromise is usually the norm with MDE when it involves these bigger businesses, and the Bay is left with another poor report card.
 
Gilligan

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
tipsymcgee said:
Correct. I remember them saying how Delaware had done something similar and lost many of their farms or farmers moved to new states. I am just pointing out that compromise is usually the norm with MDE when it involves these bigger businesses, and the Bay is left with another poor report card.
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On the other hand...I've never seen the grasses so prolific as it has been in recent years, and we're seeing dolphins and whales and certain more "tropical" game fish farther up the bay than ever before, and the oyster harvest this years is remarkable.... So it's not all bad news, thank goodness.
 
T

tipsymcgee

Active Member
NorthBeachPerso said:
"I always wanted to live rural but here's what I don't like that has to change".

The reality is that industrial runoff, point source pollution, is relatively easy to monitor and control. Another reality is that almost all industrial processes produce some sort of pollution.

The main source of problems now (not the percentage but the downstream impact of the clear cutting of forests to build them) is residential subdivisions and all the crap people have Jose and his crew put on their lawns to keep them golf course green. not to mention that everybody who moves to one of those subdivisions just has to get at least one dog that they then let run loose to crap everywhere it goes.

Every 5000 sq. ft. house, every driveway, every massive parking lot for all the amenities people demand, every road to get to those amenities feed into the problem.

Due to the Clean Water Act local and state governments are now being held to a Total Maximum Daily Load limit and are required to mitigate the pollution. Back when it was adopted the 20 year cost estimate for just Calvert County was $2 billion.
Click to expand...
Yes - there's a huge new subdivision going on the Eastern Shore in Trappe, called Lakeside, right off 50. Was a hot topic for a long time due the creeks and tributaries there. It was really contested by locals and the River Keeper organizations. But they've started construction in the last year after all those MDE 'hearings' and public input.
 
woogie

woogie

Active Member
You might want to look into the history of SOMD.

There are several cancer causing areas of concern that have impacted the water and soil of SOMD.
Naval Air Test Center Patuxent River MD is one of the largest. It is the area of SEVERAL Super Fund Sites
that both State and Federal agencies have expressed concern and done investigation, testing and cleanup.
There are reported from the State and Federal agencies that give detailed data on this. The USN disposed
of many different carcinogens over the decades and even back then knew that they were poisonous, yet
did so anyway and not held accountable. Many people working there have died of various cancers.

civilianexposure.org/patuxent-river-naval-air-station-maryland/
civilianexposure.org/pfas-contamination-at-the-patuxent-river-naval-air-station-what-we-dont-know-may-hurt-us/

And then there is the Naval Research Laboratory Chesapeake Beach MD in Calvert County. They have
let many different chemicals and carcinogens go into the water, the bay and the soil there. They do and
have done lots of chemical testing, firefighting, explosive testing and other classified things there for
decades and have not been held accountable to anyone.

militarypoisons.org/latest-news/naval-research-lab-in-chesapeake-beach-md-sends-high-levels-of-pfas-into-the-chesapeake-bay
bayjournal.com/news/fisheries/forever-chemicals-from-navy-lab-flowing-into-chesapeake-bay/article_2bb30198-041d-11ec-8d03-7fbdc38a88a7.html

Then there is the old Southern Maryland Wood Treatment Plant site in Hollywood along MD Rte 235 that is
now cleared for a residential area. This site was of great concern and the State knew of many carcinogens such
as PCBs that had leached into soils and ground water that most people back then drank from via wells to that
water table. That little bit of local history is well concealed and back in the day even the locals knew about it
and didn't talk about it.

washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1985/03/31/toxic-waste-threatens-southern-md-farms/3150f662-5d3b-46e1-88c0-1a15945b040e/
cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Cleanup&id=0300305#bkground


And now they are finding that carcinogens in fish in Maryland waters are high. Especially industrial and forever
chemicals. And this also applies to shellfish as well as finfish. The chemicals come from farming, industry and
the military among other sources such as illegal use and disposal by homeowners and landscapers.

washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2006/01/25/catfish-in-md-river-have-high-cancer-rates/ff8ac506-8018-4e3a-b977-b6832b91ab39/

There has also been problems in the past with arsenic and other carcinogens in several SOMD water supplies
that serve large populations.

epicwaterfilters.com/blogs/news/waldorf-maryland-water-quality-report

Granted, the last link is from a water filter vendor, but the data contained is from official sources. So there is that.

Be informed, make your choice, investigate.

You might want to consider installing a treatment system on your home.
 
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