"When Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) hits his last few days in office next month, he plans to enact dramatic new regulations for farmers who use chicken droppings to fertilize their fields."
"With ocean policymakers mulling new protections for deep-sea canyons off the East Coast, a new report portrays them as vulnerable "treasure troves" of marine life at risk from fishing trawlers."
"A slight increase in air temperature over the past half-century has caused waters to warm more than two degrees in tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay, a change that could reduce the expected benefits of the multibillion-dollar bay cleanup plan and eventually alter the behaviors of marine animals, a new study says."
"Gov.-elect Larry Hogan promised Maryland farmers Monday that his 'first fight' in office would be against costly new farm pollution regulations, even as environmental groups released new data showing many Eastern Shore chicken farms could be fouling the Chesapeake Bay."
"Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, encouraged by whopping awards and settlements in other states, could join what one analyst calls a 'nationwide cascade' of litigation against the oil industry for its use years ago of a gasoline additive that has contaminated groundwater across the state."
"Capping more than three years of study, the O'Malley administration declared Tuesday that hydraulic fracturing for natural gas can be done safely in Western Maryland, but only after regulations are tightened to reduce air and water pollution and protect residents from well contamination, noise and other disruptions associated with an anticipated drilling boom."
"Over the objection of environmental groups and Virginia's governor, a federal management plan released Tuesday will allow a form of natural gas drilling known as fracking to occur in parts of the largest national forest on the East Coast."
"Whitemarsh Run looks a mess, more a construction site than a stream. With its flow temporarily dammed and diverted, a track hoe is carving out a new, more sinuous channel for the badly degraded waterway running through a built-up patch of northeastern Baltimore County. New banks are being built, armored in places with granite boulders — all part of a $13 million makeover that's intended to help clean up the nearby Bird River and the Chesapeake Bay."
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