Saying "clean water must start here," a state environmental group is threatening to sue five small southern Lancaster County farmers over alleged manure and soil runoff into local streams and the Chesapeake Bay."Farming doesn't give anyone a license to pollute, and there are plenty of reso......

Federal officials, acting on President Barrack Obama's recent executive order to get serious about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, announced a draft strategy Monday that makes Lancaster County a linchpin in the plan.Local farms, sewage plants and runoff from urban and suburban landscap......

In Martinsburg, Blair County, construction of a regional facility that would take manure from area farms and convert it into electricity and other sellable products, while simultaneously cleaning the environment, is expected to begin within the next few months.Lancaster County commissioner......

Almost a year ago, farmers here and nationwide were outraged over reports that the federal government was considering a "cow tax" aimed at reducing methane gas produced by their livestock.The plan to tax cows for burping or flatulence was fodder for late-night talk shows, but it ......

Can Lancaster County's farmers help clean up the Chesapeake Bay's watershed without damaging the agricultural economy?State Sen. Mike Brubaker asked nearly 100 people attending the county's first agricultural summit how many think that dual goal is impossible.No hands we......

"Don't get on the boat," warned the old man on the wharf. "There's sharks in the water." He was joking. But plenty of sinister agents do lurk in the cloudy depths of the Chesapeake Bay. Jenny Engle and her League of Women Voters friends traveled to Balti......

Large-scale livestock farming in the Octoraro watershed of Lancaster and Chester counties is producing "staggering" amounts of manure in an already overloaded area, despite efforts to limit it, according to a new study by the environmental advocacy group PennFuture.The study of t......

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama attributed part of the nation's problem to its failure to make hard choices.Hard choices are decisions that often sting — like foregoing raises to keep jobs or paying additional taxes on gasoline to encourage automakers and the pub......

One down, one to go.The first of two massive steam generators bound for the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island was hauled ashore Tuesday at Tome's Landing Marina in this quaint, Susquehanna River town.The second one is scheduled to arrive at the marina today.On Sund......

Ninety-six times last year, during summer rains or snowmelts, raw sewage and industrial wastewater from in and around the city were piped directly into the Conestoga River without being treated. Some 943 million gallons of combined sewage and rainwater were discharged into the river and even......

This time the federal government means business about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, and the imminent "big stick" should not be ignored by local farmers, officials and residents. That's the view of a key state legislator and state and federal environmental officials who were brou......

Don't blame it on global warming, but remember the 10-foot-long manatee from Miami that showed up in Havre de Grace, Md., at the mouth of the Susquehanna River in June? That's only 43 miles from downtown Lancaster. Not quite as dramatic, but highly unusual and in keeping with er......

Nearly $4.75 million in federal stimulus funds are headed to Lancaster County for farm-related conservation projects.Eleven agriculture projects here include barnyard runoff controls, animal-waste storage facilities, anaerobic manure digesters, grassed waterways and work to stabilize areas......

U.S. Rep. Joseph Pitts toured the Manheim Borough Authority wastewater treatment plant Monday as the facility prepares for a $10 million mandated upgrade.The authority is seeking $6.7 million in grants from the Capital Financing Administration and asked Pitts to write a letter of recommend......

Manheim Borough Authority invites the public to hear about expenses relating to the sewer plant at 7 p.m. Monday in Manheim Central Middle School auditorium, 261 White Oak Road.Matt Parido, authority administrator and borough manager, said Thursday the discussion will review the Chesapeake......

Hannah Garman defied the doctors.The little red-haired girl from Lititz — whose battle with cancer and a plea for Christmas cards touched people's hearts the world over — was given only a few weeks to live late last year.But Hannah, who was diagnosed with glioblastom......

When it comes to soft-shell crabs, the sweet, briny flavor is as much inside the shell as it is in the shell. Unlike the hard-shell crab, the soft-shell is a crustacean seafood that can be eaten entirely whole — if cooked shortly after the molting of the hard shell, which happens ......

