Our Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign calls attention to the destructive pollution practices of industrialized meat production, ensures compliance with environmental laws, and supports the traditional family farms that industrial practices endanger.
It's an old saying on Maryland's Eastern Shore that the stink in the air from chicken houses is "the smell of money." But the problem here isn't stink. It is a documented and very real public health concern to all communities in lower Delaware, the lower Eastern Shore of Md and Accomack County, VA.
Growing chickens is no longer a 'family farm' enterprise. The lower Eastern Shore of Maryland has the highest concentration of poultry production in the United States. We also have some of the highest asthma and cancer rates in Maryland.
Poultry houses are now the length of three football fields, with up to a dozen or more squeezed on to small parcels with no land for other crop production. In many cases the owners of these facilities live elsewhere and hire managers to control the houses. These are not 'farms' - they are factories. These industrial scale operations are emitting as much as 40,000 tons of ammonia per year in to the air of Delmarva depositing nitrogen into our waterways, and they also emit bacteria laden particulates into our air. These are factories and should be zoned, regulated and issued water discharge and air emission Permits as industrial operations.
Listen to this podcast of the Marc Steiner Show 'Sound Bites' from a November 2016 Town Hall meeting in Salisbury, MD (co-hosted by ACT) about Industrial CAFOs, Economics, and Public Health on Delmarva, where Dr. Jillian Fry discusses the scientific literature documenting air pollution and public health concerns from poultry CAFOs, and others talk about the economic impacts of factory farming in rural communities.
Read this April 2018 Opinion piece, in The Washington Post, by Carole Morison (a former Perdue grower) about the Community Healthy Air Act and the failure of the Eastern Shore's elected officials to protect the health of the communities they represent.
Read this March 2018 Opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun by our Assateague COASTKEEPER, calling for State and Federal air emissions regulation to protect public health and our waterways.
As of 2019, new community groups such as The Protectors Of The St. Martin River, have formed to support the Community Healthy Air Act and to also add their voices to the growing number of engaged citizens who want local zoning changes to prevent industrial poultry operations adjacent to their neighborhoods.
Growing chickens is no longer a 'family farm' enterprise. The lower Eastern Shore of Maryland has the highest concentration of poultry production in the United States. We also have some of the highest asthma and cancer rates in Maryland.
Poultry houses are now the length of three football fields, with up to a dozen or more squeezed on to small parcels with no land for other crop production. In many cases the owners of these facilities live elsewhere and hire managers to control the houses. These are not 'farms' - they are factories. These industrial scale operations are emitting as much as 40,000 tons of ammonia per year in to the air of Delmarva depositing nitrogen into our waterways, and they also emit bacteria laden particulates into our air. These are factories and should be zoned, regulated and issued water discharge and air emission Permits as industrial operations.
Listen to this podcast of the Marc Steiner Show 'Sound Bites' from a November 2016 Town Hall meeting in Salisbury, MD (co-hosted by ACT) about Industrial CAFOs, Economics, and Public Health on Delmarva, where Dr. Jillian Fry discusses the scientific literature documenting air pollution and public health concerns from poultry CAFOs, and others talk about the economic impacts of factory farming in rural communities.
Read this April 2018 Opinion piece, in The Washington Post, by Carole Morison (a former Perdue grower) about the Community Healthy Air Act and the failure of the Eastern Shore's elected officials to protect the health of the communities they represent.
Read this March 2018 Opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun by our Assateague COASTKEEPER, calling for State and Federal air emissions regulation to protect public health and our waterways.
As of 2019, new community groups such as The Protectors Of The St. Martin River, have formed to support the Community Healthy Air Act and to also add their voices to the growing number of engaged citizens who want local zoning changes to prevent industrial poultry operations adjacent to their neighborhoods.
Florence Exposes Vulnerabilities & Punctuates The Environmental Dangers Of CAFO's
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.
To read more, click HERE.
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.
To read more, click HERE.
JUDGE AGREES WITH ACT, SAYS MDE APPROVED PERMIT IS NOT PROTECTIVE OF CLEAN WATER.
In late 2017, ACT and our legal partner Environmental Action Center, filed a request with the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings for a Contested Case Hearing in the matter of a CAFO General Permit application approved by the MD Department of Environment (MDE) even though the applicant could not provide adequate manure storage, or adequate composting storage of dead chickens, thereby not meeting the clean water protections of the General Permit and posing a threat to the Pocomoke River.
In May 2018 an Administrative Law Judge agreed with ACT and reversed the CAFO Permit. Read the full press release here. Read the ALJ Proposed Decision here.
In May 2018 an Administrative Law Judge agreed with ACT and reversed the CAFO Permit. Read the full press release here. Read the ALJ Proposed Decision here.
FAIR FARMS MARYLAND
A movement of environmental and public health groups, businesses, consumers, and farmers committed to a sustainable food system.
Fair Farms Maryland seeks to create awareness about the relationship between agriculture, water, food and public health; galvanize Marylanders to reduce agricultural pollution; and support farmers, businesses and public policies that promote healthy, sustainable agricultural practices.
ACT and Assateague COASTKEEPER joins Waterkeepers Chesapeake's Fair Farms Maryland campaign in helping to create a more diverse and healthy system of agriculture on the Lower Eastern Shore.
Learn more about Fair Farms Maryland here.
Fair Farms Maryland seeks to create awareness about the relationship between agriculture, water, food and public health; galvanize Marylanders to reduce agricultural pollution; and support farmers, businesses and public policies that promote healthy, sustainable agricultural practices.
ACT and Assateague COASTKEEPER joins Waterkeepers Chesapeake's Fair Farms Maryland campaign in helping to create a more diverse and healthy system of agriculture on the Lower Eastern Shore.
Learn more about Fair Farms Maryland here.
