By Timothy B. Wheeler , tim.wheeler@baltsun.com|March 15, 2009
The Environmental Protection Agency has told Maryland's poultry farmers it intends to enforce for the first time federal pollution rules governing chicken manure - a crackdown that has surprised and angered growers while pleasing environmentalists who've long complained about agricultural runoff fouling Chesapeake Bay.
At meetings recently on the Eastern Shore, EPA officials told several hundred farmers that they must get federal pollution-discharge permits if any manure from their flocks is washing off their land into drainage ditches and streams. More than half of the state's 800 poultry farmers have filed notices to get the permits, state officials say.
The federal permits are tougher in key respects than what Maryland has so far been unable to establish for its poultry farmers. State regulations and permit requirements developed last year to cover about 200 of the largest chicken farms are on hold because of appeals filed both by environmentalists and farmers.
"It's nothing more than a lot of red tape," grumbled David Wood, 62, a farmer who raises 435,000 chickens near Denton in Caroline County. While he said he'll do what it takes to comply, he predicted that some small poultry farmers may quit because they can't afford - or won't be willing - to alter their operations to meet the federal requirements. "They're not going to mess with it," he said.
But EPA officials say greater scrutiny of poultry farms is warranted because of the vast quantities of manure they generate on the low-lying Delmarva Peninsula, close to the Chesapeake and its tributaries.
Agriculture is the largest source of the nutrients degrading the bay's water quality, according to the EPA's bay program, with runoff of manure and chemical fertilizers responsible for 42 percent of the nitrogen and 46 percent of the phosphorus. Such nutrients stimulate the growth of algae blooms and a vast oxygen-starved "dead zone" in the bay unsuitable for fish, oysters and crabs.
For Maryland farmers, who have resisted government regulation, the permits are a costly headache. Growers will be required to submit comprehensive reports on how they handle and store the manure produced by their chickens, and list how much they're using as fertilizer on crops and what precautions they're taking to keep it from getting into nearby streams.