Correction — The story below, posted on LancasterOnline Tuesday, incorrectly stated the location of the tunnels on Route 272. They are in Providence Township.•••Pequea Townshi......

Rettew Associates Inc. has teamed up Kreider Farms to help lay out a livestock waste-treatment plant at the dairy farm in Manheim.Rettew, 3020 Columbia Ave., was awarded the engineering contract from Bion Environmental Technologies Inc., which has contracted with Kreider to build the treat......

A $1.1 million program will try to get more Amish and Mennonite farmers in Lancaster and Chester counties involved in conservation measures to reduce pollution in local streams and the Chesapeake Bay. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has awarded a $500,000 grant to the Chesapeake Bay F......

A plan to carry two massive generators through Lancaster County en route to Three Mile Island is generating a lot of interest — and concern — among local residents.Anyone interested in asking questions or learning more about the plan will have three opportunities to do so. AREV......

What do athletic fields at Hempfield schools, abandoned strip mines in Northumberland County and first-of-its-kind groundwater recharge landscaping at a Lititz housing development all have in common? Compost from manure gathered in Lancaster County. For more than a year now, the Chesapeake......

Correction — An article posted on LancasterOnline Wednesday incorrectly stated who is operating the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island. The plant is operated by Exelon Nuclear.•••...

A local dairy farm and a local company are launching a $1.5 million composting operation with the help of a $100,000 state grant. Oregon Dairy and Terra-Gro hope to begin operating the new facility in late 2009 or early 2010. The composting facility, with five to 10 employees, will be b......

Now that it is in charge of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, the federal government is working on the specifics of its plan to reduce the pollution that pours into the bay from Pennsylvania and other states. And while it's too early to know if there will be a devil in the upcoming details, there......

Don't look now, but President Obama just nationalized the Chesapeake Bay.The president this week issued an executive order putting the federal government in charge of efforts to clean the bay. That overturns a 30-year system whereby the states around the bay, along with the federal Env......

Local farmers can expect more pressure to secure runoff from barnyards and fields. All Lancaster County residents may be asked to live more simply and may have to pay higher sewer bills. And the burden for making tougher cleanup measures might be heaped on county officials, or possibly eve......

A bill approved Tuesday by the state House on Tuesday would add more stringent requirements for landscape architects to acquire a license to practice in Pennsylvania.The bill would mandate anyone wishing to obtain a landscape architecture license pass an exam and take 24 total hours of con......

A proposed plant in Rapho Township may use a new kind of sugar beet to make an alternative fuel that could be added to gasoline.And local farmers, who will be asked to grow the special beets, could be winners if the plant is approved.Representatives for Maibach LLC presented a propo......

Michael Hauck doesn't rake leaves. He hasn't mulched in 20 years. He doesn't need insecticides to combat bugs, and he's used scant herbicides to control weeds. Yet the Hauck family's one-acre yard carved from a cornfield in rural Pequea Township could be on a house-and-g......

Gov. Ed Rendell is seeking federal economic stimulus funds to eliminate 10 dams — five of them in Lancaster County — on tributaries that flow into the Susquehanna River.Rendell has applied for a $14.6 million grant for the project, which also includes building fish passages at ......

With a possible $3 billion budget deficit looming for Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell has asked state agencies to make serious cuts in spending.However, some legislators in Harrisburg and people throughout the farming community believe cuts to the Department of Agriculture's budget go we......

The nuclear accident at Three Mile Island was "a really hard, cold slap in the face for the industry" and a call to increased safety.That's the feeling of Tom Kauffman of the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy group that promotes the benefits of nuclear......

Sarah Thompson, a 14-year-old Landisville Middle School eighth-grade student, has been keeping herself busy studying oysters in the Chesapeake Bay.Thompson won the junior high championship trophy Tuesday at the Lancaster County Science & Engineering Fair."I did not know wha......

