I took a road trip out to West Virginia recently to hear and see firsthand the impact of mountaintop removal coal-mining. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is fighting the construction of a huge new coal-fired power plant in Surry County, Virginia, which would add hazardous and illegal amounts of mercury and nitrogen pollution to the Chesapeake Bay and nearby rivers.

But I also wondered: What about the pollution all the way up at the beginning of the coal production line?

And what about the impact on human lives?

I'm a musician, and I've always thought the best way to tell a story is through song. So I visited legendary West Virginia songwriter Mike Morningstar. He writes folk songs about strip mining and performs them as a form of protest.

But to find him, I had to drive six hours into the mountains, ending up on a long gravel road that tiptoed beside a cliff.

Finally, I found Mike's cabin.  It looked idyllic, with woodsmoke pouring out of the chimney and a line of hollowed-out gourds decorating the front porch.

Mike (at left, on guitar) was there with his neighbor and right-hand man, Rick Roberts (at right, on mandolin).

They were happy to see me, because they are trying to get the word out about a new CD they've created with a coalition of other  songwriters.  It's called "Still Moving Mountains" and it is available online here. 

They sat on Mike's couch and played. I tape-recorded them for a public radio program  on their music, which you can listen to online by clicking here. 

They started off with Mike's song, "The Buffalo Creek Disaster." It's a powerful narrative about a  1972 flood caused by strip mining that killed 118 people -- including 30 children under the age of 10.  Mike and his brother were inspired to write it after a friend recounted pulling the children's corpses out of the mud and rubble.

"They strip off all the topsoil and uproot all those trees," Mike sang.  "They killed those folks in Buffalo Creek, and then shrug the blame with ease.  Don't give a damn for life or land, just roll on like they please."

For all the lyrics, click here. Although the disaster happened more than 30 years ago, Mike believes the lyrics have more relevance than ever today because surface mining practices have only become more invasive in the decades since then.

After a couple songs, they let me join in on guitar and jam with them.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I just strummed chords, but Rick is a real mandolin virtuoso, and he also broke out the fiddle for one song.  Mike's voice is warm and resonant, and oddly soothing -- even when he's singing in protest. 

But what I like best about Mike is the way he lives his life.  Yes, he makes a little money performing at clubs and bars.  But mostly, he and his wife Donna live as organic farmers.

They have 25 chickens and eight horses.  And they use the manure to fertilize corn, green beans, pumpkins, peaches and many other fruits and vegetables.  Instead of going to the store, they can their own produce and keep it packed away in a cellar. They get all of their meat from deer that Mike hunts and then carefully dries.

The best part: Mike brews his own rhubarb wine, watermellon wine and pear wine. 

They also showed me the shelf in their pantry lined with a rainbow-hued spectrum of glass jars filled with all of the jams and jellies that they make from their berries and fruits.  Three different kinds of grape jelly. Hawthorne berry jelly.  Jalapeno jelly. Cherry jelly.  And don't forget the apple butter.

Mike very generously provided me with jars of white grape jelly to take back to my family.  A genuinely nice guy.

Even though it was December, he still had veggies in his garden.  He pulled up four rolling-pin sized carrots for me to give to my daughters.

(My youngest daughter, who is tiny and rarely eats anything, picked up one of these monster organic carrots -- which loomed as large as a baseball bat in her hands -- and devoured it.) 

Here is Mike's pantry, full of his preserved foods. 

His wife, Donna, said: "We've learned to live off the grid, and to live close to nature, just for the sake of our own self-preservation.  But also because we believe that this way, we are not generating so much waste."

But make no mistake about it. Despite their sweetness, they are angry. They are fighting to stop the "mountaintop removal" coal mining practices that include blowing up and scraping off hill summits, and dumping the waste into stream valleys.

Mike sings:

"Ever since I was a little baby, I've been living in these hills and I've been playing in these waters. But before I'd see it gone, I'd rather kill.  Don't take these hills, don't change these waters. Always let their beauty be.  As long as we've got our homeland, mountaineers are always free."

Mike chooses to express his anger through art,  picking up a guitar instead of a gun.  And he knows that while his lyrics can't stop bulldozers, melodies can move souls.  And his hope is that people will think twice about the true price of coal, both human and in the broken bones and teeth of the landscape.

Mike's life is also a quiet form of protest. Through the choreography of his mundane daily routine -- digging carrots, canning peaches -- he is showing that you don't have to abuse the land to absorb its energy.

