Hot News

1.08.2008

By Staff, wire reports

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Echoes of last November’s Poultry Summit resonated across the Eastern Shore this past weekend in the wake of a proposed crackdown on poultry farmers by Gov. Martin O’Malley.
The Governor, late on Jan. 4, advanced a proposal that would require costly pollution inspection permits from the Shore’s larger growers.
To many in the industry, it was no surprise. It had been anticipated since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — under the banner of his Waterkeepers Alliance — had delivered a controversial diatribe against the poultry industry at a “summit” at the Civic Center in Salisbury on Nov. 1.
At that gathering, O’Malley’s new attorney general, Doug Gansler, had indicated that Eastern Shore poultry growers needed to be reined in. He had campaigned on a platform to “get tough” in the Chesapeake Bay clean-up effort.
There were indications in O’Malley’s successful gubernatorial campaign, that he had a sense, an understanding, of what agriculture was all about on the Eastern Shore.
His Friday announcement that perhaps as many as 200 of the Shore’s chicken farmers may be under the regulatory gun fueled the element of surprise in his proposal.
The regulations will be given public hearings by the Department of the Environment.
A final rule is not due until March 31. The final regulations would not go into effect until 120 days after that date. Pollution control permits are already required for large dairy and hog farms, but poultry was exempted when the regulations were written more than a decade ago even though the industry is larger. Maryland proposed similar permits under former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in 2004, but the proposal was dropped after farmers complained it was too burdensome.
Response to the proposal by environmentalists was mixed, with a former Environmental Protection Agency official saying it doesn’t go far enough to protect the Chesapeake Bay from farm runoff.
The regulations would require a state permit for any chicken farm with more than 125,000 birds or poultry houses larger than 75,000 square feet. Under those criteria, about 200 of the state’s 862 poultry farms would require the permits, which would cost farmers about $120 a year in fees.
Permitted farms would have to allow state environmental inspectors onto their land to sample for pollution, take photographs and check manure management records. Annual reports would also have to be submitted to the state, declaring the numbers of animals, manure produced and how it was disposed. Manure would have to be kept more than 100 feet from streams, and a 25-foot-wide filter strip of vegetation along streams and ditches would also be required.
The Department of the Environment will take comments from the public on the proposal and issue final regulations March 31. The regulations will take effect within 120 days after that, officials said.
Robert Summers, deputy environment secretary, said regularly scheduled inspections are not required under the proposal. Summers said his agency has 35 water pollution inspectors, who must also monitor sewage treatment plants, construction sites, wetlands and other locations.
“We do not have an adequate number of inspectors to do all the inspections we’d like to do,” Summers said. “So we are going to prioritize our inspections to only those that have the highest environmental and public health risks.”
The state passed a law requiring most farms to have fertilizer management plans following an outbreak of the toxic algae pfiesteria on the Pocomoke River in 1997. However, that law does not require farms to limit runoff, but only makes recommendations and any monitoring is conducted by the state agriculture department, not environmental regulators.
“I think it’s greatly needed. ... Chickens have been one of the major problems for water quality in the Bay,” said state Sen. Paul Pinsky, a Prince George’s County Democrat and chairman of a Senate environment subcommittee. “There has been a lot of fear from the agricultural community about this and a lot of resistance.”
Michele Merkel, Chesapeake regional coordinator for the Waterkeepers Alliance, an environmental group, said the state was required under federal to begin policing water pollution caused by chicken farms federal law three years ago. She noted the proposed regulations don’t go far enough because they allow the state to decide whether to inspect poultry houses and monitor streams and underground water supplies. The permits could prohibit any runoff of manure into streams, but don’t, Merkel said.
“I don’t think it’s aggressive at all. It doesn’t go far enough to protect the Chesapeake Bay, and it reflects that the MDE isn’t serious about regulating confined animal feeding operations,” said Merkel, a former attorney for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.