3/21 By MARK POWELL

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is pushing Maryland state officials to go forward with an effort to link poultry companies and contract growers when issuing environmental permits to poultry plants.
Teresa Pierno of the bay foundation said last week that Maryland needs “an enforceable permit,” which would involve major fines for poultry companies whose growers are not following nutrient management planning.
The Maryland Department of the Environment had been meeting privately with top officials from Allen Family Foods, Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods, poultry companies which need National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to run their processing facilities.
Maryland Farm Bureau, the state’s top farmer organization, had also been involved with these meetings designed to create a workable agreement between MDE and agriculture. The private meetings had been held to attempt an accord with the state on this issue. A draft memorandum of understanding was created among all the poultry companies to deal with the issues raised by MDE. (The MOU is included in this week’s Mid-Atlantic Poultry Farmer on Page 3 as well as on The Delmarva Farmer Web site: www.americanfarm.com.)
According to Pierno, the bay foundation was asked to attend the last of the meetings between MDE and the ag leaders in December. The MOU, according to Pierno, lacked the enforcement backstop needed to ensure compliance. Those meetings, according to officials at MDE, now appear to be stalled with MDE wanting major fines for companies not ensuring their growers are following nutrient management plans and the ag interests not agreeing to have those fines in the environmental permits. The meetings, held off and on since sometime last summer, were also declared to have reached an impasse last week by the Washington Post.
MDE officials say the meetings were to be kept secret, with no talk in the press. Those officials did not know who had informed the Washington Post. The Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. (DPI) issued a press release on March 14 stating the “poultry industry was surprised to learn in (the) Washington Post that negotiations between the poultry companies and the state of Maryland on the handling of poultry litter had broken down. It was our understanding that the negotiations are still underway. We have not been notified that the talks have ended. All the previous discussions in the past several months have led to a number of drafts of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This bold and innovative program enhances the poultry companies’ environmental practices beyond the requirements of the Maryland Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998.”
DPI President William G. Massey said, “Even though regulations to implement most of the 1998 Maryland law have not even been adopted yet, our industry is dedicated to moving ahead with its environmental stewardship. We believe that this Memorandum of Understanding is unprecedented and convincing evidence of the willingness of our industry to work with the state government to improve water quality in Maryland.”
In March 1999, Maryland Farm Bureau President Stephen Weber had written Secretary of the Environment Jane Nishida to express the farmer organization’s view that linking farmers and poultry companies through NPDES permits was a misguided effort. Weber said that a co-permitting effort would be another layer of regulation on top of the state’s mandatory nutrient management program. Nishida responded at that point in a letter, saying that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had given the state the right to link poultry farmers and poultry companies. She added that “farmers will not be given any new requirements or deadlines under this co-permitting approach.” MDE sees co-permitting as necessary to make poultry companies responsible for litter from contract operations.
In May 1999, some 635 Maryland poultry farmers were asked by DPI grower committee chairman Dale Boyce to send letters to Gov. Parris Glendening with their concerns that co-permits would hurt Eastern Shore farmers.
Boyce said, “If we do not comply with our nutrient management plans, these companies could lose their permits. And, conversely, if our integrators violate their permits, we might also be held accountable and penalized.” Also last year, Speaker of the House of Delegates Casper Taylor challenged the soundness of a state policy which uses co-permitting. Taylor pointed out: “Only a few years ago the MDE, the state of Maryland and the counties opposed a similar attempt by the EPA to put the sludge application program under NPDES. That rearrangement would have tied Prince George’s and Montgomery counties (as responsible parties for Blue Plains Treatment Plant) to farmers who applied sludge from the counties’ treatment plant as ‘co-applicants’ for NPDES permits.” Taylor stated that MDE may be overreaching in its proposal. Last week, Maryland Farm Bureau’s Weber reinterated the farmer organization’s view on co-permitting: “In these times of tremendous financial pressures, we do not need another state regulatory program that will put additional burdens on Maryland’s farmers. We need a state government working with farmers, not against them. This unprecedented poultry industry initiative (the MOU) is a big step in the right direction.”