"We are not doing anything different on the Eastern Shore than EPA would do in any other part of the country," said Allison Wiedeman, the EPA official in Washington who oversees the rules nationwide. She said many poultry farmers in the Southeast are also being advised that they need to get permits.
The federal rules say farmers may not pile manure in their fields for more than 14 days, after which they must cover it or work it into the soil. Farmers also must not spread manure within 35 to 100 feet of ditches or waterways.
Wood, the Caroline farmer, said he does not have enough space in his barns to keep all the manure his birds produce in the winter. He grows wheat, corn, soybeans and barley on 700 acres, and says the waterway setback requirements could sharply limit the amount of land on which farmers could raise crops.
McGuigan said regulators would consider easing the manure storage and setback requirements on a case-by-case basis.
The federal requirements are confusing to many Maryland farmers, who'd spent the past year attending meetings to debate the state's attempt to regulate poultry farms.
State environmental officials softened the reporting and manure-handling requirements of those rules to ease farmers' complaints, but the rules were put on hold to review complaints from the Waterkeeper Alliance that they were too lax. The state had proposed to let farmers leave manure in the open up to 90 days, for instance, and would permit manure within 10 feet of drainage ditches.
A Shore poultry farmer also challenged the rules as too strict, but he has since withdrawn his appeal, a state spokeswoman said.
"We're all still trying to figure out what's going on," said Lee Richardson, 38, a poultry farmer in Willards, in Wicomico County. "It's nerve-racking."
Adding to farmers' anxiety and confusion is that there are just a handful of agricultural consultants nationwide who are certified to prepare the comprehensive nutrient-management plans required by the federal rules.
Ted Cordrey, one of those consultants who is based in Delaware, said he returned recently from vacation to find 80 phone messages from farmers wanting to hire him.
The plans themselves can cost several thousand dollars to prepare for large poultry farms, especially if they use the manure to fertilize crops. Farmers can get federal funds to cover most of the plan preparation cost, as well as of any pollution controls they find they need, but the grower still has to pay some out of pocket.