That's a song all of us could sing.

(Photos at bottom and top of mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachian region courtesy of ilovemountains.org.  All other photos by Tom Pelton)

A silly question, obviously.  Scrooge would probably send his clients registered letters on Christmas Eve, threatening to foreclose on their properties if they didn't pay up in full by New Year's.

But I ask the question because I sent my first Christmas E-Cards this year. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation also distributed E-Cards this year (pictured above). You, too, can send  Chesapeake Bay Foundation holiday e-cards, by clicking here.

At first I felt awful -- positively Scrooge-like -- about my family's E-Cards. 

I went with the E-Cards because they are faster and cheaper.  And E-cards are better for the environment, in that they don't require cutting down all those trees and wasting all that ink for something that is usually thrown away.

I felt guilty because some people don't throw away paper Christmas cards. My parents, for example, post the cards with the pictures of their grandchildren on their refrigerator.  (They don't have a photo-quality printer, so sending them an E-Card doesn't really work for the fridge.)

I have always enjoyed setting aside a wooden tray in my dining room, and letting it fill up with all the cards and photos of my relatives and friends. Then I go through the pictures and notes while relaxing in my lounge chair in front of the Christmas tree.  It's not the same feeling as sitting at my computer and sorting through an email inbox.

So felt a bit of trepidation this year. Was I sacrificing a warm holiday tradition for the sake of my greenness?  After all, Santa doesn't wear green. The Grinch does.

After I hit the send button with the Pelton family E-Card, I could almost hear the rattling of ghostly chains. The Scrooge in me was dreading a vision of a barren, soulless Christmas future.

But then I discovered something wonderful about E-Cards.  People respond to them instantly.  "Great picture!  We love you guys!" I heard back from my sister within minutes.  "And to you!....We love you, Tommy!" my Mom shot back, via Blackberry. "Very nice!" an old high school friend replied.  "Some of us aren't as pretty as the Peltons," another old friend joked, I'm assuming referring to my wife and daughters and not me.

And then the conversations started.  An old buddy of mine emailed me some old embarrassing photos of us at Halloween when we were teenagers, and another sent me a video of his kids -- and both sparked long exchanges back and forth. I sat in front of my Christmas tree with my laptop, chatting via email and laughing and remembering. Afterwards, I felt a warm glow. (And it was not from the laptop battery).

In previous years, I never got responses to my paper Christmas cards.  People got them, and appreciated them, I’m sure. But they didn’t trigger instant dialogue.

So, no, being green doesn't mean you're Scrooge.  It just means that sometimes you have to accept technology as a gift instead of a threat.

An environmental group called Assateague Coastkeeper took this photograph of what it claims is a huge pile of chicken manure leaking pollution from an Eastern Shore poultry business into a tributary to the Pocomoke River, which flushes into the Chesapeake Bay.

The organization reports that it also performed water testing in a ditch downstream from this Berlin, Maryland, poultry operation, and found very high levels of fecal coliform, phosphorus and nitrogen that suggest a manure runoff problem.

The Waterkeepers Alliance, of which the Assateague Coastkeeper is a member, filed a notice of intent to sue the 80,000-chicken farm for violating the federal Clean Water Act, and Perdue Farms Inc., with which the farm has a contract.

Perdue is asserting that the pile in the photo isn't manure at all, although a spokesman for the company declined to say exactly what it is, according to a report in The Baltimore Sun.

The truth of the case may come out in court. 

But if this does turn out to be what it looks like it is -- a heaping pollution problem -- the photograph exposes something important.  Perdue has been lobbying hard against new federal legislation called the Chesapeake Clean Water Act that would reduce runoff pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. Perdue and many industrial-style agricultural business groups claim that the bill is unnecessary, because they have their own voluntary pollution control programs, and they say their self-policing of their contract farmers is working.

Well, if the status quo is working so well -- then what is that huge pile?

I don't know.  But I do know there is a heap coming out of the lobbyists for Perdue and other industrial livestock groups who claim that everything is fine with the Chesapeake Bay cleanup.

The photo -- again, if it shows what it appears to -- exposes something else, too. Where was the Maryland Department of the Environment?  Where was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?  It is their job to enforce the federal Clean Water Act, and from this picture, it doesn't look like there was much inspecting or enforcing going on.

If we have a huge pile of chicken litter running off into a Chesapeake Bay tributary, then MDE and EPA need to inspect this poultry operation today and clean this mess up ASAP.

