Delmarva Peninsula

WASHINGTON - The three-state Delmarva Peninsula will become the first site of a new nationwide program that will create development-free zones for farmers and wildlife under a bill scheduled for final House approval today. The final version of the farm bill produced by House and Senate negotiators includes the Delmarva Conservation Corridor proposal, sponsored by Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest of the Eastern Shore. The Delmarva Peninsula includes parts of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. The Senate is expected to approve the bill by the end of the month and send it to President Bush to be signed into law. The success of the Delmarva proposal is a victory for Gilchrest, a Kent County Republican who has worked for more than two years to realize his vision of preserving large rural tracts where animals and plants can exist freely without subdivisions or shopping malls.

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."

OCEAN CITY -- Tropical storm Danielle whipped through Maryland yesterday, bringing with it a raging surf, heavy rain and gale-force winds that leveled a small portion of this city's beachfront and flooded some Eastern Shore roadways.But outside of downed tree limbs and power lines and a small voluntary evacuation in St. Mary's County, the storm's force didn't overwhelm Maryland."Maryland was very lucky; if it had taken a more northerly course, it probably would have caused severe flooding on the Chesapeake Bay," said Len Sipes, acting spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency.

Perdue Farms Inc., the giant Salisbury-based chicken processing company, is seeking to automate the one of the worst jobs in its industry - that of the chicken catcher. The company said yesterday that it is in the early stages of testing two models of mechanical catchers on the Delmarva Peninsula and hopes to automate its full operation within six years. "As the owner and operator of the automated systems, it is our intent to create a process that reduces the arduous nature of catching chicken while improving the efficiency and quality of the processing system," said Bob Turley, Perdue's president and chief operating officer.

WELCOME TO "RFD: Radio Free Delmarva," says host Va Williamson, "the show that rolls up its own sidewalk after it's done and goes peacefully hometo bed."Just a little more than a year ago, it began as a 20-minute live jazz session on WSCL (89.5 FM), a public radio station based at Salisbury State University on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Today "RFD: Radio Free Delmarva" has grown into a two-hour live radio program that draws on the lore, occupations and talent of those inhabiting the Delmarva peninsula and celebrates the region's unique, agri- and aqua-cultural community.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.