Correction — A graphic posted on LancasterOnline Wednesday incorrectly plotted the route expected to be used to haul two steam generators from Maryland to Three Mile Island. The generators will not be taken through Port Deposit on Route 222.......

Mill Creek runs through the heart of some of the most productive farmland in Lancaster County, and in turn it's seen its share of agricultural pollution.But the many farmers who harvest their bounty along its steep banks have taken measures for several years to stop erosion and limit c......

Stricter standards on farm pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed take effect in less than a year. State agencies are looking for innovative ways for Pennsylvania to meet them.That's where Bion Environmental Technologies Inc. comes in. The New York-based firm received a $7.8 million......

State Sen. Mike Brubaker has been immersed in the campaign to clean up the Chesapeake Bay for many years. Now, he's really rolling up his sleeves. Brubaker was named Thursday as Chesapeake Bay Commission vice chairman and leader of the Pennsylvania delegation to the tri-state ......

The long-feared zebra mussels have arrived in the Lower Susquehanna River, including Lancaster County. If they get established here, as they have in the Great Lakes, Mississippi and Ohio rivers and numerous lakes around the country, the economic impacts and disruption to the Susquehanna's e......

Weird as it seems, the work of a coral reef is being replicated on the rocky banks of the Susquehanna River near Holtwood. Here at the Muddy Run Pumped Storage power plant, two scientists are convinced they have found a proven way to, at last, clean up the Chesapeake Bay and, at the same time, ......

The news from Harrisburg is grim. This morning, the 11 members of Lancaster County's state legislative delegation painted a bleak picture on a host of state issues. Speaking at a legislative issues breakfast sponsored by The Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the lawmakers took tu......

Large-scale Lancaster County livestock farmers have found themselves caught in a dispute between an environmental group and the state Department of Environmental Protection regarding paperwork needed for operational permits.This disagreement led PennFuture to list more than half the farms ......

Lax state oversight of large-scale livestock farms in Lancaster County is abetting the pollution of the Susquehanna River, an environmental advocacy group charges.More than half of the county's industrial farms, known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, are out of comp......

Conoy Township supervisors in March approved Lancaster Biofuels' request to build a 60 million gallon-per-year corn ethanol distillery plant.But Seth Obetz, who helped form Lancaster Biofuels in 2006, now says the $120 million plant might process winter barley, not corn, into ethanol w......

A former supervisor of Penn Township's sewage treatment plant is accused of falsifying data and altering wastewater samples submitted to state environmental officials.J. Scott Shank, former superintendent of Northwestern Lancaster County Water and Sewer Authority, was arraigned Thursda......

The Conestoga River and its feeder streams, which meander across most of Lancaster County, are far from being fishable and swimmable as required by the federal Clean Water Act, according to the findings of a new state study. Although both activities take place in the river, about 330 miles o......

In 2005, a special commission on agriculture in Lancaster County concluded that educating Plain Sect farmers about environmental and other issues should be a priority. Last August, the former Lancaster County Board of Commissioners responded by allocating $50,000 to hire someone to oversee such......

If you pay a sewage bill, Pennsylvania's new budget may spell relief from big rates hikes that have been anticipated. Many customers served by 17 regional sewage plants in Lancaster County have been told to expect steep increases in their bills because of state and federal clean-water manda......

Mention the words "farm bill," and many people probably think of wealthy farmers receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money for crop subsidies.But the $300 billion Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, as it is officially known, includes many provisions besides direct p......

Around Lancaster County, at least seven old dams have been removed on the Conestoga River and tributaries to aid their swim to a population boom. In Columbia, officials envision a new riverfront park attracting anglers fishing for them. Pennsylvania is hoping their restoration will spawn a......

The roller-coaster saga over whether a Lebanon County township can build a sewage treatment plant and discharge wastewater into trout streams flowing through northern Lancaster County has taken yet another dramatic plot twist. After facing strong opposition 20 years ago, Heidelberg Township was......

