|
| |
|||||||||
 |
||||||||||
What Matters > Protecting the Environment
Protecting the Environment A healthy environment is essential to a healthy community. The air we breathe and the water that supplies our drinking water and affords so much pleasure are polluted. The sources are many, and we need to stop them.
Run-off into the streams and rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay cannot continue to poison the Bay. We need to work collaboratively with the states in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed to halt polluted run-off.
We need also to encourage developers, farmers, businesses and environmentalists to work with agriculture specialists, biologists and chemists to ensure that new projects are clean projects. The Agricultural Stewardship program does some of this.
Smart Growth and Open Space programs need to be funded and encouraged throughout Maryland. This will ensure that future generations can grow up playing in parks and have much green space to enjoy.
Biologists are working to develop non-toxic pesticides, and we need to encourage the dissemination of their work.
The Healthy Air Act (S.B. 189) needs to be fully funded to reduce lung cancer and asthma.
To punish the polluters who are poisoning our air, streams and Bay, we need to make sure that the Department of Natural Resources has enough staff and funding to enforce environmental protection.
States in the Northeast US and the West have signed on to the Kyoto Treaty. I will work to have Maryland sign on to the Treaty.
I will also be committed to monitoring the regional greenhouse gas initiative.
We need to encourage much more than we are the use of environmentally friendly sources of fuel and of electricity generation. Investing in alternative energies will help the economy and create jobs.
I have spent so much space discussing prevention because it is much easier to prevent pollution than it is to clean it after it has happened. That being said, we need to clean up the damage that we have done over the last few decades. By
Authority of the Team for Tracy Miller, Gary Rosecrans, Chairperson, and
Lamont Steedle, Treasurer, |
||||||||||
