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Page 14 · column 3 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
During the past several years, major efforts by the state governments of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania have been launched to raise public awareness of the threat to the Chesapeake Bay posed by agricultural pollution.
It is called nonpoint source pollution because it is not produced by a single industry or individual, but rather comes from a variety of sources. These include steeply sloped farm fields, where erosion washes valuable topsoil and fertilizer into streams, from lawns where too much fertilizer is applied, and from livestock operations when animal wastes wash, untreated, into nearby creeks and rivers.
In the past several months, two Rappahannock County farmers have done their part to reduce it by putting in conservation measures through programs co-sponsored by the Extension Service, the Agricultural Conservation and Stabilization Service and the Soil and Water Conservation District.
SWCD technicians have laid out stripcropping rows on Mike Massie’s farm at Massies Comer, and Charles “Eddie” Stuphin of Ben Venue installed a concrete waste collection pool for his hog operation.
Though farmers apply fertilizers and pesticides to their fields to help crops and control bugs and disease on their farms, often the chemicals run off the fields and into nearby creeks. Ultimately, those creeks feed larger rivers and finally the Chesapeake Bay.
The excessive nutrients contained in the runoff promotes the growth of algae, which eventually chokes off more productive plants, killing the marine life which feeds on
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