Phosphorus

Scientists say they have taken a major step toward improving water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and throughout the country by feeding chickens a hybrid corn that sharply reduces the amount of phosphorus in their waste.Researchers at the University of Delaware fed chickens the corn, along with an enzyme that helps the birds digest phosphorus more efficiently, and found the birds produced manure with 41 percent less phosphorus and 82 percent less water-soluble phosphorus. The mineral has been related to water pollution and outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida.

WHILE researching the Internet for the latest on "nutrients," like nitrogen and phosphorus, that are the principal pollutants of the Potomac River, I accidentally pulled up a piece on "nutrition" -- obesity and dieting among Americans.It made me recall the time I did a huge computer search on marine mammals, only to net everything I never wanted to know about the Miami Dolphins football team.But with my nutrient-nutrition glitch, something clicked.People in this country are worldbeaters, it turns out, in gaining weight and in losing it. We are both obese and dieters at unprecedented levels.

WASHINGTON -- It is a normally quiet corner of the city, an enclave of wealth and prestige whose winding, leafy lanes are home to foreign ambassadors and other members of the capital's upper crust.It is also home, however, to some ghosts from an antique age, and it's taking more than $25 million and the combined efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the city to exorcise them.Beneath the green lawns and ornamental gardens of the South Korean ambassador's back yard lies a burial pit for World War I-era chemical weapons and munitions.

Saving the Chesapeake Bay is turning out to be a lot more complicated than we thought.In the mid-1980s, it seemed as simple as a second-grade subtraction problem: Just take out the main pollutants -- nitrogen and phosphorus -- and we'd be left with clear water and bountiful seafood harvests.Now, as the bay's guardians begin refining their long-term plan to restore the bay, they're looking at the first dozen years' worth of results and realizing they don't add up. And new worries are cropping up: toxic Pfiesteria piscicida, rising sea levels, oyster diseases.

It's imperative that the state do more to control pollution runoff from Maryland farms into the Chesapeake Bay. But the state's proposed nutrient-management rules, which go into effect next year, need amending to ease the burden on small farms and to assure their equitable application.An advisory committee made up of farm and environmental interests is proposing several worthy changes to the rules.They include a change in calculating the size of a livestock farm, exemption of research or demonstration projects, and a state cost-sharing manure-disposal program for all livestock producers.

The state Department of Agriculture announced a pilot project yesterday that will allow Maryland farmers to manage the phosphorus-based nutrients in their crop soil.The four-year project will receive $1.5 million in annual funding from the state and the five poultry companies on the Eastern Shore, and permit farmers with excess poultry litter to transport it to farmers needing more.Poultry litter is chicken manure mixed with wood shavings. It contains more phosphorus than other fertilizers, and overloading cropland with phosphorus could cause long-term land or water-quality problems, said Norm Astle, the project coordinator.

Q. We're newlyweds with a composting conflict. I like to throw everything on the compost heap as is, and he insists on buying an expensive shredder to chop it all up beforehand. And then he wants to spend a whole day carefully layering soil, grass clippings, leaves, etc. Please help me straighten him out.A. You're going to have to compromise to make this compost pile work. He's right about shredding materials before they go in (although you don't need an expensive shredder). Chopping things into small pieces will hasten decomposition.

SUSSEX COUNTY, Del. -- While Eastern Shore poultry farmers face tough new restrictions on manure pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, their counterparts upstream in Delaware operate under some of this region's weakest environmental scrutiny.Delaware's environmental controls are so lax that a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official is warning that the state must quickly improve on its current "Boy Scout pledge" approach to reducing poultry pollution or the agency will intervene.The differing approaches by the states are most apparent on the Nanticoke River, which runs through Delaware and Maryland and carries excessive loads of "nutrients" -- nitrogen and phosphorus, prime Chesapeake pollutants.

FOR A legislative body that initially was consumed by ethics scandals, Maryland's General Assembly acquitted itself admirably as it wrapped up its 90-day session last night.Virtually every piece of major legislation was approved. Broad consensus on policy often crossed political lines, taking much of the fury out of debates.Thanks to a giant cash windfall from the state's economic good times, money was available to sprinkle around to legislators' favorite causes. Gov. Parris N. Glendening made sure lawmakers left Annapolis with plenty of good news to report to constituents.

THE $6 MILLION in fines and remedies that Tyson Foods Inc. will pay for polluting Chincoteague Bay is the stiffest penalty levied for water pollution in Maryland.The settlement that calls for reducing manure and bacterial runoff pollution should send a clear signal to the rest of Maryland's $1 billion poultry industry that remedial action is needed, not only by chicken processing plants but by farmer-growers who raise the birds."This action shows that it's more expensive not to comply with the law than to comply with it," a Justice Department lawyer said of the Tyson fine.

