Investigation! Outrage!... And a Heaping Pile of Intrigue

In this article it talks about how there is about 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in Maryland and farmers don’t really have anywhere to put it. They leave it piled up and some of it leaks into the Chesapeake Bay. An environmental group called the Assateague Coastkeepers flew over a farm in Berlin, Md. and took a picture of what it claimed was a heap of chicken manure leaking pollution into a Chesapeake Bay tributary. The Maryland Department of the Environment did an investigation and determined the heap wasn’t poultry waste at all but treated human waste sludge from Ocean City’s sewage plant. So an activist named Kathy Phillips did her own water testing downstream from the heap and it showed high fecal bacteria levels in the stream. The MDE says they can take any actions they want with or without taking samples from the heap. They said that they were confident that the material was sewage sludge but still intend to take a sample of the water as requested by the Coastkeeper. The case is still not solved yet and the MDE is trying to put it under a cover but the Coastkeeper filed a notice and it became a bigger concern than expected.

I think this situation should be handled in the proper manner. We don’t know how much the manure could have an effect on the bay. It could do major harm to the animals living in the water and it could have a ripple effect to humans since we eat crabs and fish from the bay. One way they could handle it is to find a way to use the manure in ways that they use cow and horse manure. It may be helpful for land and plants. Another is to just put it in trash bags and take it to the dump. Items that are in the dump are similar to it and probably can’t be reused so they can just add it with it.

-Damien Kinchen

Palm oil

Palm oil developers push into Indonesia's last frontier: Papua

Palm oil is a highly coveted natural resource: it is a major ingredient in many everyday foods and functions as biofuel (Wikipedia, Palm Oil). Because of this, developers are always looking for large undeveloped tracts of land in warmer climates on which to create palm plantations. Many fragile ecosystems in tropical regions are quickly being converted into palm plantations. This article focuses on Papua and West Papua, the two regions which comprise the western half of New Guinea (Wikipedia, New Guinea). Many would argue that New Guinea possesses some of the world's most unusual and fascinating animals, which makes the issue that more critical to nature-lovers.

The article focuses on "Up for Grabs," a report which summarizes an investigation of the conversion of Papuan land into palm plantations; it goes into detail of just exactly how palm oil companies are making this a reality. In many cases, their methods are what some would consider drastic, or even unethical. For example, one company had a local child unknowingly sign his family's land over to the developers for decades. Many farmers are being paid "below market rates" for their land, which will generate an exceptionally high amount of revenue for developers compared to what they originally paid for it. Some farmers were led to believe development would improve their general welfare, but the promised benefits (schooling, housing, transportation) were never delivered. Other developers began clearing land before obtaining appropriate permits to do so. The report urges the suspension of palm oil permits until more sustainable methods of development are implemented.

In a related article, "Cheerios maker linked to rainforest destruction", I learned that palm oil is a common ingredient found in several everyday foods (Cheerios, Betty Crocker, etc.) and many are protesting General Mills' usage of non-sustainable palm oil. Apparently mass rainforest destruction in Indonesia (and I'm assuming elsewhere) is caused by palm oil plantations; not only is biodiversity being lost to this industry, but it creates harmful greenhouse emissions as well. Fortunately for the local wildlife, some companies are now starting to only harvest sustainably-grown palm oil. This is another example of how our everyday activities are affecting resources in a completely different part of the world, but the word seems to be out and progress is being made which benefits everyone from the U.S. consumers to the Papuan farmers.

Personally I would like to see more ethical practices carried out in the industry, perhaps a co-op where local farmers are put in charge of the harvesting (providing them with jobs) or sustainable farms (which benefit the local biodiversity). Southeast Asia, Indonesia and New Guinea harbor some fantastic species - orangutans, elephants, rhinos, birds of paradise, parrots, tree kangaroos - and it would be tragic to lose them to unnecessary extinction.

