BERLIN — State lawmakers this week reached a compromise on the proposed controversial Phosphorous Management Tool (PMT), an initiative to limit the amount of chicken litter used as fertilizer on farms across the state, particularly those on the Eastern Shore.
Outgoing Gov. Martin O’Malley presented his own PMT in November, but many across the state including Eastern Shore farmers deemed that proposal too stringent. While few would argue with the need to eliminate pollutants from running off Maryland farms into the Chesapeake, O’Malley’s version was deemed too onerous for the state’s agricultural industry and the agrarian Eastern Shore.
Phosphorous in the right quantity is essential to healthy waterways such as the Chesapeake, but there is a fine balance between the right amount and too much. Phosphorous-laden chicken manure is spread on Maryland farms as fertilizer, but too much is leaching into the streams and tributaries to the bay, causing algae blooms that absorb dissolved oxygen and create “dead zones” where aquatic life cannot be sustained.
One of newly-elected Gov. Larry Hogan’s first initiatives was to halt O’Malley’s stringent PMT plan and come up with his own plan which would be more farmer-friendly. Hogan pulled O’Malley’s emergency version and last month unveiled his own PMT plan. The Hogan PMT plan was less onerous for the agricultural community in that it loosened the implementation schedule and attempted to strike a balance between the farming community and environmentalists.
However, many in the environmental community cried foul over the Hogan plan, so to speak, in that it did not go far enough and the implementation schedule was too far out to have any real positive immediate impact on the health of the Chesapeake and its tributaries. This week, however, state lawmakers reached a compromise on Hogan’s proposed PMT plan that appears to be more amenable to all parties involved.
State Senator Jim Mathias (D-38) said this week the compromise signals a détente of sorts in Annapolis.
“What this signals is a trust in action,” he said. “The best outcome in all of this is the governor did what he said he was going to do.”
Mathias said the compromise was reached by bringing all of the vested parties together and coming up with a PMT solution that would benefit everyone involved.
“They gathered all of the shareholders to reach an agreement on this,” he said. “It was the first real productive time on this issue with all of the players at the table including the governor’s office, the agriculture community, the environmental community and the state leadership. Everybody came together and reached a compromise everyone should be able to live with.”
According to the Maryland Department of Agriculture, the major changes include the implementation schedule for the PMT is more clearly defined and includes giving farmers no more than two one-year extensions. The new timeline also establishes 2024 as the deadline for full implementation.
In addition, a new expert advisory committee will be formed to evaluate the infrastructure and capacity available to manage additional manure as farmers transition to the PMT, which was a sticking point for the agricultural and poultry industries. The advisory committee will make recommendations to the department to provide any extensions if and only if the infrastructure is not in place.
The 20-member PMT Advisory Committee will include representatives from the government, agriculture and poultry industries, the environmental community, universities, manure haulers and biosolids handlers. Members will be appointed by the Maryland Secretary of Agriculture.
The environmental community was largely supportive of the compromise reached in the Hogan PMT plan this week. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Maryland Clean Agriculture Coalition on Wednesday issued a joint statement praising the cooperative solution.
“We are pleased the Hogan Administration has agreed to close a loophole in its proposed phosphorous regulations that could have allowed for delay after delay,” the statement reads. “Getting rid of this loophole will be a major accomplishment.”
However, the environmental groups still would have rather seen a more stringent PMT first promulgated by O’Malley and that carried on with bills by Senators Pinsky and Middleton and Delegate Lafferty.
“Our organizations would have liked to have begun using the Phosphorous Management Tool four years ago, as Maryland promised and the science dictated,” the statement reads. “Nevertheless, these revised regulations represent progress toward reducing pollution from agriculture, which we absolutely must do to protect the Chesapeake Bay and local waterways, as well as public health. We thank the Hogan administration for listening to our concerns and trying to address them. This has been a tough issue over many years.”