Advocacy
Midshore Riverkeepers are looking for ways to significantly improve water quality through legal and legislative advocacy. Recently your Choptank RIVERKEEPER® and the conservancy brought an appeal against the state of Delaware arguing that its new proposed concentrated animal feeding operation regulations [CAFO regulations] were insufficient to adequately control raw chicken waste pollution of the upper Choptank. We are represented by the Widener School of Law’s Environmental Law Clinic and the Mid-Atlantic Environmental Law Center in this action. We also recently participated in two legal actions regarding the Maryland Department of the Environment and its failure to adequately protect our rivers. One of those settled providing our citizens with stronger new regulations concerning construction runoff from large development projects. We will be active in Annapolis each legislative session lobbying strenuously for laws that protect our waterways in meaningful ways. We are working with state and local governments to maximize the environmental benefit of the new TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) constraints and the Water Implementation Plans that each jurisdiction must now employ. We are working to sponsor new legislation reducing lawn fertilizers from polluting our waterways. And at every level we are acting as a voice for your rivers.
