[foxhop]

I live in Connecticut, Long Island sound is like my back yard, the waters are green from too much Nitrogen which blooms algae.

All plants need Nitrogen to grow, there is a surplus for various reasons in the sound, that surplus needs to come down and this idea is great.

I'm curious whats worse, pesticides directly applied, or the possibility of pesticides in run off?

[bradleyjg]

It depends on whether or not they bioaccumulate^W -- checking wikipedia apparently the word I want is biomagnification.

The basic idea is that as you move up the food chain the concentration of toxins gets higher. So a plant might have a relatively low level of toxin absorbed even if it was directly applied, but a shellfish that consumed algae that were exposed to the toxin downstream from the farm might have a considerably higher level.

I don't know a whole lot about the details in this specific case, but that's my concern.