The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Maryland Pays Polluters to Pollute

Mar 29, 2021

The Maryland Department of the Environment is about to take 13 million dollars from the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund and give it to a food processing company that is a big polluter of the Chesapeake Bay!

Valley Proteins put 25 times the amount of nitrogen and ammonia allowed into the bay just during 2020. Valley Proteins, which processes chicken carcasses, along with the large Eastern Shore chicken companies, are the largest agricultural polluters in the state.

But they are hardly the only companies ignoring the laws on polluting the water, the air and the land. For decades, under Republican and Democratic governors, Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point was an enormous polluter of the waters near the plants. Bear Creek, although technically cleaned up, is also technically dead! Organisms cannot grow there thanks to decades of toxic waste, and this creek runs into a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

Public money is given by state officials to corporations large and small, so the companies won’t have to pay the bill for the messes they create!