Raising a Stink: Maryland Neighbors Fight to Stop a New Chicken Factory Farm |
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September 8, 2004
By Karen Graham
Erin Schelts is determined to see how high she can fly on the swing set. Her cousins, Joey and Amanda Embert, are executing semi-dangerous flips on the trampoline. Betty Schelts sits close by and keeps a watchful eye on her daredevil charges, a scene that must be played out countless times across America at this time of year.
There's only one problem with Betty Schelts' summer idyll: Behind them, a mere 300 feet away, excavation equipment is leveling land for a new broiler factory farm.
Like thousands of people who live near one of the more than 32,000 broiler farms in the United States, Betty Schelts has had to confront the hard truth about intensive confinement, and she doesn't like what she has learned. She thinks factory farms stink, both literally and philosophically, and she's not about to sit idly and watch as one is built "right in her backyard" in Millington, Maryland, potentially more dangerous than any kid stunt on playground equipment.
The Anatomy of a Factory Farm
The neighboring land used to be part of the Schelts' family farm in Millington. In the mid-1990s Betty's mother-in-law, in need of extra money to help care for her ailing husband, starting selling pieces of the original 49-acre wheat, corn and soybean farm. Some of the pieces were sold to family members such as Betty and her husband, Charles Sr.; others were sold outside the family, such as the three-acre lot purchased by Carol Taylor, who's raising show goats on the property.
By 1999, the Schelts family said goodbye to the last 23 acres of their farm. The land was sold to Michael and Heather Garner, who lived and worked the crop farm until October 2003. Then they, too, sold the land, this time to Thomas and Jennifer Kunes.
In short order, the Schelts family and others in the area learned that Thomas Kunes had ambitious plans for those 23 acres. In early 2004 he began laying the groundwork for two 500 x 67-foot buildings that will hold close to 35,000 birds each, according to Betty Schelts, in an apparent contract operation for Mountaire Farms. In the broiler industry, birds are raised to slaughter weight in a mere six weeks, and this new factory farm is apparently planning to have seven sets of birds a year, or 490,000 chickens. Kunes' plans received the blessing of the Queen Anne's County zoning administrator, who approved the building permits.
More than a thousand tons of manure will be produced per year by the birds, far more manure than even a 23-acre property can handle. Poultry litter or the manure, sawdust, spilled feed and feathers that accumulate on the buildings' floors will be scooped out and stored (along with dead birds) in a separate building—and that is the structure that will be the closest to the Schelts' property line.
Matter of Life and Death
The Kunes' property slopes toward a creek that runs into the Chester River, which flows directly into the already polluted Chesapeake Bay. At one point, there was a trench on the proposed factory farm's property that ran directly into the creek, but it apparently was filled in after an environmental official visited Thomas and Jennifer Kunes. Nonetheless, given the natural slope of the property and the fact that the land has been leveled of grasses that would naturally slow water flow, runoff from the manure building could still reach the creek, particularly if the building does not have walls (and apparently it's not required to have them in Queen Anne's County).
According to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 40% of the bay's northern stem (an area extending for more than 100 miles) has too little oxygen to support aquatic life. This is called a "dead zone," and it is created by nutrient-rich pollution, in part from agriculture runoff, which is heavy with phosphorus and nitrogen. This feeds blooms of algae, which grow out of control and use all the oxygen in the water, to the point where fish and other sea creatures can't breathe.
Betty Schelts says the Kuneses told her not to worry about anything, that she wouldn't "smell a thing." The couple also apparently told their neighbor that manure from the storage building would be trucked out to a Perdue poultry waste processing plant in Delaware, which will convert the waste into fertilizer pellets.
The information didn't do much to ease Betty Schelts' discomfort with the factory farm.
A Factory of Life
Chicken factory farms are nothing new to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Queen Anne's County already produces 8.4 million birds a year on 23 farms. But to Betty Schelts, the numbers mean less than how the chickens will be raised. "It is inconceivable to us that we will have to live with the knowledge that animals are being treated inhumanely right under our noses, in our backyard," she said.
She soon learned she wasn't alone. Many of her neighbors are also opposed to the buildings. She circulated a petition, and gathered more than 80 signatures from residents in the vicinity of the new factory farm. She then filed a petition to the Queen Anne's County Board of Appeals, an appointed public panel that heard testimony on September 23, 2004 on whether the building permit was properly issued and whether it should be revoked. The Board found no fault with the Planning and Zoning Board in issuing the permit to Mr. Kunes.
Some neighbors are concerned about animal welfare; some have environmental questions, such as the possibility of water contamination. Some are worried about the antibiotics commonly used on factory farms, and the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that result, while others are more upset about all the manure that would be trucked through town. Neighbors fear that the smell and the flies would drive them indoors and keep them from enjoying their homes and their land.
Carol Taylor, for example, is worried that the flies, rodents, and the diseases carried by chickens will injure or kill her prized goats. Another neighbor, Robbin Clark, has a horse-boarding business on her property. Her boarders have already informed her that they will take their business elsewhere if the factory farm is built. What's more, because of the flies and dust, Robbin figures she will lose the use of at least one of her pastures, possibly also a hay field. She is also worried that her horses will contract diseases from the chickens and be aggravated by the constant swarms of flies.
Says Betty Schelts: "The zoning board keeps telling me that Mr. Kunes' property is zoned agricultural for agricultural use. They say a confinement operation is a permitted agricultural use. I believe that just because something is permitted does not make it the right thing to do. You must use common sense in some matters. The factory farm issue is one of them."
Related Links
The Chicken Factory Farm
Sustainable Agriculture and Organic Farming