And our Congressional representatives should understand that this is an example of why we need the more comprehensive (and better funded) runoff pollution control efforts that would flow from a strengthening of federal clean water laws through the Chesapeake Clean Water Act.

All the photos of the farm (above and below) are from the Assateague Coastkeeper.

Ahhh.  It is such a soothing concept -- and actually an idea that is not only good for our blood pressure, and family relations, but also for the world.  Less driving around to malls, less buying of stuff that's going to be thrown out anyway. More cooking of food, the old fashioned way.

A few years ago, my daughters and I started a little neighborhood tradition that has become my favorite part of Christmas. Every year, we bake a whole bunch of oatmeal cookies with raisins. We put them in bags, decorated with hand-cut paper snowflakes.  And then we walk around the neighborhood, giving them out to all the local families.  It's so cheap, nobody feels guilty to get a present like this.  And it provides a great opportunity just to walk up and down the street, talking to the people who live near to us -- but who we're sometimes too busy to visit with.

So instead of driving out to the mall to finish my shopping, I'm going to go home and bake some cookies.

You?

The Obama administration yesterday announced an agreement with dairy producers to cut methane emissions by 25 percent by 2020 by building systems that capture the greenhouse gas and burn it to generate electricity.

It’s a way of milking technology to reduce global warming pollution.

The plan requires millions more in federal and private investment in so-called “methane digesters,” which are already pumping out electricity on hundreds of dairy farms across the country.

Here’s my electric idea.  Wouldn’t it be cool if poultry operations in the Chesapeake region signed a similar agreement to reduce their output of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in exchange for government investments in technology to burn their waste to generate electricity?

Just a thought. (Actually, it might also be called Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler's thought, because he has proposed something very similar.)

I visited one of these digesters on a dairy farm in Bridport, Vermont, a few years ago and was impressed.  The 2,000 cows on the Blue Spruce Farm have their waste scooped up by mechanical shovels. The manure is then treated with bovine bacteria in heated underground tanks, and the methane that bubbles out is then burned like natural gas to run a small power plant. 

In the end, the Holsteins not only pump out 8,000 gallons of milk a day, but enough juice to light up 400 homes.

The manager of the farm told me that the electricity generated does not bring in enough money to offset the entire cost of the digester operation.  But she said that the digesters are a way to reduce the volume of manure that would otherwise be spread on fields, producing runoff pollution into nearby streams. 

So it’s a way of reducing water pollution, as well as global warming gases.

One problem with the digesters: They tend to be economical only for the big dairy farms (like the one I visited in Vermont), not the many more small dairy farms that are common in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  And it is these numerous smaller farms that are responsible for much more of the pollution runoff problem in our region.  So we'd need to do something to help these smaller farms.

What do you think.  Any appetite for moooooooving in this direction?

(Sorry for all the bad cow puns, but I’m trying to compost all my bad humor in one column, to keep it from leaking out to contaminate other blogs.)

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(Photo at top by CBF staff)

I've come to this conclusion as I reflect on the nuclear attack that industrial-style farm group lobbyists have launched against important new federal legislation to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Clean Water Act, pending in Congress, would for the first time set in law binding pollution reduction goals for the Bay area states, and threaten federal penalties to states if they fail to meet these cleanup targets.

Big agricultural business groups have been frightening their members, falsely claiming that the bill will bankrupt family farmers.  But oddly, they have also been saying that they don’t know exactly what the bill will require for farmers.

Which makes me wonder: Well, if you don’t know what the bill will do, why are you claiming it will destroy people?  Because there’s something else going on here.  And that something has nothing to do with family farms, and everything to do with an industry fighting the whole idea of regulation.
 
Since the 1972 passage of the federal Clean Water Act (and a key 1987 revision of the law), most types of farms have enjoyed an exemption from federal runoff pollution control rules.  Many in the industry like that exemption, and now they are using whatever means necessary – including fanning fears with misinformation – to preserve that privelege. 

There was a puzzling moment in a Congressional subcommittee hearing on the bill last week, when the contradictions in the farm lobby’s argument became apparent.

Steve Schwalb, a Vice President at Maryland-based Perdue Farms (the third largest chicken producer in the U.S.), claimed that the legislation “threatens the very existence of the Delmarva poultry industry.”  But then he later added, “unfortunately the agricultural community has very little info” on how exactly the bill would impact farmers.

I don’t get it.  With so “little info,” how does he know it threatens the very existence of the poultry industry?

