This isn't Chicken Salad
    Doo-doo. Beginning in the 1990s a noticeably odoriferous form of pollution, producing harmful bacteria in the Potomac River, took its natural course toward the river's estuary in Washington, District of Columbia. The polite way of describing the source of this problem is chicken fecal matter, the product of 90 million chickens near and in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

      It has been estimated that the average poultry house brings about 25,000 birds to market weight every 42 days; and, in a year, that house generates 167 tons of chicken litter (manure and wood shavings). The litter is used as fertilizer, as are the 5,200 pounds of dead birds from each house, or is fed to cattle. All together, the manure produced by farms under corporate contracts may well equal the waste from the entire human population of West Virginia.

     There is an old observation pertinent here. There are two things you don't want to see made: sausage and legislation. Add chickens to that list.

      At the end of the 1990s federal officials estimated that three-quarters of the 350 poultry farmers in the Potomac Valley lacked the proper equipment or plans to dispose of the manure and about half didn't employ recommended methods for disposing of the dead birds. These problems continue to occur.

      Runoff. Eventually the runoff from agricultural lands makes its way to the Potomac and flows by the federal regulators' doorsteps alerting their sensibilities.  On the way to the Potomac's estuary the river passes through Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia where more than 600 million chickens reside producing greater than 800,000 tons of manure annually. The Chesapeake Bay is a recipient of farm waste too. Beginning in July 2001 chicken farmers from the Delmarva Peninsula -- Delaware, Maryland, Virginia -- began shipping poultry litter by train to midwestern grain farms.

     Farm runoff has been implicated in outbreaks of the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscicda. However, early 1999 DNA testing of the Potomac River watershed at low water for West Virginia's Department of Agriculture led its commissioner to applaud the success of voluntary waste management practices. Still, American Rivers in 1997 and 1998 declared the Potomac as one of the ten most endangered rivers in North America. An in-depth examination of the poultry industry in West Virginia appeared in the Charleston Gazette.

     Planning. Neither the state nor county governments planned well for the tripling of the eastern counties' poultry business in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. The governmental emphasis on job creation  foreclosed a more holistic view encompassing the new jobs' adverse effects on the environment in which citizens live and tourists visit. Long-term planning in West Virginia for land-use and economic development, not limited to the broiler industry, leaves much to be desired.

     In late 1995, a full-scale cleanup plan was proposed with federal assistance and federal dollars have followed. So far the approach has been one of voluntary compliance through the use of best management practices (BMPs). Will it work? Only time will tell. It is difficult to see how Potomac Valley farmlands can sustain continuous application of phosphorous-rich manure and remain healthy.

     Farms. Preserving farmland in West Virginia's growth areas, such as the Eastern Panhandle, is important. The 2000 Legislature passed a bill allowiing for preservation by perpetual protective easements. the governing agencies are the West Virginia Agriculture Protection Authority and county commissions.

      Money. A major issue in cleanup of the poultry mess is money. EPA Region III has taken the position that the burden rests upon the broiler industry to pay for the additional costs of cleanup, just as other chemical polluters do. Maryland has adopted this regulatory position. Large poultry companies, called processors or integrators, are pushing for the chicken farmers to bear the burden of cleaning up the manure mess.

     In September 2000 Virginia's State Water Control Board adopted rules regulating poultry farmers and poultry processors. Maryland has created hundreds of miles of buffer forests along stream fronts to filter drainage into the Chesapeake Bay from fertilzer-ridden farms.

     Under vertical integration the big processors, such as Pilgrim's Pride (which absorbed WLR a/k/a Wampler), Tyson Foods, and Perdue Farms, control each step of the poultry production ladder.  Pilgrim's Pride is the dominant player in the eastern panhandle.  WLR Foods, Inc. and Wampler Foods, Inc. were sued by West Virginia's Attorney General on several grounds including misrepresenting "the true nature of agricultural opportunities" to poultry growers.

      In August 1998 negotiations between the industry and the EPA were at a standstill.  Previously, in July 1998, the EPA had proposed further cuts in poultry runoff in the second round of new state water pollution limits.  In Hardy County, for example, the new proposed runoff reduction is to be 38 percent.  In September 1998 the federal Department of Agriculture entered the fray with draft regulations to control runoff from farms with more than 100,000 chickens or more than 1,000 cows. 

      There is optimism for cleaner water, in the long term, through enforcement of the Clean Water Act [the common name for the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FPWCA)]. 
Last updated on Wednesday, July 25, 2001