The Maryland General Assembly held a hearing last week on a bill that would force poultry companies to take responsibility – and pay for – the management of their chickens’ waste to prevent it from polluting the Chesapeake Bay.
“It’s the bill of the hour,” said Senator Joan Carter Conway, a Democrat from Baltimore and chair of the senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee. “Senate bill 497, the Poultry Littler Management Act.”
Here’s the background: The 300 million chickens produced every year on Maryland’s Eastern Shore produce about a billion pounds of manure, which runs off of farm fields to pollute the bay.
Governor Larry Hogan’s Administration in June imposed regulations that are meant to stop the chronic over-application of manure fertilizer to farm fields. The new rules, called the “Phosphorus Management Tool,” mean that about half of the billion pounds of manure produced annually can’t be spread on local farmers fields anymore, because the fields are already saturated with phosphorus.
So that means that all that excess manure will have to be trucked to farm fields elsewhere that are not saturated; or to recycling or waste-to-energy plants.
But who should pay for this waste management? Maryland taxpayers already subsidize the poultry industry by paying about a half million dollars a year to truck manure produced by the companies’ chickens to other farms. And that price tag for taxpayers could triple once the new manure application restrictions are phased in over the next six years.
Legislation, sponsored by 44 state delegates and 14 senators, would – for the first time – make poultry companies – not taxpayers or contract farmers – legally responsible for dealing with -- and paying for --the trucking and disposal of -- the waste produced by their own chickens.
Senator Richard Madaleno, a Democrat from Montgomery County, is a lead sponsor of the proposed Poultry Litter Management Act (which is also co-sponsored by Senator Conway)
“This is not an anti-farmer bill,” Madaleno said, during a Feb. 23 hearing on the legislation. “This is an effort to address one of our central issues of our state, and that’s how to keep our environment and the Chesapeake Bay sustainable.”
Supporters, including one in a chicken costume, held a rally outside the State House on the day of the hearing, waving signs reading, "Big Chicken Should Clean Up its Own Mess! Not Maryland Taxpayers!"
The farm lobby and Governor Hogan’s administration oppose the bill, and Senate President Thomas “Mike” Miller, a Democrat, has expressed skepticism about it to colleagues.
“I must say, as I read this legislation, I find it to be a very anti-agriculture bill,” said Lynne Hoot, executive director of the Maryland Grain Producers Association. “It shows total distrust, right across the board.”
A contentious issue is that farmers are used to saving money by using poultry manure as fertilizer instead of buying more chemical nitrogen fertilizer, although poultry manure is often worse for the bay, especially when applied to Eastern Shore farm fields that are saturated in phosphorus.
Farmers worry that they won’t be able to sell or use poultry manure as easily if the legislation means the poultry companies own the manure.
“If I completely remove manure from the equation, I think it’s going to cost me about $50 an acre more,” said Bill Sylvester, a farmer in Queen Anne’s County. “Over a thousand acres, it would be $50,000 additional cost to my operation.”
On the other hand, a coalition of environmentalists and health advocates argue there are even bigger costs to consider – to the bay, the environment, and public health. The advocates support the bill as a logical way to deal with the downstream impacts of a growing poultry industry.
“Phosphorus runoff has been implicated in the growth of harmful algal blooms, which may pose a health risk to people who swim, fish or eat contaminated seafood,” said Claire Fitch, a program coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future, during the legislative hearing. “Algal toxins have been linked to neurological impairments, liver damage, stomach illness, skin lesions, and other adverse health effects.”
Through its pollution and impact to health and quality of life, the poultry industry arguable already imposing a high cost on Maryland residents and the Chesapeake Bay. Supporters of the Poultry Litter Management Act argue that it would be a way to make the industry finally start paying bills that for years it has pushed off on taxpayers and others.
