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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Chicken farm pollution
  • Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:53:03 -0800 (PST)

Evidently this stuff is not worth trucking to fields to sell or give away as
fertilizer

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In Maryland, Focus on Poultry Industry Pollution

Veronika Lukasova for The New York Times

Lee Richardson next to a manure shed on his chicken farm in Willards, Md.
Excess poultry manure is washing into the Chesapeake Bay, worsening its
condition. More Photos >



By IAN URBINA

Published: November 28, 2008
WILLARDS, Md. — Standing before a two-story-tall pile of chicken manure, Lee
Richardson pondered how times had changed.

“When I left school and started working the land, this stuff was seen as
farmer’s gold,” said Mr. Richardson, 38, a fifth-generation chicken grower,
explaining that the waste was an ideal fertilizer for the region’s sandy
soil. “Now, it’s too much of a good thing.”

How to handle the 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in the state
each year has sparked a fierce debate between environmentalists and the
state’s powerful poultry industry. State officials hope to bring Maryland in
line with most other states next month by enacting new rules for where, how
and how long chicken farmers can spread the manure on their fields or store
it in outdoor piles.

“We don’t let hog or dairy farms spread their waste unregulated, and we
wouldn’t let a town of 25,000 people dump human manure untreated on open
lands,” said Gerald W. Winegrad, a public policy professor at the University
of Maryland who is a former state senator. “So why should we allow a farm
with 150,000 chickens do it?”

As the amount of cropland in Maryland has shrunk and the number of chickens
raised has grown to 570 million, these mountains of manure have become a
liability because the excess is washing into the Chesapeake Bay, one of the
nation’s most polluted estuaries, and further worsening the plight of the
fishermen who ply its waters.

But the chicken farmers say that they are already doing their part to protect
the environment and that the proposed regulations come as the industry is
reeling from record-high energy and feed prices.

“This will absolutely kill anyone coming into the poultry industry,” Kenny
Bounds, a government affairs officer for Mid-Atlantic Farm Credit, said at
one of three public hearings in the last month, where farmers objected to the
regulations and said they might push some growers out of the state.

The poultry industry in Maryland, the state’s most lucrative form of
agriculture and one of its largest employers, has expanded to feed the
nation’s growing hunger for cheap chicken.

The lower prices, however, are possible only from huge economies of scale.
And the bigger the farms, the more birds and the more manure there are to
handle.

State officials have started to realize that there are consequences to being
able to sell skinless, boneless chicken breast for just over $2 per pound
when virtually no other protein source with so little fat is that cheap, Mr.
Winegrad said.

Environmentalists and state officials have also become frustrated that after
more than a decade of spending over $100 million a year in state money on
restoration efforts, the Chesapeake, unlike most other mid-Atlantic
waterways, has only grown more polluted.

As the phosphorous and nitrogen levels in the bay have grown, so have the
algae that deplete oxygen needed by other aquatic life.

In the past two decades, working oystermen on the bay have dropped to less
than 500, from 6,000. The crab population has fallen by 70 percent.

“A lot of chicken farmers are already doing the right thing when it comes to
pollution,” said Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen’s
Association, adding that he thought the poultry regulations would be a step
in the right direction. “But there needs to be more done to make sure that
everyone does the right thing.”

Under the state’s proposed rules, 75 to 100 of the 800 largest poultry
farmers in Maryland would have to apply for permits to handle manure. State
officials would also begin inspecting these farms unannounced and levying
heavy fines if violations are not eventually corrected. The rules would not
affect smaller farms.

Michele Merkel, a lawyer with the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental
advocacy group, said the permits did not go far enough. Too few farms would
be required to have them, Ms. Merkel said, and they allow farmers to pile the
waste in their fields open to the rain for 90 days, while most other states
permit it to be uncovered for only 14 days.

Maryland is most famous for its blue crabs, oysters and watermen, so it has a
lot to lose from polluting these waters, Ms. Merkel said.

