From the Chickens to the Crabs - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 68

tices and focus only on the negatives. “This law will run you out of business,” they'd say.
The only “education” she got, Morison said, was when Perdue gave her the phone num-
ber of legislators they wanted her to complain to.
Agribusiness has powerful, well-funded lobbyists and is notoriously resistant to reg-
ulation. Poultry farming is just one part of a much larger agribusiness matrix that in-
cludes feed and fertilizer companies, irrigation-pipe and tractor makers, CAFOs, and
so on. The integrators have warned that if environmental regulations become too tough
in Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia, they will move their job-producing, tax-generating
operations to more lenient states, such as Kentucky. Thus far, the threat has worked to
minimize government oversight.
Leon Billings , a Maryland legislator from 1991 to 2003, said, “ 'Big Chicken' … hired
the top guns in the lobby community in Annapolis, and they made every effort to pre-
vent us from enacting tough regulations on agriculture.”
Federal regulators such as the EPA have allowed integrators to monitor their own
agricultural runoff on what is essentially a voluntary basis, which clearly doesn't work.
Moreover, policing runoff into the Chesapeake has been hampered because Washing-
ton, DC, and the six states in the bay's vast watershed—West Virginia, Delaware, Mary-
land, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York—have different laws and customs.
“here are laws on the topics, but there is no enforcement,” said Carole Morison.
“It was very discouraging. The regulations get so watered down and full of loopholes
they're not worth the paper they're written on.”
“ THE NEXT GLOBAL WARMING ”
As the poultry litter and other fertilizers flow into surface and groundwater, they
carry heavy loads of nitrogen (fertilizers) and phosphorus (pesticides) with them. With
help from rains, snowmelt, and spring flooding, surface and groundwater spread these
chemicals far and wide. Or so the theory goes; as Bob Hirsch said, scientists have many
clues but don't yet fully understand the spread of eutrophication.
Nitrogen and phosphorus are basic aspects of the food chain, but scientists suspect
that when they mix with water and sunlight—especially in a fecund place such as the
Chesapeake Bay—the result is superstimulated algae growth and expanding dead zones.
The buildup of nitrogen, in particular, is emerging as what experts such as Hirsch
call “the next global warming.” Nitrogen is an inert gas that makes up about 78 percent
of the earth's atmosphere, but it has more reactive forms, one of which is made into fer-
tilizers for food production. Some 90 to 120 million tons of nitrogen are created every
year by natural processes, such as nitrogen-fixing bacteria and lightning strikes. Hu-