Earlier this month, Shore Rivers, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Sierra Club, and other environmental activist advocacy groups met at an Eastern Shore Environmental Legislative Review Summit.

Summit attendees included members of the General Assembly from Prince George’s, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, and Baltimore Counties. In reviewing the summit proceedings, it is clear there is a surge of focus on pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

This is welcome news for everyone interested in the health well – being and a bright future for the Bay.

The Delmarva Fisheries Association (DFA) has been raising the alarm on pollution’s devastating impact on the Bay these for an exceptionally long time. DFA has also been researching and proposing ideas on meaningful and measurable ways to help ensure the Bay not only survives but thrives.

That said, it was disheartening that one uninformed summit attendee made statements about the health of the Bay that are, at best, misleading and are, at worst, flat out wrong.

At the Summit, State Senator Sarah Elfreth who represents Annapolis and the southern portion of Anne Arundel County said the wild fishery for oysters is not rebounding. NOT TRUE! According to the most recent reports from the State Department of Natural Resources, the number of oysters harvested over the previous four years increased dramatically, the number of oysters harvested over the previous three years have increased over 200%, the biomass on oysters harvested have increased and the spat set from which full-grown harvestable oysters grow has increased. These numbers are inconvenient truths for doom and gloom story tellers that help in endless fundraising campaigns  by some environmental groups more focused on using incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information to encourage well-intentioned but misinformed members of the public to donate money to their organizations.

Senator Elfreth also expressed her displeasure on how the Maryland Department of Natural Resource’s Oyster Advisory Commission presented their report to members of the General Assembly in December 2021. In her view, development of the report was not conducted in the way that the General Assembly had initially set it up. This observation is misleading. The facts are that industry representatives from DFA on that advisory commission not once, but twice, presented a letter of resolution specifically addressing the fact that the dialogue and deliberation was not working out the way it should have because of covid restrictions on in person meetings. These same representatives expressed their opinion that issuing a final report should be delayed. That view was not shared by a majority of the commission members.

Perhaps Senator Elfreth, who serves as chair of and as one of two Maryland State Senators on the tri state Chesapeake Bay Commission, as Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bay Critical Area, as a member of the Oyster Advisory Commission and was sponsor of the legislation on Fishery Management Plans for Oysters; would have been aware of these facts if she had attended more than a few meetings of the Oyster Advisory Commission over a four year period. Perhaps by attending more meetings and voicing her concerns at those meetings about the process she could have made a difference. By virtue of her serving in all the capacities noted above she also had every opportunity to request, access and review timely and accurate information on such an important issue as oyster restoration challenges and opportunities.

Meeting the still daunting challenges of improving the health of the bay requires every key stakeholder to participate fully in all discussions no matter how these discussions are managed, as well as a commitment to become  fully aware of all the pertinent facts. Those charged with doing what is best for the bay need to be engaged wherever, whenever, and however there is fact-based dialogue and deliberation. The Bay and those who love it as a place to make a living or enjoy using it for a wide range of recreational pursuits deserve nothing less

Rob Newberry is the chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association

A week doesn’t seem to pass without news of another legislature considering action to limit or deny abortions in its state.  And the subject is front and center at the Supreme Court in its current session.  If the Court should decide to overturn Roe V. Wade it has been estimated that some 26 states would enact anti-abortion statues. 

Every time I hear about this issue, read about it or see it discussed on television my mind jumps back more than fifty years to a primitive, dank and musty duck blind on a creek in Talbot County.  It is so long ago that I cannot remember exactly where it was. But a conversation in the blind on that fall day stands firm in my memory.

We had a beautiful view of the creek and a small, secluded, peaceful bay where ducks and geese often gathered. And right in the middle of the bay was a small island—perhaps two acres or so—about a half mile out from the blind.  It was abandoned, overgrown with wild shrubs, reeds and grasses, and mature trees typical to an Eastern Shore landscape.  And, sitting at dead center, was a tumbledown, two-story house with a couple of outbuildings nearby.  None of the weathered clapboards on the property had felt the swipe of a paintbrush for decades. 