“That’s exactly why it’s never made sense to me,” she said, “that the state
is so unwilling to really regulate one of the bay’s biggest polluters.”

The economic might of the poultry industry is certainly part of the reason.

Concentrated in Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester Counties along the Eastern
Shore, the industry contributes more than $700 million annually to the
Maryland economy.

For every job added on a chicken farm, seven related jobs are created in
slaughterhouses, construction and trucking, according to industry estimates.

Just inland from the shore, the scope of the farms overwhelms the senses. The
500-foot-long chicken houses stretch from the roadways like airplane hangars.

Inside each house, 20,000 to 35,000 chickens cramp the floors farther than
the eye can see. Feed and water are delivered in automated pipes that stretch
the length of the houses.

Corn and soy fields separate the houses from the roads, and three quarters of
the state’s crop go toward feeding the birds.

Gigantic fans suction ammonia from the birds’ waste, filling the air for
miles around.



Under the proposed regulations, chicken growers would be required to maintain
a 35-foot-wide filter strip of vegetation along streams and ditches, or not
to apply manure within 50 feet of streams or 10 feet of ditches, and they
would be required to keep manure piles more than 100 feet from streams. The
permits would also assess fines of up to $32,500 per day if farmers did not
correct problems after being told to do so.

The liability for the manure would fall to the growers who raise the
chickens, rather than the larger companies that own the birds, provide the
feed and drop off a new batch of chicks every eight weeks.

Bill Satterfield, director of the local poultry trade association, Delmarva
Poultry Industry Inc., said the farmers were an important engine for the
state’s economic well-being.

“We’re also already doing our part when it comes to the environment,” Mr.
Satterfield said.

Farmers already work to plant trees and environmental buffers around chicken
houses and feed the birds an ingredient to cut down on the phosphorous in
their manure. They also recycle some of their manure in the world’s largest
chicken manure recycling plant, which produces organic fertilizer pellets
that can be shipped elsewhere.

Storm runoff from urban areas, lawn fertilizers and pollution from cars and
sewage treatment plants also play major roles in polluting the bay. But
Environmental Protection Agency officials say that agriculture is the largest
single source of pollutants and sediment in the Chesapeake Bay, accounting
for over 40 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorous and over 70 percent of
the sediment.

State officials say that animal manure produces more phosphorus and nearly
the same amount of nitrogen pollution as all human wastewater from treatment
plants in the state.

Although the dairy and hog industry in states near the bay produce more
pounds of manure, poultry waste has more than twice the concentration of
pollutants per pound. Reducing pollution from agriculture is also about a
tenth as costly as it is to achieve the same reductions from urban
development, state and federal environmental officials say.

“The reason to focus on poultry,” said Tom Simpson, executive director of
Water Stewardship, an environmental nonprofit agency, “is that sewage
treatment plants have already been required to reduce their pollution and
storm water runoff from cities and large dairy and hog farms have permits
that can be used to limit their water pollution.”

But in the past two decades, the poultry industry has carved a special role
for itself in terms of the oversight it receives, and it has twice defeated
state efforts to impose permits.

Maryland is one of the only states where the poultry industry is regulated by
the State Department of Agriculture, whose primary mission is helping
farmers, and not by the State Department of the Environment, which is charged
with enforcing pollution laws.

Most other states with large poultry farms already require the permits and
regular inspections.

In Maryland, however, chicken farmers have only had to file nutrient
management plans with state agriculture officials, describing how they
control their chicken waste each year.

These documents are not public. The guidelines for manure storage are
optional, and the fine for not filing a plan is $350.

Standing in front of his pickup truck with a bumper sticker that said “It’s
not farmland without farmers,” Mr. Richardson shook his head in frustration.

“As far as I can tell, the current system works fine except a few bad
apples,” he said. “What they are proposing now is just more cost for us
growers and more time doing paperwork.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/us/29poultry.html








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