Chesapeake Bay Cleanup

Chicken Litter: The Aerial Hunt for Poultry Manure
By LAUREN ETTER
Ocean City, Md.

Retired Marine officer Rick Dove boarded the four-seat Cessna armed with cameras, binoculars and global positioning devices for his latest mission: chicken farmers. Or, more precisely, aerial reconnaissance of poultry droppings.

"Oh, man, that looks like a hot site," Mr. Dove said as the plane soared 1,000 feet over farms near the Chesapeake Bay. Peering through binoculars, he said, "That pile is at least two stories high." He whipped out his camera and started snapping pictures.

Mr. Dove, 70 years old, suspected the brown mound was chicken manure -- a potential pollutant of the Chesapeake Bay, the huge estuary nestled between the shores of Maryland and Virginia. Mr. Dove, a former military judge whose subsequent fishing business he believes was ruined by pollution, is among the activists who, along with federal regulators, are ratcheting up pressure on poultry farmers to clean up their litter.

Around the Chesapeake area, where poultry farming is big business, chicken farmers think they have been unfairly singled out. "The EPA seems to think that poultry farmers are Public Enemy No. 1," says Bill Satterfield, executive director of the Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., which represents the area's poultry industry. Citing EPA data, he notes that bay pollution also comes from numerous nonfarm sources linked to the area's population growth, including human sewage and lawn fertilizer. Even animals such as deer and Canada geese can contaminate water, Mr. Satterfield says. But, he adds, "It appears you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent."

The EPA says agriculture, including chemical fertilizers and animal waste, is the single biggest source of pollution in the bay. Manure alone makes up about 19% of the bay's overall nitrogen pollution and 26% of the bay's phosphorus pollution. Municipal and wastewater facilities generate the same amount of nitrogen pollution, but less -- 21% -- phosphorous pollution.

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Certainly everyone is interested in having the bay be as clean as possible. The interesting thing from this article though is that pollution from human waste is very similar to the estimates coming from food production. Why don’t we ever see the Waterkeeper’s Alliance brings lawsuits against cities for their pollution? The fact of the matter is that they are mostly an anti-agriculture group as much as anything. They aren’t interested in finding better ways to handle organic fertilizer, they just want to shut these farms down. Clean water is very important to everyone, but the strategies to accomplish it need to be science based rather than agenda based.

Using Manure to Clean Spills

Chicken Manure Biodegrades Crude Oil In Contaminated Soil
ScienceDaily — It is an unlikely application, but researchers in China have discovered that chicken manure can be used to biodegrade crude oil in contaminated soil. Writing in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution the team explains how bacteria in chicken manure break down 50% more crude oil than soil lacking the guano.

The team carried out a microbial analysis of their samples and identified 21 different microbial species known as aerobic heterotrophs. The team explains that Bacillus species and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were the best oil-munching microbes but of the 21 isolates 12 were capable of metabolizing components of crude oil. Other microbes included Proteus, Enterobacter, and Micrococcus species. Bacillus represented the most prevalent species.

"The use of chicken manure to stimulate crude oil biodegradation in the soil could be one of the several sought-after environmentally friendly ways of abating petroleum hydrocarbon pollution in the natural ecosystem," the team concludes. Read More

It’s amazing that many people are trying to categorize manure as a toxic waste, and at the same time, we find out that it works great to clean up oil spills. Most people don’t understand that manure should be treated as a resource not a waste product.

Fertilizer

Market growing for Alpharetta firm's 'chicken litter' fertilizer
By DOUG NURSE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/03/08

It's a fertile world for Organic Growing Systems in Alpharetta.

The newly formed company is cashing in on the rising price of synthetic fertilizer by specializing in reconstituted "chicken litter," as it's delicately put.

As the price of traditional, petroleum-based fertilizer skyrocketed 200 percent to 300 percent since 2005, more and more farmers and sod-growers are turning to natural alternatives, said Chris Nichols, the company CEO.

"Everyone is looking at us like we're the hot chick at the prom," said Marc Nichols, Chris' nephew and national sales manager. "Today we sold a third of what we did last year." Read More

At the same time there is a push by some people to have animal manure considered a toxic and hazardous material, the demand for it by consumers is growing by leaps and bounds. Because commercial fertilizer prices have been skyrocketing, the demand for manure has grown. It’s just another way that livestock producers are helping the environment.