It was my first visit to the blind—one of those waterside outlooks that required a good set of boots because, on each rising tide, the moldy plywood floor flooded. My host had invited a local resident to join us. He spoke up in a quiet moment when nothing was flying. 

He pointed out the various characteristics of our site and its pluses and minuses insofar as hunting waterfowl was concerned. And then he pointed to the little island.  He may have called it by name.  If he did, I cannot remember what it was. 

“See that place over there?”, he said. “That’s  where the women went for abortions years ago. They would hire a  fellow to row them out there, at night.  They were afraid to use an outboard.  Too much noise. When they got there someone they called “Doc” would take care of them.”   

“Was he a real doctor?” I asked. “No, just someone who knew how to do that sort of thing,” he said.  

Today, more than a half century after that encounter, the recollection of my hunting companion’s story and the memory of that long-abandoned island come rushing back to me as I learn of legislators considering laws that would make it impossible for legitimate, trained health practitioners to provide abortions for women whose personal circumstances are such that they feel compelled to choose such treatments. 

For more reasons than anyone can imagine, and for more years than anyone can count, women have sought abortion assistance.  The question before us today is this:  Will we, as a nation, allow those women to terminate pregnancies openly, legally and safely, or will those who need such care have to return to the darkened shoreline, looking for the rowboat, that will take them to the island for a procedure performed by “Doc?”

We are likely to have some answers before the end of this new year.   

Ross Jones is a former vice president and secretary emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University. He joined the University in 1961 as assistant to President Milton S. Eisenhower. A 1953 Johns Hopkins graduate, he later earned a Master’s Degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Barring last minute glitches, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb), successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, will be launched from the European Space Agency’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, next Friday. 

The Webb was developed by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. Its 21-foot-diameter primary mirror has more than six times the light gathering power of Hubble’s 7-foot 10-inch mirror. That, plus Its enhanced sensitivity to lower frequency light, will allow it to observe galaxies much more distant (and therefore farther back in time), perhaps near to the birth of our universe 13.5 billion years ago. 

Webb is also capable of detecting many more exoplanets within our own Milky Way galaxy, and in more detail, than the 5000 or so already discovered. It will look for biochemical signatures, molecules associated with life, on planets that lie within habitable zones (where liquid water can exist) of the stars they orbit.

The 25-year development of the Webb has accrued a cost of 10 billion dollars. That sounds like a lot of money. Is it worth it? I most emphatically answer yes. Here’s why:

First, for perspective, we have spent 400 billion dollars on a single USAF fighter program, the F-35, over the last nineteen years. Our US defense budget for next year is $753 billion.

Second, I have always wondered, as you may have, if we are alone in the universe. Webb could help answer that question, not by looking for messages as in the SETI program, but by analysis of exoplanet composition. Can we find indications of even primitive life, or at least another Earthlike planet? Doesn’t that excite your curiosity? 

Third, this project is a testament to how human beings can overcome the toughest technical challenges in accomplishing something positive. With all the bad stuff going on (divisive politics, Covid, pollution, climate change, mass murders) the Webb should be uplifting, a bright island in a sea of dark news. 

Launch of the Webb is not the nervous part. The Ariane 5 booster has a great record for reliability. The nail-biting comes with the sequence of unfolding Webb’s 18-segment primary mirror, its secondary mirror, and its multilayered sun shield. The telescope will be sent to the L2 Lagrange point, in sun orbit a million miles from Earth, so if anything goes wrong in the deployment sequence, we have no capability to send astronauts to fix it, as we did five times with Hubble. 

There are folks who have invested their entire careers working on the Webb. If it fails to deploy it will be a crushing blow. If it succeeds it will be an achievement to rival our moon landings. If all goes well, it will still be six months of deployment steps and instrument calibration before we start getting science results. Something to look forward to next year!

See the NASA Webb Space Telescope fact sheet for more detail.

