You can passes for "The Hunter" starring Willem Dafoe Monday, Aprill2nd at E Street Cinema at 7:30pm. You MUST SEND JUST YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS, AGAIN JUST YOUR EMAIL TO arch@tbd.com by Noon, March 30th to enter. ONE entry per household. If you DO NOT follow the directions, you will not be entered!

We have passes for "Bully". For your complimentary tickets to the special advance screening on Thursday, April 5th at Regal Gallery Place at 7:30pm. Log onto www.gofobo.com/rsvp and input the following code to download your tickets: NEWS8RNL3

And we have "Mirror Mirror", "The Lorax" , "21 Jump Street"and "Ghost Rider" movie merchandise. To enter YOU MUST SEND YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS to arch@tbd.com. ONE entry per household.

But is a volcanic island resort in the Caribbean really that much better than the rundown gambling den of the "armpit of America"? Since I've been to neither place, there's only one way to find out: by comparing TripAdvisor's top 5 "things to do" for each location.

1.

St. Barts: Grande Saline Beach

Atlantic City: IMAX Theater at Tropicana

If your #1 destination is an IMAX theater, which you can find anywhere, you're in trouble.

SB: 1. AC: 0.

2.

St. Barts: Anse du Gouverneur

Atlantic City: The Quarter at Tropicana

Would you rather be here, or here? Even a mediocre beach beats a great shopping mall any day.

SB: 2. AC: 0.

3.

St. Barts: Colombier Beach

Atlantic City: Absecon Lighthouse

Another beach? Is that all this island offers — a place where America's 1% can suntan in peace? What's worse, this beach is a 30-minute hike from the nearest road. Americans don't travel to other countries, leaving their cars behind, for the inconvenience of walking.

None of this matters. Lighthouses always win.

SB: 2. AC: 1.

4.

St. Barts: Shell Beach

Atlantic City: The Pier Shops at Caesars

When I was about seven or eight years old, at Long Beach Island in New Jersey, a seashell cut me in the small of my back, right across a sardine-sized birthmark. Something strange happened during the healing process, and now it looks like an archipelago of scabby bed bug bites.

Don't hang out on shell-strewn beaches.

SB: 2. AC: 2.

5.

St. Barts: St. Jean Beach

Atlantic City: Spa Toccare

Oh, Atlantic City. You were so close to an upset, but a spa will not do. If TripAdvisor's users had the sense to up-vote number six, the Atlantic City Boardwalk, this might have ended differently. Or maybe not.

SB: 3. AC: 2.

The first expert of the evening takes the podium while the attendees finish their catered dinner. (No civics on an empty stomach.) Over the pleasant tinkling of silverware touching china, Bill Fritz, Chief of Current Development in Albemarle County, describes his county’s shift in chicken regulation. He manages a joke about Thomas Jefferson, which tickles the crowd.

Ed Fendley, founder of the Arlington Egg Project, is up next. In a slim dark suit and dark shirt, he addresses the meeting with a smooth voice and professional jokiness.

Fendley’s outlines the case for relaxing backyard bird regulation with a slick Powerpoint presentation.

“Hens are better legal and regulated, not illegal and unregulated,” he says. He describes the Egg Project’s platform as thus: no roosters; allow a limited number of hens; and prescribe proper, secure, humane housing for the birds.

In a pleasing bit of theater, Fendley asks the crowd if anyone has ever had a backyard hen egg. A few hands go up. Then he asks if anyone would like to try a backyard hen egg. A few other hands. Fendley produces eggs for the audience members to take home.

“Backyard hens are good for your health,” he says. “Backyard hens connect children and adults to where food comes from.”

“Laying hens are good helpers,” Fendley continues. “They divert trash from waste management systems.”

Fendley asks the audience which legal path the county should pursue regarding chickens. The free-for-all? The not at all? “Or,” he says, “the Goldilocks solution?”

“Hens can be good neighbors,” he says, drawing a chuckle from the crowd. “They want to be good neighbors.” He ends the presentation with a slide saying “Believe in Arlington” and a round of vigorous applause.

