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State rules still short of ideal, some say
06/02/03
Fran Henry
Plain Dealer Reporter
It was once the middle of nowhere: the flatlands where Wyandot County Highway 77 crosses a Marseilles Township gravel road. That was before 16 green barns filled with 3 million hens fractured the serenity.
You see it all from the front windows of the ranch-style home Robert Bear built in 1967 for his wife, Rosie, and their three children - a panorama including the 200-acre farm where Robert grew up, the site of the log cabin where his father was born in 1899 and the 80-acre farm where his grandfather raised sheep and hogs.
But look out the back window and you'll see a bulwark of windowless barns standing aloof, the sun glancing off their broad silver roofs.
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The complex is one of four owned by Buckeye Egg Farm, an 11-million hen company whose lawsuit-plagued history of fly infestations, waste runoff and noxious odors has embarrassed the egg industry and cast doubt on its ability to produce eggs without harming the environment and annoying the neighbors. Since April 2002, Buckeye's permits to operate have been under review by the state.
"Everyone in the egg industry is shamed by what goes on there," said Bart Slaugh of Eggland's Best of King of Prussia, Pa.
While Buckeye has been the most visible, it is not the only offender among factory farms. Problems prompted citizen-action groups to spring up in rural counties, calling into question the government's ability to keep the land and people safe from factory farms.
Ohio had no rules governing factory farm operations until last August. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which regulated megafarms then, made decisions to issue permits on a case-by-case basis - a method Columbus attorney Rick Sahli called "unreliable, prone to manipulations and unreviewable." Sahli, who was deputy director and chief counsel for the Ohio EPA in the 1980s, is the lawyer for two citizens groups formed to fight Buckeye.
The new rules require the state's 140 megafarms, including 63 egg factories, to submit plans for manure management, rodent and insect control and dead-animal disposal. Farms have five years to comply with the new rules to qualify for a permit to operate.
"There are some good provisions, but the state should do a better job of setting the bar high in a number of areas," said Susan Studer King, who represented the Ohio Environmental Council on the new rules advisory board. The council has been a vocal critic of the EPA's oversight of factory farms.
She would like all farms to have a certified livestock manager, not only farms with 1 million birds or more; she would like manure storage areas to be set farther from drinking water supplies; and she would like additional conditions for permit denials. There is no limit to the number of factory farms permitted per county.
The new rules also do not address the problem of nuisance odor and air pollution. "Even if the odor is overwhelming, if the operator is following the law, they can't be cited for odor," said Studer King.
A state EPA can monitor air quality if it chooses, said Sahli. "Other state EPAs deal with odor, but the Ohio EPA avoids the issue," he said.
Bob Hodandosi, air pollution division chief for the Ohio EPA, said Ohio law restricts the EPA's ability to apply air pollution control requirements to megafarms.
"We have relied on our division of surface water to make sure the manure is being handled properly, regarding reduction in odors," he said.
Until December, the U.S. EPA required megafarms to get wastewater discharge permits only if they had a history of manure runoffs or were at high risk for runoffs. About 4,500 operations qualified. New regulations require all the nation's 15,500 factory farms to develop and follow a plan for handling manure and wastewater.
These permits will be issued by the state EPA, but the state plans to transfer the authority to the agriculture department. The legislature is in the process of making Ohio law compatible with federal law.
When the U.S. EPA issued its new rules, it acknowledged that it hadn't kept up with growth in the livestock industry nor addressed modern environmental needs. Critics, however, think the new regulations are still inadequate.
The National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Waterkeeper Alliance sued the EPA. They charged that the new rules shield farms from liability for damage caused by animal waste pollution; don't require farms to monitor groundwater or prevent animal waste from leaking into groundwater and contaminating drinking water wells, and exempt contaminated runoff by calling it "agricultural stormwater."
When the new state rules were implemented in August, responsibility for their enforcement was transferred from the Ohio EPA to the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
Environmentalists opposed the transfer because the Department of Agriculture, which historically advocated for agriculture, would be hard pressed to police the farms.
"It will take a few years to see if the program changes the culture or the culture changes the program," said Bryan Clark, legislative advocate for the Ohio Public Interest Research Group.
Robert Bear is more direct. "It's like the fox guarding the henhouse."
The question now is whether the new state and federal standards can eliminate the industry's threat to the environment. Sahli is doubtful. "The regulatory system is so decrepit that it can only react to life-threatening events," he said. "We're waiting for a crisis."
To the Bears, the crisis is ongoing. It began Oct. 19, 1997, when the first birds arrived at the new Buckeye plant behind their house. Rosie remembers that easily because it was also her late father's birthday.
The following February, the ugly aspects of living near an egg farm became real. Their garage filled with flies eager to get into the house, and the air became heavy with the stench of chicken manure. Their well went down 17 feet, and in time, manure spills signaled the need to test the well regularly for bacteria and nitrates.
They saw the problems coming years earlier. They began resisting the growth of Buckeye Egg in 1995, the year Rosie retired from 30 years of teaching kindergarten at Marseilles Elementary School. Robert already had retired after 34 years at the Kildeer Wildlife Area. They joined Concerned Citizens of Central Ohio, one of the first citizens-action groups to organize against factory farms, and one of the few remaining.
