Poultry farms in NC produce tons of waste environmentalists want better regulated

It’s the swarming flies that remind Robeson County residents that they live in the midst of an abundance of poultry houses, said David Shane Lowry, who advocates against chicken farms in the county.

“In Robeson County, they’re spread everywhere,” he said of the poultry operations.

Environmental groups that mapped poultry operations in the state found the quickest growth in poultry operations from 2012 to 2019 was in counties with substantial Black, Latino and Native American populations.

A report released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group and the Waterkeeper Alliance estimates that numbers of chickens and turkeys in Robeson, Sampson, and Duplin counties grew 36%, from 83 million to 113 million, with the fastest growth in Robeson.

Excluding those three counties, the number of chickens and turkeys grown on industrial farms grew 17%, the report said. The environmental groups called for more oversight of poultry operations, starting with how they manage the millions of tons of waste produced each year.

Lowry, an associate professor of anthropology and a board member on the Winyah Rivers Alliance, said the growth in poultry operations in Robeson is another case of an environmentally damaging industry - he named the now canceled natural gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline as the other - being funneled into Native American communities.

“The presence of Native American communities is a huge factor more than any factor,” said Lowry, who is Lumbee.

About 42% of Robeson County residents are Native American, 23.6% are Black, 24.7% are white and not Hispanic, and 9.2% are Latino, according to the U.S. Census. A little more than half of Duplin County’s residents are white and not Hispanic, 25.5% are Black, and 23% are Latino. In Sampson County, 50.3% of residents are white and not Hispanic, 26.6% are Black, 20.6% are Latino, and 3.7% are Native American.

Race and ethnicity have nothing to do with poultry operation locations, Robert Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation, said in an interview Wednesday. Poultry producers look for locations near their feed mills and processing plants, he said.

“It doesn’t matter if the neighborhood is Black, green, purple, or yellow,” Ford said. “That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

Industrial poultry operations don’t need state permits, so there is no public clearing house for information on where they are or how big they are.

But the environmental group’s report says the poultry operations are growing most quickly in the same counties where swine farms are concentrated.

The estimates in the report are based on satellite imagery from 2019 used to identify poultry operations, USDA agricultural census data to estimate numbers of birds, and the N.C. Agricultural Chemicals Manual to estimate how much manure they produce.

The poultry industry in North Carolina is huge and lightly regulated.

North Carolina was second among states in turkey production in 2018, according to the USDA. North Carolina was the nation’s fourth largest producer last year of chickens bred for meat, according to The National Chicken Council.

State rules say that operations with more than 30,000 birds must keep litter piles - a mix of manure, feathers, feed and bedding - at least 100 feet from water, and stockpiles cannot be left uncovered for more than 15 days.

Some of the operations are in the paths of hurricanes.

About 238 North Carolina poultry houses were flooded in Hurricane Florence two years ago, The News & Observer reported. Of the 255 million chickens and turkeys living in the state at the time, 4.2 million drowned.

Poultry operations don’t need environmental permits, though the state Department of Environmental Quality responds to complaints about how litter is stored. A 2014 law makes environmental complaints about agriculture operations and investigation of those complaints confidential, unless the state determines there was a violation.

The Agriculture Department inspects breeders for bird health and to evaluate mortality, an agency spokeswoman said in an email Wednesday.

In 2000, the state environmental agency wanted to learn more about dry litter facilities, and asked the Agriculture Department for the location of poultry operations and their owners. The then-state veterinarian responded with a letter that state law made that information confidential to the Agriculture Department, so it could not tell the state environmental agency.

Ford, the Poultry Federation leader, said operations with more than 30,000 birds have nutrient management plans for their dry litter that are reviewed by agricultural extension specialists.

Kemp Burdette, the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, said poultry operations have a significant impact on the environment and neighbors, but little is known about how they operate.

“At the very least, we need to permit poultry operations in the state of North Carolina,” he said. “All across the state, poultry is exploding rapidly and it’s having real, significant impacts on water quality and families that live near these facilities.”

Sen. Harper Peterson, a Wilmington Democrat, filed a bill last year that would have had the Environmental Review Commission find out where the poultry operations are and make recommendations on how the waste should be regulated. The bill died in committee.