All eyes fall on the next speaker, Darryl Hobbs, who is Powerpoint-free and immediately declares that he hates public speaking. The audience warms to him and remains rapt as he tells the story of the rats that invaded his property after his neighbor put up a chicken coop.

“I asked him what he was building,” he says. “He said, ‘a toolshed.’”

Hobbs’ neighbor, Donna Cogswell, wife to the man Hobbs has just quoted, happens to be sitting to me in a Columbia parka. She disputes Hobbs’ version of events. “That was [our] second henhouse,” she whispers. “We already had the chickens, and he knew it.”

Hobbs describes discovering holes around his backyard shed and trying to get rid of the rats. “Having to put rat poison seven feet from the children’s play zone,” he says, “is not something any parent would want to do.”

Sympathetic murmur from the crowd.

Hobbs says he had to pay an exterminator $265—a woman gasps—to come out to the property and give his assessment: “He said, ‘If you’re going to live next to a chicken coop, you’re just going to have to learn how to deal with the rats.’”

The crowd swells with outrage. People shift in their chairs. Cogswell is tight-lipped hearing her birds, Rhode Island Reds, blamed for rats in the neighborhood. “They live in the woodpiles!” she hisses, but only I can hear her.

Hobbs is on a roll. He says the Arlington Egg Project promoted its petition with “something misleading” information about rodents. He quotes from a chicken-raising advocacy website that acknowledges the rodents that chicken coops attract. He talks about resources and county priorities. He says a neighbor found a dead rat on her doorstep, which brings some audience members to a near-swoon.

“Chickens,” he concludes, “are not like other pets.” Enthusiastic applause ensues.

And now it’s on to the Q&A portion of the evening, with a series of articulate Arlingtonians raising concerns about chickens.

Alice Harrington of the Yorktown Civic Association addresses the panel with a legal pad of notes. “How do we regulate the care of the chickens?” she asks. “Does that fall under animal control? Do we have the resources?” She continues. “I don’t know if there’s an optimal flock size. What happens to dead chickens? Or sick chickens?”

Fritz says that the “maxium number is always elusive.”

A reedy woman wants to know if steel wool could be stuffed at the base of the coops to keep out rats, which is how her son dealt with rats at his fraternity house.

A trim gentleman who identifies himself as a Nebraska native adds a dash of Midwestern practicality to the discussion. “Is there any idea of what the regulatory cost would be?” he asks. “Should someone decide they want to do this, what would be the cost to the annual budget of a homeowner who took this on?”

Cogswell shakes her head when someone suggests that a coop could cost $2,000. I ask her if she plans to refute that, or to speak at all. “No,” she says. She pauses. “I’m listening.”

A white-haired woman says she had to pull down her beautiful English ivy to prevent rats from harboring in it, and could the county perhaps designate common areas like community gardens for these coops?

A woman with a pashmina draped around her addresses Hobbs with the last question of the evening. “Did the county ask your neighbor to take down the henhouse?” she asks. He says the chickens are no longer there. Pashmina asks if the rats are still around now that the hens are gone. He says more or less, no.

Cogswell is shaking her head again as people begin to rise and leave the room. “He said it’s solely because of the chickens,” she says. “And it’s not.”

Her Rhode Island Reds are gone now, off to a friend’s land in Culpepper. “The guy who has them now says he’s never seen chickens so people-friendly,” says Cogswell. She misses them, and the way they used to “cluck-cluck-cluck” when she greeted them. “They’re like pets,” she says.

The microphone lets out a terrible squawk as the room empties, and the crowd gives a startled cry.

The issue of personal chicken-raising has lived on news sites and forums for the last year. County law currently allows residents to raise chickens on their property, provided that the birds don’t roam free and that their enclosure is 100 feet from the property boarder. The county recommends a half-acre of land to remain within the law. Chicken-raising advocates say that makes chicken ownership in Arlington all but impossible.