The Bears, historians for the citizens-action group, document problems and lawsuits and keep detailed calendars to note the changes in fly activity and the presence of odor. They've filled nine albums with newspaper clippings about the factory farm transgressions and some citizens-group triumphs against the farms, most notably EPA's withdrawal of permits that would have allowed Buckeye to increase its Wyandot County flock from 2.5 million to 3.3 million hens and from doubling its Licking County flock from 4.5 million to 9 million.
But they don't need to consult their books to recall some of the worst days. During the Bear family reunion on June 27, 1999, Rosie passed out fly swatters so guests could work on fly control.
Robert filmed the picnic, panning slowly to show flies covering everything in sight - the deck, charcoal grill, siding, pant legs, shoes and toys.
On April 15, 2002, when Rosie was a substitute teacher at Marseilles Elementary School down the road, she spent the whole day fighting flies.
"I was steamed when I got out of school," she said. "I called the Ohio EPA and the attorney general, who said the principal had to call."
The next month, the principal testified at Buckeye's ninth contempt charge hearing in six years for violating environmental law. Subsequently, the farm was ordered to shut down barns to reduce its flock, thus reducing manure production.
While other Buckeye neighbors have moved away in disgust, tradition binds the Bears to the land.
"We feel we were here first, and they need to clean up their act," Rosie said.
David Armentrout, who ran the beleaguered Buckeye operation until April 30, said he believes he was making progress.
"We have been able to effect a real turnaround, but there's still a lot of work to be done. It takes constant vigilance," said Armentrout, managing member of Compliance Consulting LLC of Middletown. On May 1, Fresh Eggs Manager LLC of Marietta, Pa., took over as manager.
The manure pits are cleaned twice a year, the manure sold to farms for fertilizer. Buckeye employees inspect the manure pits daily to look for potential water leaks. "They walked the pits previously," Armentrout said, "but it's a very controlled process now in coordination with an insect and rodent control plan."
He expects Buckeye to retain its permits to operate. "We've demonstrated that these facilities can be run in an environmentally responsible manner," he said.
The Bears, who last complained about flies in late March, can only hope.
Of all of Ohio's egg farms, Daylay of West Mansfield stands out as coming closest to meeting the challenges of responsible ownership, said Studer King of the Ohio Environmental Council.
"They're not perfect," she said, citing a serious manure-spill fish kill several years ago. "But they've made the effort to go above and beyond what regulations require."
Daylay has an exceptional manure management program, she said. In the manure program, conveyor belts beneath the cages collect chicken droppings and move them to an adjacent shed where they compost for 40 days, changing into organic fertilizer.
Half the farm has been in the program 14 years, and when its four oldest buildings are replaced in the next five to eight years, they too will be brought on line.
Each year, about 10,000 tons of compost are sold under the name Nature Pure. At best, it's a break-even proposition, said Lausecker. "But it gets rid of other problems, like flies and smells. We are making valuable fertilizer out of a liability," he said.
The 2.8-million-hen farm is paying for an Ohio State University project researching air scrubbers, which remove ammonia from the composting-building's exhaust. Daylay president Kurt Lausecker said. "The system is about 15 years ahead of its time. If it works, it would really help us out."
The retrieved ammonia is converted to ammonium sulfate, which can be sold as fertilizer.
There's something different about the birds at Daylay, too.
Their beaks are natural, unlike about 90 percent of the nation's flock. Most commercial hens undergo beak trimming by age 10 days, ostensibly to minimize damage birds can inflict on one another under stress.
Lausecker stooped beside a cage and tilted his hand this way and that, reflecting light with his golden wedding ring.
"See how curious they are," he said, as the birds gathered to watch his ring.
He said his birds do well without trimming. "We use higher cages, and they're not so stressed," he said, as he walked between cages housing 85,000 hens, about seven per cage. Before the United Egg Producers changed its standards, the same cages held 100,000 hens, nine per cage. In 2008, each cage will hold six hens each. Lausecker was on the industry's animal welfare advisory board that established the new standards.
"It's my personal opinion that since [the hens] aren't so stressed, they're not inclined to hurt one another," he said. "We tried trimming them one year, but I saw blood. The sad truth is that [beak trimming] isn't done right sometimes."
Lausecker's hens also do not endure induced molting through starvation. Instead, they're fed a low-protein feed for a week or two in what he calls a soft molt. It works.
They didn't induce molting at the farm where Robert Bear grew up, nor trim the hens' beaks. There were no cages, either. His dad's 200 or so chickens were free to roam the fenced-in apple orchard, take dust baths in a pile of ash and lay eggs in the henhouse.
The orchard is gone, replaced by scrubby volunteer maples, but in his mind's eye, Bear still sees the hens perching in the apple trees.
Across the back field he sees the barns of Buckeye Eggs, where management struggles to gain industry and community respect.
The egg industry itself is evolving, right under Bear's steady gaze.
But not fast enough.
"When you're fighting a big business, you can't quit," he said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
fhenry@plaind.com, 216-999-4806
