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Monday, March 17, 2025

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Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants, even as a judge orders removals be stopped; Sierra Club sues DOGE over mass firings; Lack of opportunity pushes rural Gen Zers in AZ out of their communities; Fixing one problem, creating another? Ohio's lead pipe replacements.

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Secretary of State Rubio pledges more arrests like that of student activist Mahmoud Khalil. Former EPA directors sound the alarm on Lee Zeldin's deregulation plans, and lack of opportunity is pushing rural Gen Zers out of their communities.

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Farmers worry promised federal reimbursements aren't coming while fears mount that the Trump administration's efforts to raise cash means the sale of public lands, and rural America's shortage of doctors has many physicians skipping retirement.

Advocates await impacts of industrial sludge law a year later

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Thursday, February 27, 2025   

Environmental advocates are waiting for results from legislation passed last year, regulating the use of industrial sludge from flowing into waterways like the Chesapeake Bay.

Before laws were passed, the state had limited regulations dealing with the handling and use of industrial sludge, often made up of leftovers from meat processing facilities, which are then used as farmland fertilizers. Mishandling or overuse of the fertilizers would lead to the contamination of groundwater and flow into waterways.

Evan Isaacson, senior attorney for the Chesapeake Legal Alliance, said it was even common for neighboring states with tighter regulations on industrial sludge to transport it to Maryland for dumping.

"We had essentially become the dumping ground for industrial sludge," Isaacson recounted. "It was just an opportunistic business opportunity, I guess, for that industry to evade existing regulatory frameworks in their home states and send it to Maryland."

A 2023 study by the University of Maryland found more than half of industrial sludge land applied in Maryland came from other states. The Maryland Department of Agriculture oversees the year-old regulations governing industrial sludge.

Isaacson argued the department could change regulations to promote more transparency or put out a report on industrial sludge. He pointed out some issues, like farm privacy, means the department's regulations are not always created with as much transparency in mind, like with the Maryland Department of the Environment. Isaacson hopes other states without regulations will introduce their own standards to keep industrial sludge from being dumped in neighboring states.

"Once this regulatory program is up and running properly, it fixes that problem," Isaacson emphasized. "At the very least, we're hoping that we no longer become the regional dumping ground and that those sources in Delaware and Virginia keep their material in Delaware and Virginia."

The neighboring states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia currently have no regulations on the use and dumping of industrial sludge.


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