Tom Carter, who works in government affairs by day and fights for the Arlington Egg Project by night, has been unable to raise hens—that’s hens, mind you, not roosters—because of the size of his property. Carter stresses that the group does not encourage rooster ownership due to their noisy wake-up calls. Besides, you don’t need a rooster to get eggs. (Hens lay unfertilized eggs, which we eat, on their own.)

Kirsten Buhls, the agriculture and natural resources agent for the Virginia Cooperative Extension, says she occasionally hears from residents with complaints or concerns about neighborhood chickens.

“I think some of the concerns are very valid,” she says, but overall, they come from either misinformation or a bad chicken owner. The noise complaint, she says, is unfounded if you’re dealing with hens.

“The volume of sound that hens make is about the decimal of human conversation,” says Buhls. “About 60 decimals.” Hens do make noise, for instance, after successfully laying an egg. “They’re quite proud of themselves in the morning when they lay an egg,” she says. “For the most part, they are very quiet.”

Other worries—like how the hens will stay warm in the winter and if their poop will be a neighborhood nuisance—can be addressed through breed selection and proper ownership, says Buhls. The most legitimate concern about chickens, she suggests, is that feed will accumulate outside.

“You can’t just throw food on the ground,” she says. “The management of the feed supply must be doen very carefully to prevent rodent population.” Buhls doesn’t believe it’s an insurmountable issue—she herself has raised up to a dozen chickens at a time without trouble—but that like all animal ownership, backyard hen-raising needs to be done responsibly.

And just who are these people clamoring to own chickens in Arlington? It’s hard to say. They are people who want to have control over the production of the food they eat, Carter says, but there’s no pattern to the hundreds of zipcodes of supporters in the Egg Project’s databse. “We pretty much represent every precinct, every neighborhood,” he says. “It’s all over.” The group gathered 1,000 signatures for a petition, but Carter can’t estimate how much support there is in the county at large.

Buhls thinks that the chicken-raising debate gets a lot of attention because it’s a “kind of sexy, fun issue,” but it’s part of a larger and growing interest in urban agriculture. “This is a way for residents of an urban community like ours to connect with the land,” she says.

Buhls also doesn’t have a clear sense of the numbers, which she says is actually a testament to how discreetly people can raise chickens.

“I suspect the number is much higher than we think it is,” she says. “For the most part, with proper management, you don’t really know. They’re really quiet. Most of us don’t even know if our neighbors have chickens.”

In its annual State of the Nation's River report, the conservancy gave the waterway a D grade, down from D+ in its first report in 2007.

The conservancy says there are new concerns as well, including contaminants such as chemicals found in the river that have been linked to so-called intersex fish that have both male and female traits.

"The nation's river continues to face significant threats," said H. Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy.

More than 6 million people now live in the river's basin in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, up 5 percent in the past five years.

The river's vital signs have leveled off or declined as a result, the conservancy said, noting that in 2010 the river had the second largest decline in scores compiled by Chesapeake EcoCheck, a government university partnership, with four of six major health indicators declining.

The river, for example, is often unsafe for swimming after heavy rains because many sewage systems are tied to storm drains that overflow, a problem that only increases with the population, the conservancy said. Population growth is partly to blame.

“That means more subdivisions, more roads, more parking lots, and all of those hardened surfaces cause water to runoff and pick up pollution,” said Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac

About half of the river basin is still forested, but development in downstream areas is depleting woodlands, with Prince George's County losing about half of its forests between 1993 and 2007. And upstream, where forests increased over the past century as farm lands were abandoned, that trend is being reversed due to growing development, the conservancy said.

That's important because forested acres produce 95 percent less runoff during storms than paved areas of the same size. While many of the farms that remain are well managed, larger animal feeding operations are an increasing threat because of the amounts of manure the animals produce, Belin said.

“It's mostly related to chickens, although there is some cattle as well, but the big growth is overall in animal waste. When it rains like it is today, washes off those agricultural lands and washes into the river and streams,” Belin said.

Runoff from manure and fertilizer from croplands, lawns and other sources harms water quality by promoting the growth of algae, which clouds water and robs oxygen once the algae dies and is broken down. That can lead to dead zones where the water lacks enough oxygen to support plants, fish and other organisms.

