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["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

O.K., where's the round of boo hisses.  Where's the complaints that Maryland 
is going to make it impossible for these chicken farmers, blah, blah, blah? 
What?  No complaints about dogooding ex-hippies?  Or is all that angst only 
reserved for laws passed in California?

Lynda, in a pissy mood <g>
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "bob ford" <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>


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