Tim Carney

China & renewables

This article in today's New York Times is about China making progress in developing its renewable energy industry. The author is worried about US competitiveness, but personally I'm more worried about the huge amount of coal that China currently uses to fuel its amazing growth. I'm happy to see China making investments in this kind of technology, and I'm happy to see technology being transferred from countries like Denmark so that it can be more widely used. Coal is still the cheapest to produce and use if you don't think about the externalities it creates, and I doubt that will change any time soon, so kudos to the Chinese government for diversifying their energy portfolio, even if it means paying more up front!

Chicken waste and the Chesapeake

I talked about this a little bit in class on Friday, but please take a look at this 2008 article from the New York Times on chicken farming and the health of the Bay. A few interesting statistics:

• 570 million chickens are raised per year in the state of Maryland
• They create 650 million pounds per year of chicken waste
• We spend about $100 million per year to protect the Bay
• The chicken industry contributes about $700 million per year to the MD economy
• Many farmers already do a lot to minimize their impact, including leaving buffer strips and recycling some waste at the world’s largest chicken manure recycling plant, which produces organic fertilizer pellets
• Agriculture contributes over 40% of the nitrogen and phosphorus that pollute the bay, and 70% of the sediment
• As of 2008 farms don't need permits and don't get regularly inspected: they just have to file "nutrient management plans" which are not public. Failure to file results in a $350 fine.
  

Menhaden

Rutgers Professor H. Bruce Franklin calls a small, oily, bony fish called the menhaden "The Most Important Fish in the Sea." To most people it's not of much interest except maybe as bait, but one company called Omega Protein depends on it for 230 million pounds of menhaden per year, the source of their $175 million + of annual revenue. According to this Time magazine article, 13 of 15 Atlantic states have banned harvesting of the fish because of its role as a keystone in the food chain. It scarfs algae, basically filtering 7 gallons per minute, and in doing so builds up lots of omega-3 fatty acids in its tiny body. Omega Protein uses these oils in a variety of products, including pet food and fish oil pills.

It turns out that Omega Protein, a Houston-based company, has managed to keep regulation of the Virginia menhaden fishery out of the hands of the governmental body we'd expect to have oversight: the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. This week, a couple of Virginia legislators introduced bills to allow the fishery to be regulated, but their efforts were stomped.

If someone's getting $175 million out of the little fish, that's a good thing- jobs are created in Virginia and Houston. On the other hand, fish from stripers to crabs depend on the fish both as food and for its filtering capabilities. If we want a clean bay, we'll need the menhaden's help in cleaning it up. Question is, how much is that clean bay worth?

**If anyone's looking for a paper topic, I think this is a good one. Start by reading this article and come talk to me.**

People or beetles?

It sounds too crazy to be real, but here it is, right in Calvert County: people may lose their homes to protect an endangered beetle. An interesting quote: "'I would equate the loss of the Puritan tiger beetle with the loss of the polar bear,' said Michael Raupp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. 'If it had fur and a cute smile and were the size of a cat, people would be more concerned about the loss of this thing.'" What do you think?

Welcome!

It's the start of the new semester and this is the boundary of what this semester's students are responsible for. You can take a look at posts from the last year to see what previous students did, of course, but you're responsible for the material from this post forward, including this one.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is proposing a new set of regulations that will set aside a fair amount of the Chesapeake as a sanctuary, meaning that people won't be allowed to dredge for oysters there. Naturally, the workers aren't too excited about this: they protested in Annapolis last week against the proposed legislation. A counter-proposal was issued a few days later to put control of the fishery in the hands of the legislature rather than the DNR.

Last year we had a speaker from the DNR who described the difficulty of regulating the fishery. He said that the problems are caused by all of us- note that one commenter on the first article proposes that no one fertilize their lawns this year- but the solutions mostly end up on the backs of the harvesters. No one wants to see harvesters put out of business, but unless something is done to regulate the streams of effluent that are messing up the habitat, DNR thinks that the best thing is for us to put up with some hopefully short-term restrictions. It's a complicated problem with no easy solution!