The conservancy said progress has been made in the past five years, but not enough to get ahead of the growing problems.

Many recommendations involve limiting runoff from developed areas.

Forests also must be protected through conservation of existing areas and replanting, particularly along stream banks with a goal of a no-net loss of forests. The group is also calling for tighter toxic chemical controls.

Todd Lookingbill, an assistant professor of geography and the environment at the University of Richmond, said the effect of development on streams and small waterways is often overlooked.

Small waterways, which sometimes do not have water year-round, are "hot spots of biological activity"' that help remove pollutants, but they are often turned into culverts, channelized, or paved over.

"By not allowing the water to interact with the land we are reducing the ability of the natural environment to filter these contaminants," Lookingbill said during a conference call.

Lookingbill said development was also increasing in what he called "exurban" areas which are often rural.

Developers, meanwhile, are often hampered by regulations that limit what can be done to reduce runoff, Belin said.

Some communities, for example, require streets to be 30 feet wide when narrower streets would limit the amount of paved area. Developments in some places are also required to have a certain number of parking spaces, or don't allow more porous paving materials, he said.

Local governments, he said, "need to step up in the coming months and lay out their plans for how they are going to reduce pollution in their communities." He said it will pay "tremendous dividends down the road in terms of clean and safe drinking water."

Controlling runoff is a key feature of the federal Environmental Protection Agency's strategy for restoring the Chesapeake Bay, which the Potomac feeds, Belin noted.

While gains have been made in cutting pollution from farms and sewage treatment plants, the EPA says pollution from urban and suburban runoff is still growing.

The Potomac Conservancy has not graded the waterway since the first report in 2007. Conservancy spokeswoman Anne Sundermann said the new grade is part of its plan to reassess the waterway every five years.

Dozens of protestors who want the right to buy raw-milk gathered at the FDA Tuesday to highlight the restrictions on selling and consuming raw-milk products.

Frederick county resident Leah Mack was part of the crowd, who chanted slogans like “hey, hey FDA, raw milk is here to stay.”

“This is America where I should be able to choose my own food and whether they think it is a risk or not is irrelevant. I've done the research myself, and I have chosen,” Mack said.

Since 1987, it has been illegal to transport raw milk across state lines. Pasteurization of milk was adopted to kill bacteria and eliminate the risk of getting sick, the FDA says.

Mack says she decided to consume raw milk over the storebought kind years ago to improve her health, which worked.

“I wasn't getting bronchitis, I wasn't getting UTI's, my back pain went away even,” she described the effect of the switch.

Karine Bouis-Towe, co-founder of the farm food freedom coalition, followed a similar path. To keep the supply of raw milk flowing, she had to create a buying club that now includes 500 families in the D.C.-region.

While some states allow the sale of raw milk, Maryland does not.

“We get our milk from Pennsylvania, so we have to cross state lines. So the farmer has to take the risk to cross state lines in order to get milk to the consumers who are demanding it,” Bouis-Towe said.

That Pennsylvania farmer is now under close watch.

“He's had several raids on his farm, he’s been threatened with a cease and desist order, and that's something else that we're protesting today, we think that these charges should be dropped, that they're ridiculous,” Bouis-Towe said.

Law enforcement kept an eye on the group, but the rally remained peaceful, even as raw milk continued to come in, along with the raw-milk freedom riders who started their journey in Pennsylvania.

The FDA released a food safety note saying its position is shared by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatricians.

With winter approaching, the stinky critters are searching for food and seeking places to hibernate. While you protect your house, we'll keep you updated should there be a tomato juice shortage.

View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.

Thanks to a 5-year, $3 million restoration effort at the marsh, the scenery is looking more like it did in the past with lush greens and wetlands. Keith Bowers, president of Biohabitats Inc., says this is promising news for the Anacostia.

“The Anacostia River used to be full of freshwater tidal wetlands, specifically wild rice. Over the years, that's all disappeared, so to start bringing back those wetlands, we start improving the water quality, we improve the bio-diversity and we improve the species that live here,” Bowers says.

