The first draft of proposed standards, unveiled in late 1997, elicited a record 300,000 public comments, most of them critical of the proposed rules, which, among other things, would have allowed some genetically modified foods to be labeled organic. Meanwhile, the organic industry has decided to develop its own rules, fearing that the federal process could drag on indefinitely. In the last 20 years, levels of harmful ammonia and bacteria in the Delaware have been cut by about half, and the level of dissolved oxygen in the river, necessary for fish to breathe, has quadrupled. Still, the level of pollution draining into the river from sewage treatment plants and urban and suburban storm runoff is on the rise, and the river bottom remains contaminated with toxic metals and chemicals from years of industrial dumping. In other fish news, the largest fish kill in a decade has hit the Chesapeake Bay area, where an estimated 1 million dead fish were found yesterday in the lower Pocomoke River in Maryland.
Investigators have yet to pin down the cause.
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