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Copyright 1998 The Baltimore Sun Company
The Sun (Baltimore)
January 4, 1998, Sunday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL (NEWS), Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 749 words
HEADLINE: Farmers seek to slow bills on Pfiesteria; At meeting
tomorrow, Md. officials to hear from poultry growers; Rush to
regulate is feared; Rumors rife of bills aimed at reducing runoff
on shore
BYLINE: Heather Dewar and Christian Ewell, SUN STAFF
BODY:
Eastern Shore farmers, fearing a rush to regulate their operations
after last summer's Pfiesteria outbreak, will ask state lawmakers
tomorrow to hold out for airtight proof of a link between farm
practices and the microorganism's toxic outbreaks.
Wicomico County Councilman Louis R. Molnar, a produce and poultry
farmer, has organized a public hearing of legislators and other
state officials to be held at 7 p.m. at Wicomico Youth and Civic
Center in Salisbury.
In a written invitation, Molnar asked poultry growers to turn
out in force to send a go-slow message to legislators a week
before the start of the General Assembly session.
"Numbers count in politics, and a large crowd is essential
if we are to defeat unacceptable and economically devastating
proposals," Molnar wrote.
The councilman said yesterday that the county farm bureau and
Delmarva Farm Industry Inc., a poultry growers organization, sent
more than 1,100 invitations to farmers in Wicomico, Somerset,
Worcester and Dorchester counties.
Molnar said he hoped that at least 300 people would attend
the session. The only other hearings on the Pfiesteria problem
in Maryland were those conducted in the fall by a gubernatorial
commission, he said, adding that the meetings were not well-publicized
and many farmers did not know about them until it was too late
to attend.
"It's real important that the public be perceived as having
some input on the process," Molnar said. "First on what's
causing the problem, secondly on how we can solve it."
One speaker will be Del. Norman H. Conway, a Wicomico Democrat
who says his constituents are worried that farmers might be forced
to sharply reduce the amount of chicken manure they spread on
their fields.
The manure is a cheap, effective fertilizer, farmers say, and
more than eight out of 10 Lower Shore farmers used it on their
fields last year, according to a state Department of Agriculture
survey.
The state commission investigating last summer's outbreaks
of Pfiesteria piscicida and similar organisms concluded that
manure-rich runoff into Eastern Shore rivers and streams contributed
to the problem.
The panel, headed by former Gov. Harry Hughes, said nutrients
in the runoff helped create the conditions that caused the dinoflagellate
organisms to change from dormant to dangerous, killing fish and
sickening people along the Pocomoke River and other waterways.
The panel recommended that all Maryland farmers adopt plans
within the next five years for limiting the amount of manure they
spread on their fields.
Those limits could leave Lower Shore poultry farmers, who raise
most of the 300 million chickens produced annually in Maryland,
with the problem of disposing of the manure. Growers of field
crops might have to turn to costly chemical fertilizers or take
some of their land out of production to create buffer zones between
farm fields and waterways flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.
In the days before the Jan. 14 opening of the General Assembly,
rumors abound about a spate of bills aimed at reducing nutrient-laden
runoff from farm fields, Conway said.
Among the ideas that farmers find most alarming are a proposed
moratorium on new chicken-raising operations and a tax on Maryland
poultry, he said.
"The agriculture folks are very much concerned about proposals
that they see as very much a rush to judgment," Conway said.
Molnar said he doubted that the outbreak was "exclusively
nutrient-driven," adding that 25 percent of the Pfiesteria
-infected areas in North Carolina had low nutrient levels. "I
don't know how we can expect to find a solution in 45 days when
they've been working on it in North Carolina for a number of years,"
he said.
Eastern Shore farmers are willing to take steps to reduce the
risk of future Pfiesteria outbreaks, he said, "but it's
got to be proven to work. It can't be someone's idea or someone's
theory."
One of the goals of tomorrow's meeting, Conway said, is to
get that message out to Eastern Shore delegates. But he said he
expected that those at the meeting would be open to proposals
for some voluntary changes in the way they run their farms.
"There are some people here who have concerns about the
use of chicken manure year after year and the effect that may
be having," he said. "Our folks, for the most part,
want to do what is right and what is reasonable. After all, they're
the ones who depend on the land, and they need for it to be healthy."
Pub Date: 1/04/98
LOAD-DATE: January 8, 1998