Environmentalists had mixed reactions to the proposal, with some praising Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration but others criticizing the permits as too weak.
"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 federal law required Maryland and other states to start policing water pollution from chicken farms three years ago.
She argued that the proposal doesn't go far enough because it would leave up to state discretion whether to inspect poultry houses and monitor streams and underground water supplies for pollution.
The permits could flatly outlaw any runoff of manure into streams, Merkel said, but these don't go that far, allowing some pollution as long as the farms follow a list of rules.
"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.
Julie De Young, a spokeswoman for the Maryland-based Perdue Farms, the third-largest chicken company in America, said the permits proposed by Maryland are less burdensome than some federal industrial-style discharge permits. The company will have no problem with the state's new environmental program "as long as it's not overly onerous from an administrative or financial standpoint."
The regulations would require a state permit for any chicken farm with more than 125,000 birds or poultry houses of more than 75,000 square feet. About 200 of Maryland's 862 poultry farms are large enough to need permits, which would cost farmers at least $120 a year in fees.
Among other requirements, permitted farms would have to allow MDE inspectors onto their land to sample for pollution, take photographs and check manure management records. They would also have to submit annual reports to the state, declaring the numbers of animals they have, how much manure they produce and where it was spread. And they would have to maintain a 25-foot-wide filter strip of vegetation along streams and ditches. Among the requirements is that manure be kept more than 100 feet from streams.
