"Sometimes You've Got To Make A Little Bit of Good Trouble"

Last week I attended my 9^thWaterkeeper Alliance Annual Conference.   As I type that first sentence I thought I had counted incorrectly so I defaulted to the reliable finger count.   And darn, there it was – this is my 9^th year as a Waterkeeper!  

My first Waterkeeper conference was in New Orleans, LA a mere two years after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the 9^th Ward and downtown NOLA.  It was an experience I won’t ever forget, for not only was I tossed into the brilliant chaos of keynote speakers, workshops, networking, happy hours and late night camaraderie that is the annual Waterkeeper Alliance conference, but I was also tossed head on, face to face, with the total devastation that was Katrina, and what happens when irresponsible development, and human intervention of natural water systems, disrupts natural safety nets.  Water diversion canals combined with the loss of important cypress forests and wetlands was a recipe for disaster.  Our conference that year was a great opportunity for reflection, education, and a call to action to save the ecosystems of the Gulf Coast.  Ironic that 3 years later our Gulf Coast Waterkeepers were dealing with the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, as the world’s thirst for fossil fuel energy sources exacerbates climate change and the possibility of storms worse than Katrina. 

This year, our annual Conference was held in Boulder, CO and the Colorado River was the focus for a week of workshops, panels and guest speakers centered on Energy, Climate Change, Industrial Agriculture, and diversifying our movement. A stellar line up of panel discussions and workshops laid the foundation for an inspiring week of networking and sharing stories with Waterkeepers from 29 countries and 257 programs around the world.

I was a panelist for the workshop exploring National and International Industrial Agriculture pollution impacts to local waterways, and joined Waterkeepers from North Carolina, Idaho, Maryland, Guatemala, and China on this international panel.

My presentation was about the work Assateague Coastal Trust has been doing with residents of local communities in Somerset County who asked our help approaching their county Planning Department to ask for stronger zoning codes that would protect rural residential neighborhoods from industrial scale poultry house developments.

Somerset County has a combined residential/agriculture zoning district, so in many places throughout the county subdivisions have been built next to corn and soybean fields.  Families moving into this rural ag/residential area knew they were moving into an agricultural community and indeed most didn't mind living next to a farm, even a poultry farm.  Unfortunately, some people on Palmetto Church Road in Princess Anne, MD built their homes next to a traditional small family farm only to find a few years later it was sold and the red barn, white farm house and little chicken coop was replaced with twenty six industrial scale poultry houses surrounding their homes.

 

Today there is a new model of poultry production on the Eastern Shore, and it is a far cry from the small family farmer trying to earn extra income by setting up three or four poultry houses on their family farm.

Today we have international corporations using local developers who are purchasing prime agricultural parcels at top dollar and building six to twelve, or in one instance twenty-six,  60' x 600' industrial scale poultry houses on these parcels.

 

Think Walmart Supercenter and its parking lots.  That's the density of poultry house construction taking place throughout our rural lower Eastern Shore.   These developers contract with Perdue, Tyson or Mountaire,  set up the operation, put a manager on site in a trailer, and then move down the road to purchase another parcel and build another industrial scale poultry development.

Each of these houses holds up to 30,000 birds at a time and usually rotate 5-6 flocks a year.  That's a lot of chicken, a lot of manure (with nowhere to go because these CAFO developers don't farm the land,) and a lot of ammonia, feathers, dust and other particulates being blown out of industrial fans into the air of neighboring communities.

This poses a direct health impact to anyone living near these facilities. Assateague Coastal Trust, with assistance from the Johns Hopkins Center For A Livable Future and the University of Maryland School of Public Health,  compiled a package of health studies, research, and other information to submit to the Somerset County Planning Commission for review. 

Unfortunately the County Health Department Director dismissed the entire packet as not relevant because it was not research from a Somerset County source.  Well, I guess they're right on that point, despite one of the peer reviewed papers having been written by a Nobel Laureate.  Mr. Bill Satterfield, of Delmarva Poultry Industry, publicly dismissed the body of research as 'bunk.'

A recent video interview with Somerset County resident Tom Kerchner, on The Daily Times website, captured the feeling of these residents when Tom explained his decision to sell his little house in the woods and move away from the Eastern Shore.  Watch the video here. (My apologies, Delmarvanow.com makes you watch a 15 second commercial first.)

Somerset County has the highest density of poultry houses on the lower Shore, and it is also the poorest county in the State of Maryland.  These poultry 'jobs' are not helping Somerset County climb out of its economic slump. 

  

Indeed, as a once thriving waterman's industry fades into history and the tourism dollars that industry brought to the county dry up, County officials seem to be inviting anything that has to do with poultry into their county:  70 new poultry house projects are in the pipeline; there is a proposed chicken manure-to-energy power plant trying to find a parcel of land to call home; a chemical plant will process hatchery waste (bedding litter, dead hens/chicks, infertile eggs, etc.) into products used for make-up, fragrances, and 'natural flavorings'……yum!

On behalf of Assateague Coastal Trust, it has been my privilege to help facilitate a dialog between residents, county officials and yes, even the poultry industry, in an effort to find a pro-active solution for a growing problem on Delmarva - too little space and too many chickens.

As Reverend Dr. Gerald Durley said, during the closing ceremony of the 2015 Waterkeeper Annual Conference, when he praised Waterkeepers everywhere for their passion and their work to protect their local communities and waterways from pollution, "Sometimes you've got to make a little bit of good trouble."