EPA Propagandizes for More Bay Taxes

The Bay Journal never fails to rub me the wrong way for being the house organ of the Federal Bureaucracy.  Ostensibly a private news service, specializing in news on the Chesapeake Bay, the BJ is funded largely by federal funds, and staffed, to a major extent, by ex-environmental NGO employees.  

Publication is made possible through grants from the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program Office, the Campbell Foundation for the Environment, the Town Creek Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chesapeake Bay Office, the Chesapeake Bay Trust, and by donations from individuals. View expressed in the Bay Journal do not necessarily reflect those of any governmental or grant-making organization.

But it's not exactly a coincidence that their views usually correspond to those of the EPA, NOAA, and their NGO lackeys, either.

Today's article is a disguised attempt to get more authority over the animal agriculture that has been the mainstay of the economy of the Eastern Shore:

New Report: Maryland Environmental Officials Must Ask CAFOS and MAFOS to pay fees

Three years after Maryland environmental officials announced a robust plan to permit large animal feeding operations, the state has fallen way behind in both its inspections and its paperwork, according to a new report.

The Center For Progressive Reform called its report "Falling Behind," and it says that the state is not doing enough to inspect these farms, grant them permits and make sure that their animal operations are an adequate part of their nutrient management plans.

The report didn't look at pollution incidences, or violations — it just focused on granting permits and charging the appropriate permitting fees. It estimated that, because the Maryland Department of the Environment isn't collecting these fees, it's missed out on at least $400,000 so far. That money, the researchers say, could be used to help the agency hire more inspectors — it has only three for the whole state — and hire more consultants to help farmers write their nutrient management plans. There has long been a shortage of such experts in Maryland.

It's really no secret that they want to make animal agriculture more expensive and more difficult to the point that it becomes uneconomic in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  Other  groups elsewhere will be doing exactly the same thing.

Anyone who thinks the Chinese are going to buy food for us when we don't grow our own pigs, chickens or cows, and all the corn we produce goes into gasoline is nuts.