Delmarva Peninsula

In its largest-ever single land deal, the state of Maryland will acquire about 58,000 acres of forest and wetlands on the Eastern Shore, as part of a three-state deal to protect it from development.Virginia and Delaware will purchase about 9,000 acres each, bringing the total to 76,000 acres in parcels scattered across the Delmarva Peninsula."Ultimately, this could be our Adirondack State Park, our Jersey Pine Barrens," said John R. Griffin, the former Maryland secretary of Natural Resources, who was involved in part of the negotiations.

Perdue Farms Inc., the giant Salisbury-based chicken processor, has teamed with a small Missouri-based company to build the first Eastern Shore factory that will convert chicken manure into pelletized fertilizer.The $6 million project, which could receive funding from the state, is designed to help rid the Delmarva Peninsula of excess poultry litter in an environmentally friendly manner.In announcing the initiative, James A. Perdue, chairman of the nation's third-largest poultry processor, said that "both poultry and crop producers are faced with increasing environmental mandates on farming; our goal is to help keep farming viable on the Delmarva Peninsula."

Partnerships are way to make conservation work for everyoneThe Conservation Fund agrees with The Sun that partnerships are the key to success in conservation today ("Lessons of a land deal," Aug 7).The projects the editorial cited in the Northeast and on the Delmarva Peninsula -- which together involve 376,000 acres of wetlands, wildlife habitat, woodlands and working forests -- are clear evidence of the importance of cooperation and teamwork.Both transactions are very complex and involve public agencies, nonprofit organizations, foundations, private investors and landowners.

Drugstore giant Rite Aid Corp. will expand on Maryland's Eastern Shore and double its presence in Delaware by acquiring Edgehill Drugs Inc., the largest drugstore chain on the Delmarva Peninsula, Rite Aid said yesterday.The nation's third-largest drugstore operator, with more than $12 billion in annual sales, said it will add privately owned Edgehill's 25 stores to its empire.Rite Aid did not disclose the purchase price. The company is scheduled to close the deal March 2 and expects the acquisition to add to earnings starting with the first quarter of fiscal year 2000.

HEBRON -- To the acknowledged icons of the Eastern Shore and Delmarva Peninsula -- the seafood and the waterfowl, the sandy beaches and tidewater coves -- add another: ditches.For thousands of miles across Delaware and Maryland, farm drainage ditches -- up to 14 feet deep and 80 feet across -- have extended, replaced and bypassed natural streams and wetlands of Chesapeake rivers from the Chester to the Pocomoke.The ditches make possible low-lying Delmarva's agricultural bounty. But they are also rapid-delivery systems to the bay for the nutrients that reduce oxygen, kill underwater grasses and possibly trigger toxic Pfiesteria outbreaks.

Willis T. Smart likes to talk about dabbling in fiction writing, stand-up comedy and rock 'n' roll, but he is first and foremost a company man, from the Golden Arches pin on his lapel to the McDonald's soda he sips during a meeting.The tall, athletic redhead from Long Island, N.Y., made $1.55 an hour when he started serving Big Macs at 17. Now, the 42-year-old is one of 40 McDonald's senior regional managers in the country, relishing a new home on 3 acres in affluent Glenwood in western Howard County, a Lincoln Town Car, and membership in the Cattail Creek Country Club.

SALISBURY -- Open the door of a stained-glass chapel at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church and hear the sound of change on the Eastern Shore -- in Spanish.The priest is Salvadoran. The parishioner strumming the guitar is from Mexico. And the singing worshipers' home countries make up a virtual map of Latin America: Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico and more.In only a few years, Spanish-speaking immigrants have become a presence across the Delmarva Peninsula.

HOUSTON -- We rarely notice change until well advanced; sometimes we never notice. Take chicken. America eats far more chicken than beef; nothing is cheaper (even the potatoes served with it cost more). At the counter, chicken, ready to go, can be found whole or by specific parts; raw, broiled, barbecued or smoked -- and enormous, thriving fast-food chains are based on chicken.But well within living memory, until the late 1920s, chicken was the most expensive dish you could order in a restaurant; it cost more than lobster or filet mignon.

CHESTERTOWN -- For 22 years, Emma Lively has worked at the Campbell Soup Co. plant here, going to work at 5:45 a.m. to separate chicken meat from the bone on an assembly line.Yesterday morning, she and 239 other employees got bad news: The poultry processing plant two miles outside of town will close Sept. 1, part of a consolidation effort by Campbell.The closing marks Campbell's departure from Maryland, although not from the Delmarva Peninsula -- a Millsboro, Del., plant makes pickles -- and follows by less than two years the closing of a company plant in Salisbury.

