Maryland farmers aren't the only ones getting closer scrutiny from the feds these days. It turns out that inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency have been paying calls on Amish farmers in Lancaster County, PA to impress on them the need to keep manure from their livestock out of the rivers and streams that feed into the Chesapeake Bay.

Lancaster is farming country, and is a leading source of runoff of the nitrogen and phosphorus that produce dead zones in the bay every summer. As The New York Times reports, EPA checked 24 farms in Lancaster last September, 23 of them run by members of the Plain Sect who shun modern technology and can be frequently seen traveling the roads there in horse-drawn buggies.

Seventeen of the farms checked were not handling their manure properly, EPA inspectors found, contaminating their own wells in many cases as well as polluting nearby streams. Farmers were advised to take steps to handle their manure better, and offered help applying for government grants to pay for storage pits and other practices designed to curb runoff.

It's a jarring change for the Amish, who normally want nothing to do with government. But as the story noted, Amish farmers control more than half the farms in Lancaster, so it would be impossible to clean up without them.

More than 500 farms in Maryland applied last year for discharge permits after EPA officials advised that runoff from around their chicken houses and other livestock operations could subject them to enforcement action.  Some farmers in Pennsylvania and Virginia are getting less-gentle reminders from EPA.  The agency announced recently that it had cited an egg-laying farm in Pennsylvania and two farms in that state for allowing nutrients from their animals' manure to wash into nearby streams, which ultimately feed into the Chesapeake.

The Pennsylvania egg-laying farm, with 36,000 hens, also had 80 cows, EPA said, and both operations were discharging to Chickies Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River. 

In Virginia, federal inspectors found large piles of uncovered poultry manure at a Linville farm with 100,000 chickens, and evidence that nutrients from the piles were getting into a stream that feeds into the Shenandoah River, a tributary of the Potomac River.  Inspectors found similar runoff problems at another farm in Timberville with more than 500 cows and nearly 23,000 turkeys.

Both were ordered to stop the discharges, get federal permits for their operations and submit compliance plans for curtailing their pollution.

(AP photo, 1998)