Plan Would Pay for Fallow Farmlands

Federal and state officials have agreed to offer Maryland farmers more than $250 million to leave 100,000 acres fallow and to create buffers against runoff pollution contaminating the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The project would provide a filter of trees and grasses along nearly 5,000 miles of shore by 2002. The project, though more than a year in the planning, reflects the added urgency to clean up the bay since the summer, when a marine microbe killed thousands of fish and was implicated in sickening more than two dozen people.