Florence Exposes Vulnerabilities
As we watched overflowing rivers in North Carolina flood hog & chicken Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), Maryland state and county permitting agencies continue to allow new huge industrial scale poultry CAFOs to be built in or adjacent to Delmarva flood plains, streams, and rivers.
Sea level is expected to rise between 2.1 and 5.7 feet along the Maryland coast by 2100. Increases in sea level are also exacerbated by storm surges and these more frequent storms are forecasted to be increasingly severe. On Delmarva, where much of the region exists at or below 35 feet above current sea levels, rising seas are particularly critical. But even at current sea levels we have a ticking time bomb on lower Delmarva.
This summer, after only a 3” rainfall, an eight house CAFO on Purnell Crossing Road in Worcester County was surrounded by water up to the foundations of the houses. Its protective stormwater management system was overflooded and had become one with the flood water in the adjacent fields.
In the Manokin River watershed, Somerset County, there are over 100 poultry houses within a 3 mile radius of College Backbone Road, an area of low lying fields and swampy wetlands. Stormwater drainage for every one of these poultry houses is connected to ditches that connect to the Manokin River. Just as the storm surge from Florence raced up the Cape Fear and Neuse Rivers to meet with billions of gallons of flooding rain water rushing downstream, the same scenario in the Chesapeake Bay would push storm surge up the Pocomoke and Manokin Rivers, to meet with rain swollen ditches, backing up all that water into chicken houses located along those ditches or built upon low lying farm fields.
Communities in Showell, MD have opposed a proposed industrial scale CAFO that is to be built within 100' of the flood plain of Middle Branch, a tributary to the St. Martin River, for just these reasons. Why would Maryland and Worcester County jeopardize the health of the St. Martin River (which just last year pulled itself over the hump and earned its first 'C' water quality grade) by approving construction and environmental permits for a 150,000 bird CAFO?
A new industrial scale poultry CAFO is working its way through Worcester County Permitting. The five 600’ long houses will be built on a small parcel of land within the Nassawango Creek watershed along Rt 12 & St Lukes Rd just west of Snow Hill, and the parcel could not be more poorly suited for this type of facility. The land is low, wet, and poorly drained. The land and the nontidal wetlands on the property currently serve to filter stormwater and the nutrients and other pollutants carried by that stormwater. The wetlands on the parcel are part of a natural filtering system that protects the water quality of Pusey Branch and Nassawango Creek. The property of this proposed project will ultimately drain to the Pocomoke River, which is impaired for nitrogen, phosphorus, total suspended solids, low dissolved oxygen, bacteria and undetermined pollutants that are impacting the river's benthic biological integrity.
This CAFO will produce over 1 million chickens a year, housing nearly 250,000 chickens per flock. The developer of this industrial complex is not a farmer. He does not live on this small
parcel of land. This is not a farm. It is an industrial use of land in a rural, wet part of the county. And I can guarantee you when we get another Isabel, or Florence here on Delmarva those chickens inside this new CAFO off Snow Hill Road will drown and all that pollution from manure, mortality and pesticide storage will end up in someone’s home and definitely in the Pocomoke River.
It is time for Maryland and our lower Eastern Shore counties to take off the blinders and proactively address the flaws in current regulatory and zoning policies. CAFOs built today will be around for 20-30 years, and inundation from a Florence on Delmarva will be catastrophic.
Sea level is expected to rise between 2.1 and 5.7 feet along the Maryland coast by 2100. Increases in sea level are also exacerbated by storm surges and these more frequent storms are forecasted to be increasingly severe. On Delmarva, where much of the region exists at or below 35 feet above current sea levels, rising seas are particularly critical. But even at current sea levels we have a ticking time bomb on lower Delmarva.
This summer, after only a 3” rainfall, an eight house CAFO on Purnell Crossing Road in Worcester County was surrounded by water up to the foundations of the houses. Its protective stormwater management system was overflooded and had become one with the flood water in the adjacent fields.
In the Manokin River watershed, Somerset County, there are over 100 poultry houses within a 3 mile radius of College Backbone Road, an area of low lying fields and swampy wetlands. Stormwater drainage for every one of these poultry houses is connected to ditches that connect to the Manokin River. Just as the storm surge from Florence raced up the Cape Fear and Neuse Rivers to meet with billions of gallons of flooding rain water rushing downstream, the same scenario in the Chesapeake Bay would push storm surge up the Pocomoke and Manokin Rivers, to meet with rain swollen ditches, backing up all that water into chicken houses located along those ditches or built upon low lying farm fields.
Communities in Showell, MD have opposed a proposed industrial scale CAFO that is to be built within 100' of the flood plain of Middle Branch, a tributary to the St. Martin River, for just these reasons. Why would Maryland and Worcester County jeopardize the health of the St. Martin River (which just last year pulled itself over the hump and earned its first 'C' water quality grade) by approving construction and environmental permits for a 150,000 bird CAFO?
A new industrial scale poultry CAFO is working its way through Worcester County Permitting. The five 600’ long houses will be built on a small parcel of land within the Nassawango Creek watershed along Rt 12 & St Lukes Rd just west of Snow Hill, and the parcel could not be more poorly suited for this type of facility. The land is low, wet, and poorly drained. The land and the nontidal wetlands on the property currently serve to filter stormwater and the nutrients and other pollutants carried by that stormwater. The wetlands on the parcel are part of a natural filtering system that protects the water quality of Pusey Branch and Nassawango Creek. The property of this proposed project will ultimately drain to the Pocomoke River, which is impaired for nitrogen, phosphorus, total suspended solids, low dissolved oxygen, bacteria and undetermined pollutants that are impacting the river's benthic biological integrity.
This CAFO will produce over 1 million chickens a year, housing nearly 250,000 chickens per flock. The developer of this industrial complex is not a farmer. He does not live on this small
parcel of land. This is not a farm. It is an industrial use of land in a rural, wet part of the county. And I can guarantee you when we get another Isabel, or Florence here on Delmarva those chickens inside this new CAFO off Snow Hill Road will drown and all that pollution from manure, mortality and pesticide storage will end up in someone’s home and definitely in the Pocomoke River.
It is time for Maryland and our lower Eastern Shore counties to take off the blinders and proactively address the flaws in current regulatory and zoning policies. CAFOs built today will be around for 20-30 years, and inundation from a Florence on Delmarva will be catastrophic.