The truth is that the bill would actually help farmers and clean up waterways at the same time.  The legislation would require states to meet pollution reduction goals, but then give the states flexibility how to achieve these targets.   The bill also creates a new tool  to help the states reach the goals:  a pollution credit trading program.  Municipalities that face steep costs for rebuilding their stormwater systems to meet pollution reduction goals can get more clean-water bang from their buck by buying credits  from farmers. Farmers can reduce pollution much more affordably by taking simple steps such as building fences to keep cattle out of waterways, keeping fertilizer away from streams, and planting crops in the offseason to absorb left-over fertilizer.   Farms that make basic efforts like these to reduce runoff pollution stand to earn $117 million a year from these new credits in Pennsylvania, $85 million a year in Maryland, and $50 million a year in Virginia.

So, no, we’re not talking about bankrupting farms.  We are talking about farmers making money by  doing what many are doing, anyway – keeping poop out of streams.

The industrial farm lobby’s real reason for opposing the bill is more apparent in a letter that the Maryland Farm Bureau wrote to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, one of the sponsors of the legislation.

In the Nov. 6 letter, Maryland Farm Bureau’s president W. Michael Phipps is frank in criticizing the bill for “effectively repealing the stormwater exemption for farms in the watershed.”

And so I ask: Why should any of us be exempt? It seems to me that we should all be accountable and responsible for our pollution.

The dance, called "A Scientist's Nightmare," was choreographed by my wife, Liz Pelton, who runs the dance club at our local school.  A friendly neighborhood biologist, Dr. Eric Schott, brought a bunch of live blue crabs to the dance studio, so the dancers could observe their movements and imitate them on the dance floor. As might be predicted, the kids love to pinch each other.

As part of an artistic biology lesson, the students wore shirts with different designs on the front -- narrow finger-like shapes on the bellies of the boys (representing the male or "jimmy" crabs) and wide triangles on the girls (who played the female or "sook" crabs).

The plot revolves around a scientist who attends a conference about the Bay.  She then falls asleep reading a report I wrote for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation called "Bad Water and the Decline of the Blue Crab in the Chesapeake Bay." (This is actually the least realistic part of the dance, because the report is a page-turner).  The scientist wakes up to visions of crabs, jellyfish and white-coated researchers dancing in her head (a sort of Chesapeake "Nutcracker," just in time for the holidays).

You can't see all this in the brief clip above.  But if you want to watch the whole thing live, the students will be performing it again at 2:30 p.m. on February 27 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive in Baltimore.

Their segment is part of a larger dance show called "Aqueous," a meditation on our many biological and spiritual connections to water. Baltimore's Full Circle Dance Company is producing and performing the event.  For more information, click here.

(Photo of Full Circle Dance Company performer Allison McGuire by Erica Feriozzi)

The legal action asks EPA to seize control of the water pollution permitting program at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), which the Waterkeepers charge is not inspecting or fining  polluters often enough.

The Waterkeepers deserve a lot of praise. Not only are they great boots on the ground (acting as citizen inspectors of waterways), but their legal action shines a helpful spotlight on the importance of having effective and well-funded state environmental agencies.

There is no question, MDE has problems. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) agrees. In May, CBF filed a notice of intent to sue the state agency for its failure to force a cleanup of the Sparrows Point steel factory site in Baltimore County, which is leaking toxic chemicals.  (CBF also targeted EPA and the current and past owners of the site in that action). And CBF has advocated for stronger pollution control permits for municipal storm water systems, and industrial-scale poultry farms and other animal feeding operations than MDE has endorsed.

But to be fair to MDE, a few things must be kept in mind.  First, is that the agency has been getting unquestionably better -- more aggressive and vigilant -- in recent years under the leadership of Secretary Shari Wilson.  The agency increased its enforcement activity by 34 percent in 2008 over the previous year, imposing some of its highest penalties ever.

And this stepped up vigilance has come without any additional staff or money. In fact, over the last three years, during the recession, MDE has had its operating budget cut by about a third, or $27 million.

So my hope is that the Waterkeepers petition will not only continue to push MDE in the right direction – but will help convince lawmakers and the O’Malley Administration to restore funding to the state agency, so they can hire the inspectors and other staff they need. I expect the Waterkeepers will be out front this next legislative session and during budget negotiations, urging the state to give MDE the necessary funding and support.

There is also the big picture to keep in mind.  MDE is not alone.  In fact, state environmental agencies across the Chesapeake Bay watershed have been lax in enforcing the federal Clean Water Act. Ultimately, EPA has failed to do its job in holding the feet of MDE and other state agencies to the fire.

