Manure

Supermarket shoppers in Maryland can't miss the signature blue-and-gold Perdue label on chicken and turkey in the meat section. The Salisbury-based company is the nation's third-largest seller of poultry. That makes it a prime target of environmentalists, who contend "Big Chicken" is fouling the Chesapeake Bay by not taking care of the animal waste produced by the flocks raised for it on thousands of farms across the Delmarva Peninsula. But in supermarkets with garden sections, consumers are likely to run across another product with links to Perdue, one that even environmentalists like — organic fertilizer, made with manure from some of the fowl grown for Perdue and other companies.

Optimism might seem out of place after the Waterkeeper Alliance's bitter loss in a recent lawsuit to hold Perdue Farms and its grower Alan Hudson responsible for polluting waterways with poultry manure. But it's possible to at least be hopeful of solutions, perhaps within the current decade, to this widespread bay pollution. Reasons for hope were less likely when the lawsuit was filed three years ago. Witness a survey recently presented by University of Maryland ag scientist Kenneth Staver.

Contrary to the views of one reader ("Maryland fertilizer regs leave a bad odor," June 7), proposed regulations recently submitted to the Maryland Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review are not about "demonizing manure. " These regulations, worked on by stakeholders for more than a year, attempt to reduce the use of any organic source of nutrients - including wastewater sludge and processing waters, as well as manures - in ways and at times where it is more likely to impact surface and ground waters.

State Sen. Bill Ferguson's car was vandalized overnight, and he said he suspects political enemies are to blame. Ferguson, a first-term Democratic senator representing south and southeast Baltimore, posted a picture on his Facebook page this morning, showing his car badly damaged from what he called "acid. " "Heard I had an opponent next election. Pretty clear its going to be same type of election as last time," Ferguson wrote on his Facebook page. "Last time this happened it was 2 weeks before election day. Not a fun way to start the day, and this time they used acid to destroy my car. " Ferguson said that in 2010, someone dumped food and horse manure on his car. This time, there was also manure on the hood of the car.  Ferguson lives in Canton, and said the incident has rattled his family.

The Maryland Farm Bureau balks at environmentalists' efforts to classify manure as a pollutant. They say that farmers value the manure as a resource and use it in lieu of chemically enhanced fertilizer. The simple fact remains that when too much manure is applied on land, it can become a significant source of phosphorus pollution that's killing local streams, creeks and the bay itself. Up to a certain point, manure can indeed be a helpful resource. But once the soil is saturated, no more manure should be applied.

It was arguably Ronald Reagan's favorite joke. In one version, two kids -- one an optimist, the other a pessimist -- rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he'll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with delight: "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" In fact, the joke took on a life of its own in the Reagan White House. Whenever bad news came in, someone would remark, "There's got to be a pony in there somewhere.

Autopsies showed that deaths of a father and his two teenage sons found in a Kent County manure pit Thursday were accidental. Maryland State Police said Glen W. Nolt, 48, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of Peach Bottom, Pa., died of suffocation during a farming accident. Their bodies were recovered from a pond of liquid manure at Centerdel Farm, a 200-acre dairy farm in the 12000 block of Vansant Corner Road in Kennedyville. Multiple injuries contributed to Cleason Nolt's death, police said.

I'm going grocery shopping for my garden. It may take severa trips; I'm running low on staples. The potting shed is bare of basics like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium -- the agricultural equivalent of bread, milk and toilet paper.My soil is hungry, and I must feed it.This is no easy task. Certainly it is more arduous than a trip to the grocery store. When I shop for myself, I take coupons and checkbook. When I shop for the garden, I take pitchfork and pickup.When the garden's tummy starts growling, I don't go to the farmer's market.

With an O'Malley administration bill seeking to boost offshore wind development effectively dead, the General Assembly approved another bill to promote projects that would produce energy from poultry manure and wood. SB237 , which would provide incentives to place giant wind turbines off Ocean City, has yet to come to a vote in the Senate Finance Committee.  Environmental groups, many of whom had made the measure a top priority, threw in the towel late in the day, issuing a press release expressing their disappointment with the General Assembly's failure to pass the measure for a second straight year.