Kabul, Afghanistan - -Insurgents armed with rockets, mortars and a truck bomb staged an unusual frontal attack Saturday on a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, killing two American soldiers and forcing the defenders to call in airstrikes to avoid being overrun. The assault, which came as thousands of American troops were taking part in an anti-Taliban offensive hundreds of miles away in the south of Afghanistan, pointed up the insurgents' ability to take the fight to a location of their choosing - in this case, a remote outpost in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan's tribal areas.

The tomato plants I started from seed were big and healthy until I planted them. Now they're purple. Do they need more fertilizer? Although purple or reddish tomato leaves are a symptom of phosphorus deficiency, the problem in early spring is not lack of phosphorus. The soil is just too cold for the tomatoes to be able to access the phosphorus. Tomatoes need warm weather. If you're trying to get a jump on the season, put them in a sheltered spot and use black fabric mulch to absorb the sun and warm the soil.

JERUSALEM -Israel's use of white phosphorus artillery shells led to the deaths of at least 12 Palestinian civilians and destroyed millions of dollars in property during the recent three-week war in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch says in a report released Wednesday. Israeli military officials called the claim "baseless" and said the shells, designed to produce a smoke screen, were used in accordance with accepted rules. A frequent critic of Israeli military practices, New York-based Human Rights Watch says its review of the Gaza fighting found instances in which white phosphorus rounds were used in urban areas under circumstances that had no clear military rationale.

Can I transplant my dogwood while it is blooming? I planted it too close to the house two years ago, but it is flourishing. Dogwoods are forest understory trees, so choose a new location that is at least part shade. Spring is the time to transplant your dogwood, but wait until the soil is workable, i.e. dry enough that a ball of soil squeezed in your hand will crumble when you bounce it. Working with soggy soil that contains a high percentage of clay could turn it into cement. When you transplant your dogwood, prepare the transplant hole ahead of time.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert defended yesterday his country's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip and pledged to defend the military against international calls for an investigation of potential war crimes. "The soldiers and commanders who were sent on missions in Gaza must know that they are safe from various tribunals and that the State of Israel will assist them on this issue and defend them," Olmert said before his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, in comments released by the government.

JERUSALEM - Israeli leaders worked at home and abroad yesterday to reinforce a fragile cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and respond to international criticism of civilian casualties inflicted by Israel's 22-day offensive against Hamas militants who control the Palestinian enclave. Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, met in Brussels, Belgium, with European leaders about preventing arms smuggling into Gaza, and military officials in Tel Aviv said they were investigating complaints that Israeli forces ignored international restrictions on the use of phosphorus weapons during their attacks in Gaza.

Gov. Martin O'Malley said yesterday that he is inclined to sign legislation delaying a statewide ban on dishwasher detergent containing polluting phosphorus and that he still is weighing whether to veto a bill ensuring that fruity alcoholic drinks known as "alcopops" continue to be taxed and distributed the same way as beer. The General Assembly approved both bills during its recently concluded session. O'Malley, a Democrat, has received a number of veto requests and letters in support of the alcopops bill, which he pulled at the last minute from a batch of bills he signed last month.

Researchers used compost on Baltimore yards to demonstrate a technique for fighting the city's tragic lead-poisoning problem. Why is it OK to accuse them of using "sludge"? It's not. The compost that was used in this 2000 study is called Orgro. It's used and sold all around Baltimore. In fact, it's been made since 1988 at a composting facility owned by the city. It's labeled "Class A," meeting the highest federal and state standards for compost. Yes, this compost is made in part from what are properly called "biosolids," which come from a Baltimore wastewater treatment plant.

The Maryland Senate is poised to delay the implementation of a statewide ban on dishwasher detergent containing polluting phosphorus that seeps into the Chesapeake Bay, in response to objections from consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, which said it cannot meet the original deadline. Senators gave preliminary approval yesterday to legislation that would push back the ban's implementation by six months, to July 2010. The change would come one year after the General Assembly passed the ban on nearly all phosphorus in the detergents, which environmentalists say are discharged into the bay through sewers and other avenues, and contribute to algae blooms, fish kills and dead zones.

On the subject of conservation - especially the protection of the Chesapeake Bay - the farmer's voice is rarely heard. A good example of this came in 1997. That's when farm runoff was blamed almost entirely for the toxic outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida that resulted in fish kills, closed parts of three rivers to recreational use and raised questions about the safety of Maryland seafood. Lost in all the rhetoric was the fact that it was never proved that farm runoff had anything to do with the wave of Pfiesteria hysteria that swept the state.