Nearly a decade ago, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
decided that the best way to save the bay was to extend a hand to its
biggest polluter – the crop and poultry farmers who apply large amounts
of fertilizer to the land.

The alliance between the region’s largest environmental group and the
powerful farm lobby has helped bring millions of dollars in new
anti-pollution funds to the bay watershed – and, the foundation says,
improved the odds that the Chesapeake will one day be restored.

But many environmental advocates question the foundation’s friendly
approach. They say that tough regulations, not just incentives, are
needed to force farmers to control pollution.

“I’ve never seen an industry cooperatively clean up its mess,”
said Scott Edwards, legal director of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a
national watchdog group that has sued farmers and state agriculture
departments over pollution issues. “Industry only responds to force.”

The bay foundation’s unusual approach was evident last month when the administration of Gov. Martin O’Malley
revised its proposed rules on pollution-control permits for poultry
farmers. Instead of requiring permits for 200 poultry operations, the
administration scaled back to about half that number after farmers
complained that the rules were onerous.

While many other environmental groups railed against the O’Malley
administration, bay foundation officials called the revised rules “a
step forward.”

Foundation President William Baker said last week that while he wished
the regulations were stronger, the revised proposal is a good start for
a state that has no poultry-discharge rules now.

“The way to make them more effective at reducing pollution is to show
that they’re workable, show that they will not unfairly put the farmer
at financial risk, and show there is financial support to pay for
them,” Baker said of the new rules. “Let’s show they work, and that
they can work even better if they’re improved.”

But Sen. Paul G. Pinsky,
an environmental advocate who is concerned that the proposed rules are
not strict enough, said that it is never prudent to accept weaker
measures and hope that they’ll become stronger.

“I don’t think we should settle for less at the beginning of the
debate, because the political process is going to make us settle for
less anyway,” said Pinsky, a Prince George’s County Democrat.

Nationally, many major environmental groups working to combat farm
pollution favor sticks over carrots. In Iowa, the Environmental
Integrity Project is trying to force the state to regulate pollution
from animal farms. In Pennsylvania, the group PennFuture has pressed
the state to enforce farm pollution laws.

But in reacting to Maryland’s proposed farm pollution rules, the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s only comments were to ask whether the
financial interests of farmers would be protected. For instance, the
foundation’s senior scientist, Jenn Aiosa, asked whether public money
would be available to help farmers pay for required pollution control
plans. And she took issue with a proposal to compel farmers to check
soil and water samples for contamination.

The O’Malley administration is accepting comments on its latest proposal and is expected to release final rules in the fall.

For much of its 40-year existence, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation did
not try to court farmers as it tried to educate the public and lobby
for laws to clean up the estuary. The foundation’s approach changed in
the late 1990s, when an outbreak in the Pocomoke River of a toxic
algae, Pfiesteria, was linked to runoff from poultry farms.

Environmentalists clamored for tougher anti-pollution laws, while
farmers complained that they were being over-regulated to the point
that they would be forced to close down. Eventually, the General
Assembly required farmers to file plans detailing how much fertilizer
they were using.

Baker said the foundation began to realize that if the farms went out
of business, large developments probably would replace them – bringing
impervious surfaces that would promote suburban runoff and be far worse
for the bay.

“We decided at that point that we needed to earn the trust of farmers,
to show them we didn’t want to put them out of business,” Baker said.

The foundation has a staff of 170 and a $22 million budget, much of it
used for education and restoration work such as planting wetlands.
Foundation officials said they do not get money from the farm industry.

While the group has sued local and federal governments over
water-quality issues, its efforts with respect to farmers have mostly
centered on securing more money for pollution-reducing practices. The
foundation pushed to get money in the latest federal farm bill, which
passed with an unprecedented $400 million for bay cleanup efforts.

Though initially skeptical, the farm lobby has accepted the
foundation’s help. Two years ago, Buddy Hance, then president of the
Maryland Farm Bureau, said farmers and the foundation were “dating.”
Hance, now assistant state agriculture secretary, said the relationship
has only strengthened since then.

d understand the obstacles
they deal with every day,” Hance said.

Farm pollution has decreased during the past decade, both because
of new programs and because many farms have gone out of business,
according to government officials. But agriculture remains the largest
source of bay pollution. Last year, farm runoff carried nearly 290
million pounds of nitrogen into the bay, far more than the 184 million
pound goal.

Former state Sen. Gerald W. Winegrad said the foundation’s failure to
take on the farm lobby has left a leadership void on the largest source
of bay pollution.

“The bay overall is a disaster, and the leading cause of that disaster
is agriculture,” he said. “You couple this with the position of the
500-pound gorilla in the environmental field of the bay, the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation, taking a hands-off approach to agriculture … and you
have a disaster in environmental leadership, too.”

Winegrad said the softer approach stems from the public’s
perception of farmers as salt-of-the-earth good guys. But Howard Ernst,
a political science professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and longtime
foundation critic, said he thinks the group chose the carrot approach
because getting money to help farmers control pollution is easier than
trying to pass and enforce regulations.

Though perhaps well-intentioned, Ernst said, the strategy is wrong-headed.

“CBF starts with the assumption that farmers have a right to pollute
our waterways. Once you start with that assumption, it makes sense to
give incentives to help the polluters,” Ernst said. “In their bid to
become moderate and accommodating, they’ve become ineffective.”