"Well, it starts with rain," says Mara Moran, 12, a Girl Scout with Troop 1706 in Cheverly, Md. "My teacher says that the water we drink is the same water the cavemen drank." "Yeah, people think you can make water, but you can't," says Deirdre Harder, 9, as she helps Mara push a big plastic bar......

A bill authored by a Lancaster County senator aimed at cleaning soap detergents that pollute waterways became law Tuesday, making Pennsylvania the second state in the nation with this type of legislation.The bill — written by Republican state Sen. Mike Brubaker of Warwick Township &m......

Despite a pair of court challenges, the state says it's full steam ahead for its nutrient-trading program in which farmers are paid by developers and municipal sewage-plant owners for conservation measures. Pennsylvania's nutrient-trading program, the most ambitious in the nation, was u......

Instead of retrieving lost recess balls in the stream behind Fritz Elementary School on Tuesday, students picked up plastic bags, cardboard boxes and cans.Fritz students in fourth and sixth grades cleaned up a section of the East Lampeter Township stream as the first step in creating an ou......

Berkley Crain and Danielle Lukens and their classmates at Lancaster Country Day School are creating micro forests that will help cleanse the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. That's a good news story for Earth Day number 38, Tuesday, April 22. The sobering sidebar: It's going to take t......

Landisville Middle School seventh-grader Sarah Thompson won the junior division reserve championship Tuesday night at the Lancaster County Science & Engineering Fair.Thompson's winning life science project was titled "What Is the Effect of Water Temperature on the Feeding Rate......

Using porous asphalt for Columbia's new Riverfront Park, improving a rare wild trout stream in southern Lancaster County and repairing local streams by removing old sediment from colonial mill days are projects included in nearly $1.4 million in state grants. The four local projects are amo......

Mount Joy Borough appears to have embraced the idea of traditional neighborhood developments, unlike nearby East Hempfield Township, which killed a TND ordinance in January.The borough will hold a conditional-use hearing March 26 for a TND proposed by Land Use Resources. If conditional use......

Helping clean up the Chesapeake Bay can seem like an abstract and onerous requirement for Lancaster County. But state Sen. Mike Brubaker says the county has played a role in polluting the bay and must do its part to restore its health. And back in 2000, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virgin......

At least two municipal groups from Lancaster County are among the dozens that have sued the state government over the cost to upgrade wastewater plants as part of a strategy to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.The lawsuit, filed in Commonwealth Court Friday by Capital Region Council of Governme......

A New York-based firm intends to spend $3 million to $5 million to install an innovative manure-treatment system on a local dairy farm as part of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. Bion Environmental Technologies said today it plans to build the system at the Ron Kreider farm in Manheim to remo......

Lawmakers in Harrisburg will try to figure out this week how to keep municipalities from being bankrupted by the cost of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.Under a federal mandate, municipalities in the bay's watershed, which includes the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, have just tw......

Your sewer bill is likely going up. And state officials are feeling the heat for requiring upgrades to sewage treatment plants to help the Chesapeake Bay — without offering state financial help to offset the costs. Finger-pointing and legislative probes are in full force. Among the n......

The privilege of having Susquehanna riverfront or island property on popular Lake Clarke is about to come with a higher price. To prevent sewage pollution of the river and Chesapeake Bay, Safe Harbor Water Power Corp. is requiring all 72 renters on five islands in Lancaster County below Columbi......

The work of two Franklin & Marshall College scientists who have rocked the Chesapeake Bay cleanup world will be the cover story in Science magazine on Friday. The world's leading journal of scientific research chronicles the startling discovery of Dorothy Merritts and Robert Walter in 2......

Pennsylvania's environmental secretary today called a planned $275 million expansion of PPL's Holtwood Dam "a milestone in Pennsylvania's pursuit of clean energy production." "Clean energy is an imperative for our environment, our economy and our security," Kathleen McGinty said in prepared rem......

