On March 4, I joined community members and advocates from Assateague Coastal Trust, Center for a Livable Future, Environmental Integrity Project, Food and Water Watch, and NAACP to testify in favor of Maryland's House Bill 1312. The bill, introduced by Delegate Vaughn Stewart (D-Montgomery County), would place a moratorium on permits for new or expanding concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs) in the state. The legislation would apply to "industrial poultry operations," defined as operations that produce 300,000 or more broiler chickens per year. It was introduced with strong support from community members and environmental and public health advocates hoping to pump the brakes on the seemingly unmitigated growth of poultry CAFOs, especially on the Eastern Shore.
The environmental and public health harms from CAFOs are nothing new to Eastern Shore residents. As stated in CPR's testimony, the expansion of CAFOs on the Delmarva Peninsula is a barrier to Maryland meeting its obligations under the Bay TMDL (total maximum daily load). Modeling shows that agriculture is the single largest source of nutrient pollution in the Bay from Maryland and the watershed as a whole. Data on nutrient loads indicates that the Eastern Shore has made the least progress in reducing phosphorus pollution and that nitrogen loads in the region have actually increased since Bay states agreed to the TMDL's pollution reduction goals.
In addition, a breadth of public health data shows that nutrient runoff from CAFOs contaminates groundwater, which many Eastern Shore residents rely on for drinking water. CAFOs also increase worker and community exposure to air pollutants that can cause or worsen respiratory health conditions. During the House hearing, Wicomico County resident Monica Brooks expressed concern for her daughter and granddaughter, who both suffer from asthma, and a new facility that went up next to her granddaughter's school playground. Another area resident, Margaret Barnes, shared that after moving to Salisbury a few years ago, her family began suffering from sore throats. Her son, previously healthy, was constantly afflicted with respiratory health issues. As a result, her family moved back to Annapolis earlier this year.
To add insult to injury, the effects of the climate crisis, such as sea-level rise and flooding, exacerbate the air and water quality impacts of CAFOs. Maryland's current and proposed stormwater pollution permits for CAFOs do not address how increased precipitation affects the pollution-removal efficiency of required controls, even though the state has already acknowledged to EPA and the public that this climate impact is undermining efforts to restore the Bay. Floodwaters may also damage CAFO pollution controls or cause spills that contaminate drinking water sources. Despite worrisome flood projections, Maryland's CAFO permit does not consider these impacts, either, and the state continues to permit new facilities in locations that are already at risk of flooding.
At the hearing, the opposition sought to refute the breadth of public health data and claimed the legislation would destroy Maryland's economy. However, recent data suggests the economic output attributable to the state's agricultural sector is lower than most Marylanders might think. A 2018 study by Salisbury University economists found that the agriculture industry contributed $3.3 billion to the state economy and supported 23,878 jobs, amounting to less than 1 percent of the state's GDP and contributing less than 1 percent of jobs. Every job is vital to the person who holds it, her family, and her surrounding community, but continuing to allow CAFOs to expand creates problems that outweigh the likely benefits.
While the fate of this bill remains unclear, CAFO moratoriums are gaining traction. Similar legislation passed in North Carolina and was introduced in Iowa. In 2019, the American Public Health Association published a policy statement supporting moratoriums on new and expanding CAFOs. Unless and until Maryland puts regulatory measures in place to mitigate the aforementioned effects of CAFOs, it's up to the legislature to act.
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Darya Minovi | March 12, 2020
On March 4, I joined community members and advocates from Assateague Coastal Trust, Center for a Livable Future, Environmental Integrity Project, Food and Water Watch, and NAACP to testify in favor of Maryland's House Bill 1312. The bill, introduced by Delegate Vaughn Stewart (D-Montgomery County), would place a moratorium on permits for new or expanding concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs) in the state. The legislation would apply to "industrial poultry operations," defined as operations that produce 300,000 or more broiler chickens per year. It was introduced with strong support from community members and environmental and public health advocates hoping to pump the brakes on the seemingly unmitigated growth of poultry CAFOs, especially on the Eastern Shore.
Christine Klein, Sandra Zellmer | March 11, 2020
The flood season is upon us once again. Beginning in February, parts of Mississippi and Tennessee were deluged by floods described as "historic," "unprecedented," even "Shakespearean." At the same time, Midwestern farmers are still reeling from the torrential rains of 2019 that destroyed billions of dollars' worth of crops and equipment, while wondering whether their water-ravaged farmland can ever be put back into production. All this while the Houston area continues to recover from three so-called "500-year floods" in as many years, back-to-back in 2015, 2016, and, most notably, Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
John Leshy | March 5, 2020
With the help of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has had a long and proud history of tackling pressing challenges through responsible and inclusive management of America's public lands. One might expect it would continue that tradition as climate change has become a major challenge confronting the nation. Not so. In fact, Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt has been doing more than any of his predecessors to promote fossil fuel development on America's public lands, all the while dancing around the issue of whether he has an obligation, or even the legal authority, to address climate change.
Matt Shudtz | March 5, 2020
From the farm fields of California to the low-lying neighborhoods along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, structural racism and legally sanctioned inequities are combining with the effects of the climate crisis to put people in danger. The danger is manifest in heat stroke suffered by migrant farmworkers and failing sewer systems that back up into homes in formerly redlined neighborhoods. Fortunately, public interest attorneys across the country are attuned to these problems and are finding ways to use the law to force employers and polluters to adapt to the realities of the climate crisis.
Karen Sokol | March 2, 2020
Earlier this year, on the heels of the Earth's hottest decade on record, a coalition of former government officials, fossil fuel companies, car manufacturers, financial companies, and nonprofit organizations renewed their endorsement of a national carbon tax as "the most effective climate solution" (emphasis added). And by "the," it appears that they mean "the only." The catch is that the coalition's legislative plan also calls for preventing the federal government from regulating carbon emissions and from taking any other protective measures "that are no longer necessary upon the enactment of a rising carbon fee." Given the scale and complexity of the planetary emergency that we face, it would certainly be nice if the solution were that simple. But that, of course, is too good to be true.
David Driesen | February 27, 2020
On March 3, the Supreme Court will hear a plea to invent a new rule of constitutional law with the potential to put an end to the republic the Constitution established, if not under President Trump, then under some despotic successor. This rule would end statutory protections for independent government officials resisting a president’s efforts to use his power to demolish political opposition and protect his party’s supporters. Elected strongmen around the world have put rules in place allowing them to fire government officials for political reasons and used them to destroy constitutional democracy and substitute authoritarianism. But these authoritarians never had the audacity to ask unelected judges to write such rules, securing their enactment instead through parliamentary acts or a referendum.
Noah Sachs | February 26, 2020
Environmental groups faced a skeptical bench during Monday's argument in two consolidated cases, U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, as they fought to preserve a 2018 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that had halted an $8 billion, 600-mile natural gas pipeline. At the heart of the dispute is a 2017 permit granted by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross the George Washington National Forest.
Joel A. Mintz | February 24, 2020
In recent months the Trump administration has intensified its assault on federal environmental safeguards on several fronts. It has proposed drastic reductions in the scope of protections against water and air pollution, lagged in the cleanup of hazardous waste contamination, allowed the continued marketing of toxic herbicides, narrowed the scope of needed environmental impact reviews, ignored and undermined legitimate scientific studies and findings, and dismantled government attempts to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.
Noah Sachs | February 19, 2020
On Monday, February 24, the Supreme Court will hear argument in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association. These consolidated cases pit a pipeline developer and the U.S. Forest Service against environmental groups that want to halt the pipeline's construction and protect the Appalachian Trail.