That’s why the Chesapeake Bay Foundation filed a lawsuit against EPA, and why we are fighting for passage of a new bill that would strengthen the federal Clean Water Act – and impose federal penalties on states if they don’t keep their promises to reduce pollution.

Passage of the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act, now pending before Congress, is critical for saving the Bay.  The bill would help ensure that not only Maryland, but all the other states in the Bay watershed enforce the law and make necessary investments in environmental progress.

To learn more about the bill, click here.

It’s a threat (usually vacant) that industries have made repeatedly over the decades to try to scare government officials away from imposing common-sense rules to protect our environment.

And now we’re hearing a similar tune from big poultry business interests and other representatives of industrial-style agriculture.  The Salisbury, Maryland, based Perdue Farms Inc., the third largest poultry company in the U.S., is fighting hard against the most important legislation in a generation for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act would create legally-binding pollution reduction targets for the Bay area states, increase federal oversight, and threaten federal penalties if states fail to keep their cleanup promises.

During a U.S. House subcommittee meeting yesterday on the bill and the Obama administration’s Bay cleanup plan, a Perdue representative raised the specter of the company pulling out of region if the legislation passes.

“This bill would be a tremendous burden to poultry growers,” Steve Schwalb, vice president of Environmental Sustainability for Perdue, told a House agriculture subcommittee.  “Not that we want to move out of the Bay watershed, but it’s an economic decision – pure economics.”

Schwalb even mentioned that Perdue already has an operation in China. He did not say right out that Perdue would move to China.  But he did hint darkly that poultry production for Americans would flee America.  “We have a genuine concern that production of our food will be outsourced overseas, because it is more economical,” he said.

Classic scare tactic.  Excuse me, but how much does this reflect a concern for the common good in our Chesapeake region?  In my mind, corporations, like citizens, should be dedicated to their local communities, not making threats.

No, Perdue, it is not all about economics. It’s about civic responsibility, instead of the narrow financial interests of one industry.  The Chesapeake Bay is a treasure for everyone in our region – young and old, rich and poor. And the Bay must be saved so that future generations can enjoy its beauty, history, culture and ecological bounty.

A claim often made at the committee hearing yesterday was that the Chesapeake Clean Water act would impose new regulations on farmers.

“We have concerns that this legislation creates new law on how agriculture can operate,” Schwalb told the committee.

Not true. The bill would require states to meet pollution reduction goals. But then the legislation would give the states flexibility, allowing them a variety of options to meet the cleanup targets. In addition, the bill requires the federal government to create a new pollution credit trading program that will provide money to farmers and others to help them reduce their pollution. This program might actually generate as much as $85 million a year for farms in Maryland that meet baseline standards for controlling runoff, and $50 million a year for similar farms in Virginia.

Listening to yesterday's hearing was like venturing into an alternative reality, in which the long-stalled Chesapeake Bay cleanup was performing wonderfully well.

Opponents of the Chesapeake Clean Water Act made the assertion that the voluntary nature of the current cleanup program is delivering great progress.  So there’s no need to change, in the eyes of the farm industry lobby.  The claim was made over and over again that agriculture has met 50 percent of the goals set in 2000 for reducing nutrient pollution into the Bay by 2010 (based on a 1985 baseline).

So why not just let the current system continue, and eventually 100 percent of the goals will be met?

My reaction: Two deadlines to clean up the Bay have already passed.  One deadline was blown in 2000, and now we will miss a second one in 2010.  Meeting 50 percent of our goals, after two blown deadlines, isn’t even close to good enough.  In school, 50 percent wrong on a test means an F grade, not something to crow about (as was happening at the meeting yesterday).

If a student gets an F grade, the teacher does not say: “Okay, great! Keep on doing what you’re doing.” An F grade means that a student needs to change his or her behavior and work harder.

Wilmer Stoneman, associate director of government relations for the Virginia Farm Bureau, did not seem worried about the pace of Bay cleanup during the hearing yesterday.

“We have had 400 years of effects on the Chesapeake Bay,” he told the committee. “We are not going to fix it in 30 (years), we are not going to fix it in 25 years, and we are not going to fix it in 2 year increments.”

That's debatable.  But it is certainly true that we will never fix the Bay if we follow the farm bureau’s advice and continue with the status quo.

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(Photo at top: U.S. Geological Survey)