DAY TRIPS IN DELMARVA: A GUIDE TO SOUTHERN DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA. By Alan Fisher. Rambler Books. Illustrated. $9.95.(Paperback).ALAN FISHER of Baltimore, that most urban redoubt, has produced the best organized, best written, most comprehensive and practical guide to day-trips in that most rural and pastoral of locales, the Delmarva Peninsula.He describes and gives directions for 17 daylight-hour trips -- from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal area, through the glories of Chestertown, Rock Hall, Wye Island, Easton, Deal Island, Assateague, Chincoteague in picturesque Maryland to Accomac and Northampton counties of Virginia.

Hank Walter in Phoenix asks why the temperature in Salisbury is often 10 degrees lower than the surrounding areas: "In the mornings, the temperature there is usually as cold as it is in York, Pa." I've heard that before. Best guess: Salisbury, at the center of the Delmarva Peninsula, cools more at night because it's farther than nearby towns from the moderating influences of the bay and ocean.

Anyone who's ever driven behind a truck hauling chickens knows to expect a powerful odor and even a few feathers in its wake. But poultry carriers also apparently trail an airborne plume of potentially harmful bacteria, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers. The results suggest that motorists and those who live along roads traveled by chicken trucks may be exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the researchers say. They urged further study and possibly changing transport methods in areas of intense poultry production such as the Delmarva Peninsula.

William Potter Dukes, a former educator who established a magazine in the late 1970s devoted to the culture and way of life of the Delmarva Peninsula, died Friday of pulmonary fibrosis at Perry Point Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The longtime Denton resident was 71. Mr. Dukes was born in Baltimore and raised on Wickford Road in Roland Park. He attended Friends School and then transferred to Severn School in order to prepare himself for entrance to the Naval Academy. At the academy, he studied electrical engineering and planned to become a Navy pilot.

The Chesapeake Bay, where we learned to swim, fish and crab, is dying. And despite millions of taxpayer dollars spent on research and reporting, there has been little action to hold polluters accountable for poisoning our beloved bay. Drive around the country roads of the Delmarva Peninsula and you will find the leading source of the desecration of the bay and its estuarine tributaries: toxic animal waste piled outside chicken houses, sprayed over fields...

Charles Norris "Scorchy" Tawes, a former roving reporter and photographer for WBOC-TV who traveled the back roads, villages and towns of the Delmarva Peninsula recording the life stories of the folks he met along the way, died Monday of cardiovascular disease at the Alice Byrd Tawes Nursing Home in Crisfield. He was 86. Mr. Tawes was an accomplished fisherman, and the Scorchy Tawes Pro-Am Fishing Tournament was named after him. He began his television career in 1975 at WBOC in Salisbury, giving an outdoors and fishing report.

Crossing the Bay Bridge to Kent Island is frequently a tiresome exercise in fighting traffic congestion, but the first exit from the bridge puts you on the road to a peaceful weekend walk. Exit 37 leads to Log Canoe Circle and the modest entrance to Terrapin Nature Park, a 279-acre preserve with 4,000 feet of beach, woods and a great view of the Bay Bridge. It is one of 33 places that Jay Abercrombie recommends in his Weekend Walks on the Delmarva Peninsula (The Countryman Press, $15.95)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that Perdue Farms has agreed to review the operations of its contract chicken farmers to help them minimize the runoff of manure into Chesapeake Bay tributaries. The program, called the Clean Bays Agreement, does not introduce new pollution regulations or cleanup requirements, and it does not take away responsibility from environmental agencies, said Jon Capacasa, director of the water protection division for EPA's Mid-Atlantic region.

Feeling helpless against what seems to be an inevitable march of residential and commercial developments through Maryland's farmland? Don't think it's possible for one individual to play a meaningful role in keeping open space open so that second- and third-generation farmers can pass along their livelihoods to their children and grandchildren? As we cudgel our collective brains to find workable solutions toward managing the imminent growth facing the Eastern Shore and much of the agricultural countryside still remaining in the counties around Baltimore, we could end up despairing that there are no remedies.

John Meredith Anderson, a retired State Highway Administration surveyor who worked during the 1970s on a resurvey of the portion of the Mason-Dixon Line between Maryland and Delaware, died of multiple myeloma Friday at his Pasadena home. He was 77. Mr. Anderson was born in Addison, Mich. and raised in the Mount Washington neighborhood. He was a 1948 graduate of Calvert Hall College High School and attended the Johns Hopkins University and Loyola College. He worked for Catalyst Research Corp.

POCOMOKE CITY -- When signs were taped to storefronts this week imploring customers to wipe their feet, it was not shopkeepers fussing over muddy shoe prints. The customers were ordered to walk through heavy-duty disinfectant to kill avian influenza, the highly contagious virus that was found on a farm north of downtown a week ago. In just a few days, the town of about 4,000 people had already lost more than 300,000 chickens, some of its freedoms to work and move about and much of its sense of financial security.