More than 200 farmers penned a letter to Governor Martin O’Malley, urging him to work with them and not against them when it comes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. The farm bureau organized the petition effort, which grew from farmers’ frustration at constantly being blamed for the bay’s unhealthy state. Shaun Adamec, an O’Malley spokesman, said the governor acknowledges the contributions farmers have made toward reducing pollution.

The petition was intended mainly to counteract negative attention that has been cast on farmers, Maryland Farm Bureau President Patricia Langenfelder said. Farmers have built manure storage structures, planted buffers along streams, grown winter cover crops and instituted other “best management practices” to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution. While the government often contributes some of the cost of such practices, farmers have to put up their own money as well, Langenfelder said. She noted that nutrient and sediment pollution from farms has decreased over the years due to such practices. Meanwhile, other sources of pollution, particularly urban and suburban stormwater runoff, are increasing.

Langenfelder said farmers have made “major strides” in reducing pollution, but “we’re getting accused of not doing our fair share.” The farmers’ letter took a stab at a group of professors and activists whose recommendations on pollution control are heavy on agricultural reductions. The farmers wrote: “Environmental fringe groups with little regard for the facts and the truth continue to recommend ill-conceived draconian regulatory regimes that will place Maryland farmers in economic turmoil, unable to compete against producers in the other states or other countries.”

The academic group, self-described as “senior scientists and policy leaders for the bay,” sent a flotilla of boats to Annapolis City Dock earlier this month to unveil its latest set of recommendations.

Farmers have a difficult task when it comes to explaining to the public how much pollution they cause. Throughout the six-state Chesapeake watershed, farming is the top source of nitrogen pollution to the bay. But in urban and suburban areas such as Anne Arundel County, farming often is at the bottom of the list.

For the “Lower Western Shore,” which runs from the Magothy River watershed down to South County, farming is dead last as a cause of nitrogen pollution, according to the state’s BayStat program. Farming contributes just 7-percent of nitrogen in the Lower Western Shore. The top polluter is stormwater runoff; rainwater that rushes across roofs, parking lots and streets, carrying pollution into waterways, contributing nearly 44-percent.

When the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus flow into rivers and the bay in large amounts, they trigger the growth of algae blooms. The algae block light from reaching underwater grasses, and when the algae die, they suck life-sustaining oxygen from the water. Similarly, sediment pollution clouds the water and smothers oysters and other bottom-dwelling creatures. Maryland, other bay states and the federal government are drawing up a new “pollution budget” that will set enforceable limits for nutrient and sediment pollution.