The visit was part of National Estuaries Day celebrations. District officials say the 33-acre Kenilworth Marsh restoration completed in 1993 is a model of public-private cooperation among the district's Department of Public Works, the National Park Service, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and the Council of Governments.

“It was really great to see an estuary like this in an urban environment, and to know that we can bring and restore an estuary like this,” said Kate Roetzer, a legislative assistant at the office of a Democratic Representative from North Carolina.

Environmental groups wanted to stress the need for continued federal funding for these types of projects, funding that may end up on the chopping block.

“Rather than cutting the funds, they should be enhancing the funds for more projects like this,” said Jeff Benoit, president of Restore America's Estuaries. The Anacostia River project was funded through a combination of federal and private money.

“Restoring wetlands like this, protecting wetlands like this are vital to the overall health of the Bay,” said William Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The groups involved in the project say it helped the local environment and created green jobs.

Transforming the 30 acres of freshwater tidal marsh took a team of engineers, biologists and others.

Bowers says the project has also brought back wildlife, “from red-shouldered hawks, to heron, to egrets, there's beaver coming back in the system.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

[DCist; WJLA]

But unless you're experienced in mushroom taxonomy, we recommend you leave the wild ones alone, as they recently put two local men, in separate incidents, in critical condition.

"This is the first time I see mushrooms in my backyard," Frank Constantinopla, 49, of Springfield, Va., told MyFoxDC. "So I said [to myself] I was so lucky ... I will try it." He said he thought the mushrooms, which appeared after heavy rains, were "organic" and "a good mushroom."

The mushrooms (Amanita phalloides) were organic, yes, but are also known as "death caps." They're the world's "most dangerous" mushroom.  Within hours of cooking and eating the mushrooms, the Philippines native was on the verge of liver failure. It took an experimental drug, flown in from California, to save him.

One week later, an 82-year-old Frederick farmer also got sick after eating the same type of mushroom, and was saved by the same drug.

UPDATE: Two women are currently being treated at Georgetown University Hospital after eating wild mushrooms picked in Northern Virginia, WUSA reports.

[WAMU; WUSA]

Along with the usual trash — food wrappers, plastic bottles, beer cans — there are also used condoms, "female hygiene products," and medical waste washing ashore at Slaughter Beach and Broadkill Beach, WBOC reports. Without assistance, it could take weeks to clean up the mess, but who's going to volunteer to pick up syringes?

D.C. and Baltimore's 33 smog days in 2010 are responsible for the high ranking in the Environment America report [pdf]. Philadelphia and Atlanta didn't fare much better. Best we can tell, if you want clean air and an urban environment, you should move to Anchorage, Alaska.

[USA Today]

PETA has confirmed that they applied for a .xxx domain name, the Virginian-Pilot reports. (For those not in the know, .xxx is a recently approved, voluntary domain for pornography sites.) The site will feature nudity and "sexually suggestive content," but not hardcore porn, says Lindsay Rajt, associate director of campaigns.

The pornographic images, Rajt said, would lead viewers to 'information and graphic imagery of how animals suffer in the food industry.'

'That's what we hope will shock people, get them talking, question the status quo and take action that benefits animals,' she said.

Because the first thing you want to see after achieving orgasm is the slaughter of a racehorse.

[AP; WUSA]

The bird was found Friday along the banks of Evitts Creek, just west of Rocky Gap State Park in Allegany County, near the Pennsylvania line, the Sun reports. While the eagle is no longer on the federal endangered species list, it is still protected by the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; killing one can carry a penalty of $100,000, and the wrath of every patriot in the nation.

The club president has told members that the board voted to use methyl bromide to redo the greens, which would preserve them for up to 15 years, the Post reports. The Maryland Department of Agriculture says the club doesn't need a permit for, nor does it need to tell neighbors about, its use of the chemical. And one board member "said the board researched the gas, determined that it was safe, and felt no need to notify area homeowners."