New farm regulations being aired this week by Maryland officials would ease first-ever limits on how, when and where the state's farmers can spread animal manure and sewage sludge on their fields. The " nutrient management" rules , which were posted online Wednesday, have been revised by state officials in response to widespread complaints when they were first floated last summer. A scientist who reviewed them calls them a major step forward in the long-running effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay. But farming and local government groups remain concerned about the potential costs, while environmentalists are split on whether they go far enough to curb farm pollution.

Cows, rather than chickens, caused the pollution for which an Eastern Shore farm couple and Perdue are being sued, contends a witness for the Salisbury-based poultry company. Charles Hagedorn, a microbiology professor from Virginia Tech , told a federal judge Monday that a small herd of cattle grazing on Alan and Kristin Hudson's farm near Berlin were the sole source of high levels of bacteria and nutrients found in drainage ditches there. "These counts - and they are high - came from the cattle," Hagedorn testified.  But a lawyer for the Waterkeeper Alliance pressed Hagedorn to acknowledge that manure blown by large ventilation fans out of the Hudsons' two poultry houses could also have reached the ditches, contributing to the pollution.

It was arguably Ronald Reagan's favorite joke. In one version, two kids -- one an optimist, the other a pessimist -- rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he'll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with delight: "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" In fact, the joke took on a life of its own in the Reagan White House. Whenever bad news came in, someone would remark, "There's got to be a pony in there somewhere.

Alan Hudson, the farmer at the center of a environmental law case that could shake up the Eastern Shore chicken business, took the stand in federal court Wednesday to tell his side of the story. Hudson testified that as a 19-year-old, he built the chicken houses at issue in the case, on the Berlin-area farm that has been in his family for at least a century. "That was going to be my contribution to getting my foot in the door farming with them," the 37-year-old Hudson said, adding that the farm needed a new stream of revenue after its dairy closed down a few years before.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Executive Director Alison Prost mentioedn some good ideas in her recent op-ed, but what's more important is what she didn't say ("New pollution regulations aren't enough for the Chesapeake Bay," July 15). She didn't mention, for example, that the bay's poor condition is partly due to the timid recommendations the foundation has been issuing for 45 years, like buying local meat and planting bay-friendly landscapes, which produce only cosmetic reductions in pollutants.

Contrary to the views of one reader ("Maryland fertilizer regs leave a bad odor," June 7), proposed regulations recently submitted to the Maryland Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review are not about "demonizing manure. " These regulations, worked on by stakeholders for more than a year, attempt to reduce the use of any organic source of nutrients - including wastewater sludge and processing waters, as well as manures - in ways and at times where it is more likely to impact surface and ground waters.

Some of the new nutrient management regulations proposed by the Maryland Department of Agriculture to the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review of the General Assembly are unworkable in many areas of the state and demonstrate an ignorance of current agronomic science. One new regulation requires that all applications of organic nutrients be incorporated into the soil within 48 hours while completely ignoring commercial fertilizers. There are several problems with this.

— Many farmers in this rural Kent County community were left shaken after a father and his two teenage sons were found dead early Thursday in a pond full of liquid manure on a local dairy farm. The deaths appear to be accidental, but investigators will wait for autopsy results before ruling out foul play, said Greg Shipley, Maryland State Police spokesman. The bodies, tentatively identified as those of Glen W. Nolt, 48, and his two sons, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of Peach Bottom, Pa., had taken hours to find, submerged in a 20-foot-deep, 2-million-gallon manure pit on Centerdel Farm, state police said.

Autopsies showed that deaths of a father and his two teenage sons found in a Kent County manure pit Thursday were accidental. Maryland State Police said Glen W. Nolt, 48, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of Peach Bottom, Pa., died of suffocation during a farming accident. Their bodies were recovered from a pond of liquid manure at Centerdel Farm, a 200-acre dairy farm in the 12000 block of Vansant Corner Road in Kennedyville. Multiple injuries contributed to Cleason Nolt's death, police said.

— Many farmers in this rural Kent County community were left shaken after a father and his two teenage sons were found dead early Thursday in a pond full of liquid manure on a local dairy farm. The deaths appear to be accidental, but investigators will wait for autopsy results before ruling out foul play, said Greg Shipley, Maryland State Police spokesman. The bodies, tentatively identified as those of Glen W. Nolt, 48, and his two sons, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of Peach Bottom, Pa., had taken hours to find, submerged in a 20-foot-deep, 2-million-gallon manure pit on Centerdel Farm, state police said.