BERLIN – A group of concerned citizens will continue to work to protect the St. Martin River as the permitting process for a poultry operation on Peerless Road moves ahead.
Dozens of area residents who initially expressed worry about the impact of a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) on Peerless Road last month have now formed a coalition to work to ensure the project doesn’t hurt the local waterway.
“We haven’t been convinced we should sit here and do nothing,” local resident Gail Jankowski said.
Last month, a public hearing hosted by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) regarding the water discharge permit for a CAFO proposed for Peerless Road drew a crowd of concerned citizens. While MDE is still in the process of reviewing the comments made at the hearing, residents worried about the potential impact of the CAFO have joined forces and created a coalition, Protectors of the St. Martin River. The group, which is headed by Jankowski and her husband Joe, has generated substantial interest.
“We have an email list of over 100 people,” Jankowski said. “Many of them then distribute the emails to their homeowner’s associations.”
As the group waits to see whether MDE will impose any restrictions on the CAFO’s discharge permit, its members are working to raise awareness of the St. Martin River. The waterway received a D-plus rating in the 2016 report card issued by the Maryland Coastal Bays Program.
“You look at that and think why aren’t we working to increase the rating?” Jankowski said.
Frank Piorko, WHO, said the report card was created annually after officials combined data from a variety of sources.
“There’s a lot of science that goes behind the letter grade,” he said.
While various changes have been implemented in recent years to improve the condition of local waterways—many point source discharges have been removed, technology has improved, etc.—the St. Martin River continues to rank a D-plus on the annual report card.
“The hard part for most folks to understand is it takes time for us to see the results of best management practices,” Piorko said.
Jankowski and other members of Protectors of the St. Martin River attended a town hall meeting hosted by Worcester County Commissioner Chip Bertino last weekend. Jankowski said she found it frustrating that Bertino and the other commissioners present didn’t appear concerned about the CAFO and offered no suggestions for residents who were.
“It was just ‘we’re comfortable, this’ll be fine,’” Jankowski said.
Bertino, however, said he’d only heard from a handful of residents concerned about the CAFO. He said he didn’t want to work against a property owner who was doing something within their rights.
“The applicant is doing everything they’re supposed to do to build a poultry operation that is within the law at the state and local level,” he said. “If they’re following the law what right do we have to tell them they can’t do it? They’re private property owners building this in an agriculturally zoned area.”
Piorko, who was also in attendance at Saturday’s meeting, said that since the MDE hearing he’d heard from several area residents concerned about the proposed CAFO. He’s since read the project’s nutrient management plan—an extensive document that details how the CAFO will manage stormwater, deal with dead birds, remove manure and the like—and encourages those who are worried to review the document.
“We’re asking folks to take the time to understand what’s being proposed,” he said.
He said the goal of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program was to help the community become educated.
“We don’t take a position on one particular project unless we have a compelling reason to think there’s a threat to our waters,” he said. “I don’t feel there is in this case.”
Assateague Coastkeeper Kathy Phillips, however, an early opponent of the proposed CAFO, believes it is “indicative of everything that is wrong with current county zoning.”
“Putting an industrial scale Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation that will produce half a million chickens a year and exhaust 13 tons of ammonia into the surrounding area, on a tiny 20 acre parcel adjacent to a critical Resource Protection Area that is the wetland headwaters of Shingle Landing Prong is bad for the waterway and bad for the surrounding communities,” Phillips said. “Ammonia deposition of nitrates to our surface waters and our groundwater is one of the main sources of agricultural pollution in the state of Maryland and contributes to eutrophication and dead zones in our waterways.”
Phillips said exhaust from the poultry houses would release ammonia, particulate matter and pathogens into the air.
“These air emissions are capable of traveling outside of the CAFO production area, depositing dust on nearby homes, fields, trees that is then washed into nearby waterways each time it rains,” Phillips said. “It is not surprising that in Wicomico County, with a high concentration of poultry CAFOs, one in four school children have asthma.”
Phillips also pointed out that major rain events such as those experienced last week were becoming more frequent.
“Other CAFOs in the county did experience flooding to their stormwater retention ponds and to their production areas, which caused pollutants to enter surface waters of the state,” she said. “It is a farce that the State of Maryland classifies these CAFO permits as ‘zero discharge.’ Citizens are educating themselves and monitoring CAFO activities in their communities. They see the flooding, they see the overflowing stormwater ponds and they no longer trust their government agencies and politicians who continue to claim there is nothing to worry about.”
Anyone interested in the efforts of Protectors of the St. Martin River can email [email protected].