Bob Moores retired from Black & Decker/DeWalt in 1999 after 36 years. He was the Director of Cordless Product Development at the time. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University

For far too long, prevailing conventional wisdom has been that environmentalists and farmers will always be at odds over the impact of government policies, oversight, and regulation. It’s time to change that. We need a strategy that supports our farmers as they deal with the negative effects of climate change and one that also supports the agricultural practices that will help address the severe, immediate climate crisis that we all face.

Maryland—and especially the Eastern Shore—is highly vulnerable to the current and future effects of climate change. When it comes to rising sea levels, our region has the dual misfortune of the threat of rising waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries as well as sinking land. Our farmers stand to lose the most if we fail to act on the threats of saltwater intrusion, coastal flooding, and severe weather events—but our vibrant agricultural community also stands to benefit the most when we think creatively about how to partner for success.

I come from a long line of family farmers, and agriculture runs deep in my DNA. It’s one of the reasons I’m running for Congress here in Maryland’s First District—our farmers need a true advocate and leader who is willing to stand up for them in Washington, and that’s something we haven’t had for the past decade.

My spouse and I own a small 34-acre organic farm in Kent County that is our forever home. We see ourselves as stewards and work to always be in right relationship to the land and its habitats and ecosystems. It is in the spirit of a farmer-conservationist that I sponsored a roundtable discussion which gathered local stakeholders ranging from farmers and environmentalists to academics, non-profit leaders, and industry entrepreneurs to discuss ideas for how agricultural policies can partner to help solve our climate crisis.

Out of that collaboration came a specific policy platform that I call “Agri-Climate Solutions for Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” which can be read in full on my campaign website. These ideas are just a few of many ways that our agricultural communities can be a part of our climate solutions and how farmers can benefit from these practices.

Creating a National Soil Health Initiative

Successful agricultural communities depend on the quality and health of the soil that is feeding their crops. As the effects of climate change are dramatically impacting soil conditions, we must get ahead of the curve on mitigating these challenges by supporting a robust and visionary plan to create a new project called the National Soil Health Initiative (NSHI) through the USDA that would address the problems of saltwater intrusion, reform key conservation programs, and leverage greater use of carbon farming which can boost soil health and store carbon in the soil, positively impact the climate crisis, and contribute to agricultural resilience. This project could begin as a pilot program for the Delmarva / Chesapeake Bay region to prove its benefits before rolling it out as a national program.

Farming Carbon: Soil-Based Sequestration

While certain agricultural practices can release net carbon emissions, others do the opposite by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere into the soil. Scientists estimate that each year, soils could sequester over a billion extra tons of carbon. However, we must support the implementation and continuation of carbon storing practices to achieve maximum soil carbon outcomes.

There is a growing carbon credit market providing an opportunity for farmers to get paid for mitigating the effects of climate change through soil-based carbon sequestration.

Large corporations who want to offset their carbon footprint are in the market to buy carbon credits. Farmers generate carbon credits they can sell in this marketplace when they go through the process of certifying and calculating the carbon they store in the soil through practices using cover crops, diversified crop rotation, use of natural inputs such as compost, conversion to perennial grasses and other conservation cover, reducing chemical inputs, and pastured rotational animal production, to name a few.

To address this potential, the NSHI will invest in research to test and identify optimal carbon storage practices and will facilitate the tracking and measurement of organic matter and soil carbon to help drive best practices and maximize participation in carbon markets. The program will assist with the transition to and continuation of practices which achieve optimal per-acre carbon storage.

