ANNAPOLIS – With a Dec. 31 deadline looming, fewer than 8 percent of Maryland farmers have filed required nutrient management implementation plans and part of the delay is being blamed on the state, which in some counties is two years behind in developing such plans.
Of the 12,400 farmers in Maryland, only 948 have submitted completed nutrient management plans to meet the deadline. Another 425 farmers have applied for a “justification for delay,” which excuses them from the deadline as they continue work on their plans.
Implementation of the phosphorous and nitrogen run-off management programs required by the Maryland Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998 is supposed to begin at the end of 2002. Farmers who fail to meet that deadline and who fail to show the department they are taking steps to develop a plan, could be fined up to $250.
Yet state agricultural agents, who help farmers devise the plans, recently told farmer applicants that the earliest they can get to them is 2004, said Terry Poole, an agricultural extension agent in Frederick County.
“We just don’t have the resources here to do all the plans,” he said. Maryland employs two people to help develop the plans for Frederick County’s roughly 1,300 farms.
Many farmers waited until the last minute to apply for plans, which is adding to the long waiting list, Poole said.
“It’s not entirely unexpected in a program that is this new,” said Don Vandrey, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Agriculture. “This is the first time that any state has tried it in this way.”
To deal with the backlog, the department plans to get more people certified to develop the nutrient management plans, and it also may train a few farmers to develop their own plans.
Farmers aren’t meeting the deadline, said Stephen Weber, president of the Maryland Farm Bureau, because the state is overwhelmed with requests for plans.
“I know they don’t have the resources,” Weber said. “You could see it coming . . . It’s becoming obvious that they are not going to get this done on time.”
Some lawmakers are considering a bill to put off the deadline, an effort to mediate the same old struggle between farmers and bureaucracy that has always existed.
“Farmers are very independent and they don’t want bureaucrats looking over their shoulder,” said Delegate Robert Kittleman, R-Howard. Most want to comply with the law, he said, contrary to the stereotype that farmers are dragging their feet because they don’t care about the environment.
“There’s a presumption that farmers are going to put on more fertilizer than they need, and farmers are actually the most frugal” with their supplies, he said. “They are conservationists themselves, but they want to be left alone.”
Some legislators said the timetable was overly optimistic, particularly given the lack of funding.
Delegate Ken Schisler, R-Talbot, said the state did not put the promised money into the budget after 1999 because it wasn’t used quickly in that year’s budget.
“Even if they hadn’t pulled the resources, the deadlines were too ambitious when we started them,” said Schisler, who is considering a bill to postpone implementation of the plans beyond Dec. 31, 2002.
“I do believe it’s important for policy makers to mean what they say and if they can’t meet the deadline they should just change the deadline,” he said.
That’s better than refusing to enforce it, he said.
Pushing the deadline back is not the solution, said Theresa Pierno, Maryland executive director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
“There is excess nutrient run-off. We’re seeing this excess run-off polluting the bay,” she said. “In no way would we support eliminating or putting this off for a number of years.”
Excess nitrogen and phosphorous encourage growth of the pfiesteria toxin that was linked to thousands of fish deaths in 1997 on the Eastern Shore tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Improvement of water quality standards for the bay became more urgent after the outbreak, which resulted in the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998.
Getting farmers trained to implement their own plans might be the solution to the problem, Poole said. Farmers mostly support nutrient management, but resent “being legislated.”
“We can teach these people to write a plan and it can be functional for them,” he said. “Then they can have ownership in it.”