If it seems like we're getting an awful lot of record-making rainstorms and flooding in your lifetime, it may not be your imagination. Because of global warming, the county and Pennsylvania really are getting more extreme summer downpours than 60 years ago, according to a new report by P......

When Caroline Novak started consulting for the Lancaster Farmland Trust in 2004, she made some bold statements. The nonprofit farmland preservation group and the county's Agricultural Preserve Board could double the number of acres they save from development each year, she predicted. M......

Local farmers can soon "REAP" the benefits of new Pennsylvania legislation aimed at cleaning up the environment through economic incentives.More than 100 farmers and business owners turned out Tuesday morning at the Lancaster Farm and Home Center for a forum to discuss the new Resource Enh......

Like it or not, Lancaster County residents will be digging deeper into their pocketbooks to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, a body of water that doesn't even touch Pennsylvania. Some local municipalities are looking at rate hikes up to 40 percent to cover sewage-treatment upgrades over the nex......

Every time you start your automatic dishwasher, you're probably piping a substance destructive to fish and plant life into the Conestoga and Susquehanna rivers and, eventually, the Chesapeake Bay. That substance? Phosphorus. It is mixed into almost all popular brands of dish de......

Tim Wanner may never look at the Ephrata Fair in the same way.Wanner was among the Ephrata High School students in Josh Shortuse's environmental science class who attended the borough's annual festival of food, agriculture and games Wednesday.While enjoying the goodies &mdas......

Corn prices driven higher by the demand for ethanol from plants like one proposed in Conoy Township could be a boon for farmers. But environmentalists worry that growing more corn in the region could be a bust for the Chesapeake Bay. In a new report this week, the Chesapeake Bay Commiss......

(Editor's note: This is the last in a series of stories by New Era Correspondent Wendy S. Caldwell. She recently completed a co-op in applied anthropology at Millersville University aimed at understanding sustainable agriculture in Lancaster County.Lancaster County has long be......

Lancaster County's Plain Sect farmers tend to steer clear of the government and keep to their Old Order ways.More and more these days, however, the government is creating regulations aimed at the farming industry that affect Plain Sect and non-Plain Sect farmers alike.Many of th......

Fran Rodriguez sees plenty of Lancaster city children playing baseball and other organized sports.What she doesn't see is a lot of those kids hiking or fishing or canoeing."Our kids are very athletically minded," said Rodriguez, 44, who is state Rep. Mike Sturla's ......

The greening of Lancaster County may soon extend to its rooftops.The county is partnering with several public and private property owners to secure state funds for a "green roof" program that aims to cover conventional roofs with plants."Green roofs are one of the way......

Several factors contribute to 'dry spell'•••The recovery of the American shad run on the Susquehanna River has taken a huge step backwards this year.And it's not going to get better for a few years at best and for several years at wor......

Further proof that Lancaster County's long-standing excess-manure problem is being transformed into an asset surfaced today with the announcement of a two-year pilot project to compost up to 80,000 tons of the waste and adapt it for desirable uses. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation,......

Lancaster County has more than 600 miles of dirty water running through the countryside before pouring into the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay.The region, conservation officials said Thursday, would benefit from cleaner water.That's where REAP comes into play."......

Not so long ago, farmers Bill and Nanette Furina considered shutting down their Egg Basket farm in Mount Joy."We said, 'If we're going to stay here, we're going to have to find some way to generate our own electricity,'" Mr. Furina said.Thursday, the Furina......

Something quite unexpected is happening to manure, long one of Lancaster County's most challenging environmental issues. Suddenly, the excess waste of cows, pigs, poultry and other livestock is being viewed not just as a prime polluter of local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay, but as an asset,......

A Maryland energy company has announced an ambitious plan to build multiple Lancaster County manure-to-energy plants within one year.EnergyWorks, of Annapolis, Md., said Wednesday it will invest about $8 million to construct and operate three plants that will produce a bio-gas that can be ......