THE COMMUNITY HEALTHY AIR ACT #healthyairstudy
Do you often smell ammonia and bad odors near your home, your place of work, your school or church, or where you recreate? Click here to see a map of the Eastern Shore and where Confined Animal Feeding Operations are located.
The Community Healthy Air Act would require the Maryland Department of the Environment to conduct a one-time study that identifies air pollutants emitted by large animal feeding operations and assesses any potential public health risks. While industrial chicken houses emit harmful air pollutants, we don’t know how much this pollution is affecting the health of neighboring communities or nearby waters, including the Chesapeake Bay.
The Community Healthy Air Act has been introduced in the Maryland General Assembly three times since 2017, brought by ordinary citizens who live on the Lower Eastern Shore and are concerned about the air they are breathing. The Lower Shore has the highest concentration of Confined Animal Feeding Operations in the state and a report by the Maryland Governor's Office showed 1 in 4 middle-school children in Wicomico County have asthma.
Yet this bill has never been allowed for a vote in committee and never allowed to move to the General Assembly for debate and a vote. Lobbying efforts to stop the bill by Delmarva Poultry Industry (DPI,) the Farm Bureau and the Eastern Shore's own Delegation have been strong and persistent.
Wondering why we can't seem to pass the Community Healthy Air Act in Maryland? Maybe because our Dept of Environment is now entering into signed agreements with the poultry industry.....
To avoid legislatively mandated air monitoring through the Community Healthy Air Act, MDE announced in January 2019 that it will do its own ambient air monitoring project, funded in large part by the Delmarva Poultry Industry. A public informational meeting about MDE's limited air monitoring project was held April 25 at UMES. Watch the press conference held by concerned citizens prior to the MDE meeting here.
According to MDE the project will monitor only 2 stations on the Lower Shore, one upwind and one downwind of an existing industrial chicken house. Their study will not analyze public health impacts. The data collected will belong to MDE and DPI and by agreement between the two entities can not be used to develop public policy or regulation.
The Community Healthy Air Act would require the Maryland Department of the Environment to conduct a one-time study that identifies air pollutants emitted by large animal feeding operations and assesses any potential public health risks. While industrial chicken houses emit harmful air pollutants, we don’t know how much this pollution is affecting the health of neighboring communities or nearby waters, including the Chesapeake Bay.
The Community Healthy Air Act has been introduced in the Maryland General Assembly three times since 2017, brought by ordinary citizens who live on the Lower Eastern Shore and are concerned about the air they are breathing. The Lower Shore has the highest concentration of Confined Animal Feeding Operations in the state and a report by the Maryland Governor's Office showed 1 in 4 middle-school children in Wicomico County have asthma.
Yet this bill has never been allowed for a vote in committee and never allowed to move to the General Assembly for debate and a vote. Lobbying efforts to stop the bill by Delmarva Poultry Industry (DPI,) the Farm Bureau and the Eastern Shore's own Delegation have been strong and persistent.
Wondering why we can't seem to pass the Community Healthy Air Act in Maryland? Maybe because our Dept of Environment is now entering into signed agreements with the poultry industry.....
To avoid legislatively mandated air monitoring through the Community Healthy Air Act, MDE announced in January 2019 that it will do its own ambient air monitoring project, funded in large part by the Delmarva Poultry Industry. A public informational meeting about MDE's limited air monitoring project was held April 25 at UMES. Watch the press conference held by concerned citizens prior to the MDE meeting here.
According to MDE the project will monitor only 2 stations on the Lower Shore, one upwind and one downwind of an existing industrial chicken house. Their study will not analyze public health impacts. The data collected will belong to MDE and DPI and by agreement between the two entities can not be used to develop public policy or regulation.
OTHER ACTIONS TO PROTECT COMMUNITIES AND WATER QUALITY
Learn more about communities standing up to pollution from Industrial scale poultry production by joining their Facebook group pages: Concerned Citizens Against Industrial CAFOs, Protectors of Our Indian River, and Protectors of the St. Martin River
In 2014, with partner Food and Water Watch, ACT and our COASTKEEPER challenged Maryland's Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) General Permit for Discharges because the many deficiencies in the Permit did not protect water quality. As a result of the two year challenge, we brought the Permit into compliance with Federal clean water laws.
In 2019, ACT and our COASTKEEPER joined with Waterkeepers Chesapeake, ShoreRivers' Choptank RIVERKEEPER, and Center for Progressive Reform to work with Maryland Senator Paul Pinsky to pass a comprehensive bill that improved permiting and compliance fees, requires the State to better track the movement of poultry manure in and out of the State, protects communities by requiring a CAFO developer to have the MD CAFO Permit for water discharges approved prior to beginning construction of any CAFO buildings (which also opens up a public comment period for adjacent property owners and neighborhoods, and restored Dept. of Natural Resources water quality monitoring stations in rivers on the Lower Eastern Shore.
In 2014, with partner Food and Water Watch, ACT and our COASTKEEPER challenged Maryland's Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) General Permit for Discharges because the many deficiencies in the Permit did not protect water quality. As a result of the two year challenge, we brought the Permit into compliance with Federal clean water laws.
In 2019, ACT and our COASTKEEPER joined with Waterkeepers Chesapeake, ShoreRivers' Choptank RIVERKEEPER, and Center for Progressive Reform to work with Maryland Senator Paul Pinsky to pass a comprehensive bill that improved permiting and compliance fees, requires the State to better track the movement of poultry manure in and out of the State, protects communities by requiring a CAFO developer to have the MD CAFO Permit for water discharges approved prior to beginning construction of any CAFO buildings (which also opens up a public comment period for adjacent property owners and neighborhoods, and restored Dept. of Natural Resources water quality monitoring stations in rivers on the Lower Eastern Shore.
