Chickens produce billions of pounds of waste in NC. No one tracks where it goes.

[David P.]

Chickens produce billions of pounds of waste in NC. No one tracks where it goes.
DECEMBER 01, 2022, News & observer

Kemp Burdette spotted the giant piles during a routine flight over eastern North Carolina in June 2021.

Two 300-ft rows of chicken litter — manure mixed with poultry barn bedding — sat in a Sampson County field alongside what looked like three dilapidated poultry houses. A third, smaller cluster of brown piles was nearby.

Burdette, the Cape Fear riverkeeper, typically would report such a sighting to the N.C. Dept of Environmental Quality, hoping to start the clock on any required cleanup. Per state rules, piles of chicken waste can’t remain uncovered for more than 15 days in a row so rain doesn’t wash pollution into nearby waterways.

Instead, Burdette and Cape Fear River Watch decided to wait, hoping to illustrate how long it can take for state officials to check out what no regulators are out there looking for.

The piles sat for more than 17 months, seemingly flaunting North Carolina’s flimsy rules, Burdette wrote in a November complaint to the DEQ. He included aerial photos that Cape Fear River Watch took of the piles during flights in Sept 2021, Jan 2022 and Oct 2022.

To Burdette and other environmental advocates, the mess left piled on a Sampson County farm is a stark example of a broken system.

Chickens raised in NC are likely generating about 2.5 billion pounds of manure annually — more than the amount of waste produced by 7.5 million humans, an analysis by the Charlotte Observer and News & Observer found. But regulators almost never track where it winds up.

That manure is a valuable fertilizer for North Carolina farmers, state environmental officials acknowledge.

But nobody in NC regularly checks to make sure waste is applied properly to prevent water pollution. When plants can’t absorb nitrogen and phosphorus in animal manure, the nutrients can escape into the air, seep into groundwater or wash into public waterways where they can kill fish and cause algae blooms.

In fact, state environmental officials don’t know where most waste produced by farms ends up.

To show how poultry waste could be impacting the environment, Burdette and Cape Fear River Watch took water samples downstream of the Sampson County site six separate times between Jan and June 2022.

Tests showed fecal coliform levels, a common indicator of animal waste, were more than double state standards in four of the six samples. With the presence of hog farms and municipal treatment plants, that doesn’t make an airtight case that the origin was poultry manure.

But Cape Fear River Watch also had three samples tested for antibiotics farmers give to animals, with two showing Tetracycline, the antibiotic used most frequently with poultry.

“This stuff is happening because there’s no system to keep it from happening,” Burdette said.

BIG BARNS, BIG WASTE
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As far back as 2001, a U.S.D.A. study found that about 30 NC counties produced more phosphorus from manure in 1997 than the available land can absorb and seven counties produced more nitrogen than can be absorbed.

By 2013, a U.S. EPA study found that with its large number of cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys, North Carolina generated more manure per acre of farmland than any other state starting in 2007. Chicken and turkey production statewide has grown 22% since then.

Poultry litter, which consists of pine shavings mixed in with the manure, is cleaned out of poultry barns periodically between flocks — about every six weeks. State law requires poultry farms that raise more than 30,000 birds a year to create nutrient management plans, industry advocates note.

Piles can sit uncovered either near barns or in fields for no more than 15 days, the rules say. Litter must be covered after that and is often stored in a shed with one open side or covered with tarps near barns.

The state also requires litter piles to sit no closer than 400 feet from a well or a stream. Farmers and haulers aren’t supposed to spread litter on fields when it’s raining or when the fields are wet. There are supposed to be at least 25 feet of trees or grass between fields where litter is spread and nearby streams.

Farmers are expected to test the waste within 60 days of it being spread on fields and test the soil where it’s applied to help calculate how much crops there can absorb. They are told to make sure that mechanical spreaders are adjusted to ensure they don’t release too little or too much.

And they or the people they hire to haul away waste must record every field where the waste ends up.

“If they go by their nutrient management plans, there shouldn’t be any problems,” said Bob Ford, the executive director of the N.C. Poultry Federation.

Manure haulers who move more than 100 tons a year need to submit an annual report to the N.C. Division of Water Resources describing where they are spreading waste. Those who move more than 750 tons also need to include an analysis of the waste.

But in the vast majority of cases, nobody checks to make sure the information is accurate.

Heather Overton, a Dept of Agriculture spokeswoman, said Division of Soil and Water Conservation officials help farmers with technical parts of waste management like collecting samples and calibrating equipment.

“The department does not have any regulatory authority over poultry waste as fertilizer. This is not under our jurisdiction,” Overton wrote in an email.

DEQ technically has the power to regulate how poultry waste is applied as fertilizer. It can act against farms that violate state rules intended to prevent litter from polluting waterways, wrote Josh Kastrinsky, an agency spokesman.

But no DEQ staff are assigned to regularly monitor how farms dispose of poultry litter, he said.

Richard Rogers, the head of DEQ’s Division of Water Resources, said his agency’s inspectors visit dry-litter farms to check on their handling of waste piles only after receiving a complaint from a riverkeeper or concerned citizen.

“That’s the limit of what we can do currently,” Rogers said.

Transparency is limited, too. Kastrinsky couldn’t immediately disclose, for instance, what steps DEQ was taking to determine if the Sampson County piles were what they looked like: poultry waste stored in violation of the rules.

A 2014 state law requires DEQ staff to keep the details of a complaint confidential unless the agency determines a farmer broke state rules.

Instead, it’s Burdette and 13 other riverkeepers in NC, employed by nonprofits, who try to keep tabs on what looks like mishandled waste. Frequently they do this on flights with volunteer pilots over areas with heavy concentrations of poultry farms across NC.

“You’re not going to find the problem if you’re not looking,” said Anne Schechinger, agriculture economist for Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

REGULATORS RARELY LOOK
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Unlike waste management systems operating on hog farms, nutrient management plans for dry-litter poultry operations do not need to be certified by a technical expert, according to guidelines N.C. State Extension produced for farmers.

Lauren Greene helps farmers write nutrient management plans as an N.C. State Extension area specialized agent for poultry.

When writing the nutrient management plan, Greene considers factors like the type of soil it’s being spread on top of, what kind of crops are grown there and how much of the nitrogen and phosphorus they’re able to absorb.

Even if a management plan is carefully drawn up, though, “I don’t know that there’s anyone checking every time there’s a truck spreading litter,” Greene said.

There isn’t.

In a note to DEQ staff reporting the Sampson County waste storage site, Burdette wrote, “The only reason we were able to observe this site is because of air patrols – and luck. Who knows how many more sites like this exist? Nobody knows.”

When DEQ’s inspectors learn of a violation, they are able to review three years of a farmer’s nutrient management records. Those records include the dates litter was moved, estimates of how much litter was removed and where the litter was spread, according to Kastrinsky, the DEQ spokesman.

Frequently, farmers hire a hauler to move the litter from their land elsewhere. In that instance, the farmers’ records should show which hauler was used, their contact information, when the litter was moved and estimates of how much material was moved.

But because farmers aren’t required to file that information with any government agency, there’s very little public information available in North Carolina about where poultry waste ends up.

Scientists and environmental groups say it’s vital for the public to know where waste goes.

“State regulators should be doing a lot more with these poultry facilities to make sure they know where they’re located, how much waste they’re producing and where they’re applying it,” Schechinger said. “I don’t think any industry should be allowed to regulate itself.”

This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article267940512.html