Reforming Conservation Programs

The USDA has an alphabet soup of programs that collectively work to conserve land by compensating farmers and landowners who voluntarily engage in conservation practices. The NSHI will advance some key reforms to these programs by:

Increasing rental payments under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for projects tied to climate-conscious practices that focus on increasing organic matter, soil carbon, and soil health as well as better management of nutrient runoff into waterways. CRP will also add educational and technical assistance programs to inform landowners of available programs and assist with participation and enrollment;

Updating the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) to give weighted priority to projects devoted to soil-boosting practices which provide optimal per-acre carbon storage outcomes;

Using the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) to provide federal bonus payments to farmers enrolled in state cover crop programs, effectively leveraging additional state funds for this purpose and maximizing enrollment in existing state cover crop programs. CREP will also authorize incentive payments for rewarding best practices in measured outcomes for soil carbon storage;

Amending conservation programs to put an increased emphasis on helping farmers create individualized soil health plans, including plans for soil carbon storage;

and Amending conservation programs to allow farmers to receive rental payments for land that is no longer suitable for agriculture because of saltwater intrusion if they install some form of alternative and sustainable energy source on that marginal land.

Boosting Technical Assistance and Decreasing Administrative Burdens

USDA programs supporting soil health and soil carbon storage, education, and assistance are underfunded and oversubscribed. There is a significant need for more federal investment in technical assistance and support throughout all USDA programs to meet the growing demand. The Natural Resources Conservation Service and its Soil Conservation Districts is just one example of where we must invest in more technical assistance offerings to help farmers implement robust soil health plans that are envisioned under the NSHI. In addition to program expansion, the NSHI is dedicated to decreasing administrative burdens that can limit access and engagement in these programs.

Addressing Saltwater Intrusion

In addition to severe weather events, rising sea levels also pose a significant threat to our farming traditions as saltwater intrusion dramatically impacts growing conditions. As saltwater leaches from the Bay onto our fields and into our aquifers, the rising salinity level in the soil makes it challenging to grow an array of cash crops that have become staples for our region.

To address these challenges, the NSHI will invest in research to test and determine which cash crops are most capable of withstanding salty soils and periodic flooding; track salinity changes over time in groundwater wells and surface water; and map these areas as a way to highlight where it will be most cost-effective to implement adaptation measures such as planting salt-tolerant crops. The NSHI will also make changes to existing conservation programs to inform landowners of available programs and ease transition of impacted farmland to marsh fields that will protect biodiversity and improve carbon storage.

Crop Insurance: Keeping it Affordable and Rewarding Good Climate Practices

The Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) protects farmers from the impacts of unpredictable weather but as insurance claims increase because of severe weather events, farmers may be faced with higher premiums to keep the program solvent. The USDA projects that the severity of predicted climate change could cause FCIP costs to increase by up to 22 percent. We must ensure that farmers are not bearing the burden of these increased costs through higher premiums for their crop insurance. A better approach is to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate mitigation and devote a portion of that funding towards FCIP solvency.

In addition to keeping crop insurance premiums from rising, the USDA should reward farmers with lower FCIP premiums if they are using best practices to make crops more resilient against severe weather.

Farmers who increase organic matter and carbon in the soil can produce more climate resilient crops, which withstand the extreme and unpredictable swings between drought and heavy rains. These practices contribute to more resilient yields and reduced federal crop insurance claims; however, the USDA gives no consideration to whether a farmer deploys these practices when determining crop insurance premiums. By modernizing this program to give farmers credit for good climate practices through lowered FCIP premiums, the USDA would create an incentive that is good for the farmer as well as the land.

Transforming Poultry Litter Into Biofuel and Potting Soil
The Eastern Shore is home to some of the highest concentrations of broilers in the country with the poultry industry employing thousands of Marylanders in our region. For decades, excessive chicken litter was applied directly to agricultural fields, resulting in high nutrient levels in the Bay, algae blooms, and dead zones. How to properly manage excess poultry litter has been an ongoing challenge for our region, but an innovative public-private partnership may offer a sustainable solution to this problem.

Planet Found Energy Development is a Maryland-based company of scientists, farmers, and business leaders dedicated to developing manure management technologies that will safeguard the environment as well as the economic viability of our agricultural communities in the Chesapeake Bay Region. Planet Found has built a patent-pending system for treating poultry litter and converting it into renewable energy, potting soils, and fertilizers while eliminating liquid discharge. In the process, the majority of phosphorus introduced to the system is captured as a phosphorus-based fertilizer, removing it from the nutrient cycle in sensitive agricultural and ecological environments.

