Burn That $#!* and Save the Bay

Initiatives that protect the Chesapeake Bay while reducing dependence on foreign oil should be preserved in Farm Bill

In writing the next Farm Bill, Washington needs to exercise fiscal responsibility, especially in these tough economic times. We have a serious budget crisis at hand. But we also have another serious crisis hanging just as ominously over our nation: unresolved energy challenges that directly threaten both our economic security and our national security. This is a problem that farmers in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed can help solve while at the same time addressing another great challenge: cleaning up and restoring the bay.

Here in the Chesapeake watershed, excess nutrients from animal operations are a significant source of pollution. More than 40 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus introduced into the bay come from agriculture, and half of these nutrients come from animal manure. The good news is that by deploying new and evolving technologies such as gasification systems and anaerobic digesters, farmers can convert animal manure into much-needed bio-gas and electricity while simultaneously reducing nutrient loads that degrade water quality. And by growing bio-energy crops like perennial grasses and fast-growing trees, which don't require annual tilling of the soil or the application of fertilizer, farmers can significantly reduce the amount of sediment and nutrients that might otherwise end up in streams, lakes and estuaries that feed into the bay.

Dennis McGinn, a Lexington Park resident and retired Navy vice admiral, is president of the American Council on Renewable Energy. Ernest Shea (eshea@25x25.org), a Lutherville resident and former Maryland assistant secretary of agriculture, is president of Natural Resource Solutions LLC. Both are leaders of the 25x25 Alliance, a coalition committed to America securing 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2025.

I'm agnostic on the role of "renewable" resources, but I think this approach is on the edge of realistic (I don't have much faith that we'll be 25% renewable by 2025, but as a goal it's not too bad).  I would like to see the farm wastes go somewhere besides the Bay, and using them to make energy would be worthy.  It's worth a temporary subsidy to make it work.

Previous articles on biomass burning here, here, and here.