"Safe" is a relative term, but know this: Methyl bromide is applied by workers in protective gear and covered by a tarp for about three days, after which it's recommended that another three days pass before humans and pets are even allowed to walk on the treated grass. Not only does it deplete the ozone layer, but can cause pulmonary edema, kidney damage, and paralysis.

Only someone concerned about brown spots on a putting green could convince themselves that methyl bromide is safe.

The flooding in Prince George's County has been so bad that the Fort Washington Forest Wastewater Pumping Station has been overflowing since Wednesday afternoon, and the Broad Creek Wastewater Pumping Station started overflowing Thursday afternoon. The one consolation is that the county experienced more overflow after Hurricane Irene, but that still doesn't make us feel any better.

Overflows "are common in the Washington region, and can threaten drinking water," the Post reports. If you're in D.C., you may not have fared much better.

D.C. Water and Sewer Authority officials said their system likely overflowed during the heavy rains, but they issued no report. When it cannot handle flows, the District’s sewer system is designed to release raw sewage from businesses and homes, mixed with rain runoff, into the nearest body of water. Officials said that option is preferred over allowing diluted sewage to back up into sinks, tubs and toilets.

Raw sewage? We'd recommend throwing out those wading boots right about now.

GreenChill Certification, developed by the EPA in partnership with supermarkets, indicates that a store has achieved a reduced level of refrigerant emissions, which impact the ozone layer and contribute to climate change. Though more than 7,300 stores belong to the GreenChill Partnership (20 percent of the grocery industry), just a handful of stores in the D.C. region are represented: a Wegmans in Woodmore, Md. and a Harris Teeter in Chantilly, Va.

The new Whole Foods received gold-level status from the EPA, which means the store will produce 75 percent fewer refrigerant emissions than a typical U.S. supermarket. For those who don’t give a fig about refrigeration, the store will also be offering free samples and musical festivities throughout opening day.

The planned soccer field isn't scoring many points among residents.

“I think the entire nature of this neighborhood will change,” Susan Rufkhar said. “My home is within sight and sound, so we'll be able to see and hear all of that and it would be difficult to pull in and out of my driveway.”

The school board is leasing the 20 acre school site on Brickyard Road to the county. Montgomery County says it needs more soccer facilities in the down-county region, as laid out in the 2002 Potomac master plan.

“The master plan specifically calls for this particular property to be used for ball fields if it's not used for a school,” said county spokesman Patrick Lacefield.

Some residents say they were left out of the dark during the discussions and only found out about the project in March.

“We were shocked that we were not notified...that the community was never notified that there was any change in use coming to the parcel,” said Ted Duncan, who heads the Civic Association of River Falls.

Nick M aravell says his livelihood rests on that land, where he's farmed for three decades.

“I have until the end of 2011 and then I don't have any assurance that I'll be farming here,” he said.

“This is public land, which should be used for public purpose and not for a private commercial farm,” counters Montgomery County’s Lacefield.

Public comments on the proposal to select a partner to develop the fields can be submitted until Thursday.
The civic associations in the community say they would like to stop the whole process. On Tuesday they filed a legal notice for a possible financial claims against county and board of education.

Barker wrote a letter to the town's citizens that begins with a Price is Right reference — "COME ON DOWN and tell your mayor and city council that you can learn to share your great city with the deer!" — and includes a (one can assume) Barker-esque pun: "I have unfortunately recently discovered that my deer friends in your city may be killed."

Barker must be really bored to bother writing a letter about deer to a small city on the other side of the country. But if you want to disagree with him, we urge you not to do so to his face:

Here's the full letter, via the Post:

Bob Barker deer letter

Sad, I know. But consider this: "Amani’s litter will be the only captive-born cheetah litter from any North American zoo this year, and 80 percent of captive cheetahs die without producing any offspring," the Smithsonian's Surprising Science reports. I guess that's kind of sad, too, though not without a grain hope. Oh, just watch the video, which eliminates sadness as effectively as ecstasy, but without the brain damage or infantilism.

[Flickr/National Zoo]