This project is currently being piloted on the Lower Shore in Pocomoke City. As innovations like this one come to market, there is an opportunity to use agricultural technology to solve some of the most stubborn environmental challenges created by certain farming practices. Reducing agricultural runoff into our waterways and lowering our phosphorus nutrient loads will dramatically improve the health of our Chesapeake Bay. Doing so by investing in and scaling up technologies that transform poultry litter into value-added products for commercial sale is a win-win-win.

This Agri-Climate plan envisions a world where Eastern Shore- and Maryland-based companies with next generation solutions to agricultural and environmental challenges benefit from strong public sector support and advocacy. The agricultural community is in many cases the most affected by the climate crisis, and farmers should be our priority partners in combating it.

Heather Mizeur is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 1st Congressional District race in 2022. She previously served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing the 20th district in Montgomery County. She now resides is Kent County with her spouse Deborah Mizeur.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

We’re all familiar with that statement, uttered by Abraham Lincoln as the United States hurtled toward civil war, a statement that Lincoln himself took from the New Testament.

There’s no denying that the United States is again a nation divided. It’s not just major public policy matters that are politicized, it’s everything. Even a worldwide health crisis has become a cause of division, with the simple acts of wearing a mask or getting a vaccine becoming hotly contested polarizing causes.

It’s bad enough that some of these divisions stem from some of the same issues that have divided the United States since its founding: Race, disagreements over the role of government, and regulation of individual rights.

But what makes today’s divisiveness even more dangerous is that many leaders of the Republican Party, including and especially Donald Trump and his most fervent supporters like Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland’s First Congressional District, have embraced division as a political strategy. They cynically seek every opportunity to pit their “us” against a multitude of “thems,” to brand those who question them as “enemies of the people,” to label honest disagreements as “war,” and to attack, belittle, bully, and destroy. They want us to be divided, because division makes their supporters feel threatened and motivated to vote for them. If Wall Street tycoons believed in the creed that “greed is good” because it helped them make money, then many of today’s Republican politicians and their high-paid strategists operate by the principle that “division is better” because it helps to keep them in power.

And that brings us to Steve Bannon.

Bannon is the Republican political and media operative who, before he became Trump’s top political adviser, ran Breitbart, one of the most contentious, provocative, and divisive of the alt-right media. Bannon has said that “[a]nger and fear is what gets people to the polls.” He has pushed extreme nationalist and anti-immigrant policies. His Twitter account was permanently suspended after he suggested that Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded. His has remained in close connection with some of the same alt-right groups that organized the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Indeed, on the eve of the attack, Bannon broadcast that “all hell is going to break loose” at the Jan. 6 protests. And as we now know, it did. But how did Bannon know what would happen in advance?

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack wants to talk with Bannon. They want to know what he knew, when he knew it, and who else he was talking to, including Trump. These are all legitimate grounds of inquiry for an attack that claimed lives, saw our seat of government overrun by mob rule, and threatened one of our most important democratic institutions – the election process.

But Bannon refuses. So the House, including with the support of several Republicans, has voted to hold him in contempt of Congress, and last week he was indicted on charges of criminal contempt. Was Bannon contrite? No. On the contrary, he paraded into court defiant, bringing his own camera crew to record the event, which he will no doubt post all over his media sites to rile his audience and raise money for himself and his extremist causes. Controversy, anger, and division are good business for Bannon, which he cynically exploits for himself and his Republican allies.

Jan. 6 was an example of how divisiveness can lead to violence that can destroy a nation. Bannon and anyone else who may have encouraged, fomented, and even supported that kind of violent action need to be held accountable.

Lincoln predicted what would happen when a house remained divided.

We need to stop those who for the sake of political gain would recklessly promote division to the point of violence before it happens again.

Dave Harden is a candidate for Congress in MD First District