Editorial Board Guy Guzzone Mike Hoffman Jon Robinson Brian Parker Erica F. Parker Marta Vander Starre Web DoubleClickd Publishing Advertising - For display and classified advertising rates and information, contact Guy Guzzone Maryland Director Sierra Club 69 Franklin Street Annapolis, MD 21401 (410) 263-2230 Next Deadline - Dec. 15, 1997 Chesapeake is published periodically by the Sierra Club's Maryland Chapter. Annual dues of Sierra Club members pay for the subscription to this publication. Non-members may subscribe for $15.00 per year. The opinions expressed in this newsletter are, in general, aligned with those of the environmental community in Maryland, but are strictly those of the author and not necessarily official policy of local, state, or national Sierra Club entities. The Sierra Club prides itself on being a grassroots volunteer organization and concerns and opinions of all its members are welcome on these pages. Items for publication must be typewritten, double-spaced, and must include the name, address and phone number(s) of the author. Material may be edited for length, content or clarity at the discretion of the editor. Preference will be given to manuscripts on disc or emailed directly. Photographs, sketches, or other works of art are welcome. Materials cannot be returned unless a stamped self-addressed envelope is included with the submission. Send items for publication to Guy Guzzone (see address below). Change of Address - Send address changes to Sierra Club, 85 Second Street, 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105-3441. For fastest service, please include your old and new addresses along with your 8-digit membership number. For membership information, contact the representative for your area listed on the outer cover of this newsletter.

The Toxic Ambush Predator Cries "Fire"! overnor Glendening speaks with metaphoric tongue. "The dead fish in the Pocomoke River are like canaries in a mine," says he. When the canaries die, it's time to run. But run where? For unlike the claustrophobic space of an underground mine, we're talking about water when it comes to Pfiesteria. And water is everywhere. Water is necessary to virtually all life including our own. For water to do its work in support of living systems, it has to be clean--by which we mean free from manmade garbage, contaminants, pollutants. If Maryland's fish are the canaries, then we are the source of the gas that is about to explode. The metaphor, although I am not sure the Governor understood all the implications when he spoke it, is particularly accurate. For oil and petroleum based products and the mindset they are part of are at the source of much of the problem we have with Maryland's water, Pfiesteria included. INSIDE NOV./DEC. 1997 ISSUE LESIONS OF WEBSITES As the Pfiesteria crisis has grown, so too has information on the web about the crisis. Listed are a selection of some of the most interesting websites dealing with the little toxic ambush predator, its researchers and regulators and others affected by the whole mess. Mattawoman Creek: A Threatened Treasure Recreation and Parks in Jeopardy Columnist Wins National Sierra Award Outings Candidates for the Excutive Committee Book Review Remember DDT? Well, as Rachel Carson pointed out, at great cost to herself, chemicals we apply to the land have a way of concentrating through the food chain, destroying birds and other life before they can take wing. But as deadly as many agricultural chemicals may be, the mindset behind their development and use is worse. About fifty years ago, chemical corporations decided they were smart enough to "fool Mother Nature" as the margarine ad says. It was called "The Green Revolution." Chemical corporations introduced a full array of chemicals to better fertilize crops, to kill insects and plants that reduced production. Production. Production was everything. Initially, yields doubled, tripled or more. Under this chemical, high input mindset, soil was viewed as a medium to produce crops with. Its nutrients were stripmined to produce larger crops. The concept of feeding the soil, protecting its rich living environment through stewardship was thrown out the window. Also discarded was the rural culture and knowledge built on that stewardship. The expensive, petroleum based agricultural chemicals required for the Green Revolution were best applied on larger farms with machinery that also used oil for energy. [Funny how linked everything seems.] Huge numbers of farmers were thrown off the land as a result. Today, only 2% of US workers are farmers. In the Third World, farmers were pushed into the cities where they became pools of cheap labor to be exploited by US and other transnational corporations which, in turn, moved whole US industries overseas, costing millions of jobs at home. Like the wings of a monstrous butterfly, the Green Revolution started storms all over a world increasingly out of balance as a result. At the heart of this change was the idea that humans could organize agricultural production so efficiently that we could turn farms into food factories which could be made to run faster and faster. The poultry farms of Maryland, suspected in the Pfiesteria outbreaks, are in reality chicken assembly lines. Contract poultry growers have more in common with auto assembly line workers than they do farmers of past generations. Chicken growers raise chickens that do not belong to them, with feed supplied by the corporate integrators like Perdue and Tyson and containing unknown chemicals and additives designed to reduce growing time. The whole process is closely supervised by the integrator's field controllers who dictate virtually every aspect of the process. In a weird way, chicken growing in Maryland is a return to a kind of corporate feudalism with serfs and everything. But the knights of Maryland's chicken feudalism ride in stretch limos, not on armored horses. A herd of such limos was double parked in front of the governor's mansion in Annapolis on Wednesday, October 15th carrying chicken industry executives to meet, over a shrimp lunch (talk about mixed messages), with the governor and his aides to seek protection from regulation resulting from the Pfiesteria hysteria. Barely 50 yards away, a group of chicken growers, organic farmers, and environmentalists including Sierra Club members were holding a press conference to present their recommendations to the Hughes Commission or, as it is officially called, the Blue Ribbon Citizen Pfiesteria Action Commission. This press conference was the result of a series of face-to-face meetings between farmers and environmentalists sponsored by a grant from the National Sierra Club. Held at the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin, these meetings quickly came to focus on the imbalances in current agricultural practices which threaten the environment. The four recommendations presented to the Hughes Commission by the group were based on a group desire to rein in the expanding growth of factory farming methods and replace them with sustainable agricultural practices. Organic farmers provided a critical component to the group's process--showing chicken growers and environmental activists alike that there were better, sustainable ways to farm that also increased farmer income and consumer health. The group was energized by the realization that the solution to Maryland's water quality problems lay with a reconsideration of how we used the land [remember Smart Growth] and produced our food. Which brings me back to Pfiesteria and the Hughes Commission... On Friday, October 18th, Dean of the University of Maryland's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources testified that only 45% of the farms on the Eastern Shore used uncomposted chicken manure as fertilizer. The other 55% used chemicals. In dollar value, half of the agricultural chemicals sold in Maryland each year are used to fertilize and control lawns, home garden and golf courses--not farms. So, if we are to point fingers at anyone in this crisis, we should point at that part of ourselves that has bought into the idea that we can ignore nature's system of balance in the quest for cheaper food, greater profits or greener lawns. Runoff controls are important. The $200 million Vice President Al Gore has presented to the Governor to recreate the wetland barriers that filter runoff before it enters streams is great. But unless we fundamentally change our approach to agricultural production and its relationship to the Earth, we will be playing catch up in a game we are still losing...a game of survival.