Farm Bureau prez wants Md.'s A.G. impeached

WASHINGTON - Maryland farmers now have a legal battle on their hands and in their waters.

The battle is with the state Department of Agriculture -- and one of the plaintiffs believes the department's actions are grounds for the impeachment or recall of Attorney General Doug Gansler, an idea Gansler calls "silly."

In brief: The water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed continues to decline. In Maryland, 1.2 billion pounds of chicken manure are produced every year. Runoff from farms is a huge contributor to the nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment in Chesapeake Bay.

The Maryland Farm Bureau is suing to keep documents about farm nutrients out of the public's view.

Agricultural organizations in Maryland, as in other states nationwide, submit Nutrient Management Plans to their respective departments of agriculture. These documents detail how livestock waste is managed and how the farm is limiting the negative impact on surrounding waters. In Maryand, farmers submit one-page documents with the ag department that say they have Nutrient Management Plans back at their farms. The state pays for those plans, Gansler says.

The farm bureau is now suing the Maryland Department of Agriculture after the Waterkeeper Alliance, a grassroots water-quality organization, convinced the ag department to release the the on-file information. The Waterkeeper Alliance says that because the farms have to go through a permitting process, the information is public, just like it is in other states.

"I'm very disappointed in the attorney general of Maryland because it's not necessarily the Department of Agriculture that's been pushing the release of information for the plans," says Maryland Farm Bureau President Mike Phipps.

"It's pressure, I think, from the attorney general, who actually is supposed to be defending the law that the General Assembly passed and the governor signed back in '98 which states that the plans are to be confidential. And, he's instead of defending the law, he's usurping it.

"I'm not so sure he shouldn't be impeached or recalled, whichever is swifter, for doing that," Phipps says.

Phipps says the details in those nutrient plans could be used by competitors to undermine businesses and expose financial details about a farmer's operations.

"The notion that someone would call for the impeachment of the attorney general for the attorney general's enforcement of laws that are already on the books is somewhat silly," Gansler tells WTOP.

Gansler says the farm bureau is confusing two different things -- the more detailed plan a farmer keeps on file at his farm and the one-page document at the Department of Agriculture.

"The latter is something that should be public. The former, at this point, is confidential," Gansler says.

Scott Edwards, the legal director for Waterkeeper Alliance, says he is puzzled by the the farm bureau's lawsuit, given what he has seen in plans from farmers elsewhere in the country.

"I think that there seems to be a disconnect, in my mind, between what I have seen in other nutrient management plans, which are just descriptions of how wastes are to be applied, what the farm is doing to make sure they're reducing impacts on water, how they're handling the nutrients, so on and so forth," Edwards says.

"I'm not quite sure how any of that is confidential. It doesn't divulge any trade secrets or business secrets. There's nothing damaging about it," Edwards says.

Phipps disputes this claim, saying the plan includes everything from livestock populations to lease-options to personal information about the farmers.

"It's so detailed that I don't know how you would break it down without revealing important business plans of each farm," Phipps says.

Gansler says one farm's nutrient plan would be of no use to another farmer.

"All these plans are about how much fertilizer you put on your land and what kind," Gansler says.

But the Waterkeeper Alliance is interested in water quality, not Social Security numbers, Edwards says.

Edwards says the public has a right to review the information on file with the state and then monitor whether water quality is impacted.

"That is part of the transparency of our environmental legal system here," Edwards says. "That is what is being avoided in Maryland. They're doing everything they can to keep the public out of the process. They don't want transparency. They don't want to give the people the right that they have under federal law to take part in environmental protection, and that's just plain illegal."

The farm bureau has no problems with releasing general watershed data, Phipps says, but has a problem with the information the Waterkeeper Alliance is asking for that goes "down to the farm level."

"They're in a cloak of darkness here, this industry," says Edwards about farming. "That just doesn't work for any other industry in this country.

"If a chemical manufacturing plant were to open up in the Eastern Shore of Maryland next to a chicken farm, and that farmer's streams started to turn different colors of orange and red, I can guarantee you those farmers would be the first people to protest and demand to see what they were producing, what those chemicals were, how much they were dumping into that creek."

Gansler says there is a "legitimate question about whether the plans back at the farm should be public or not."

Right now, he says release of the public information filed with the state shouldn't be a problem.

"The law is so weak right now that even if you don't file a Nutrient Management Plan at all -- forget whether it's inadequate or not -- the entire fine is $350, $100 for not filing and $250 for not having a plan," Gansler says.

(Copyright 2008 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)