Environmental groups file civil rights complaint against DEQ over scant poultry farm regulations

Jefferson Currie, the Lumber River Riverkeeper, drove his truck down St. Paul’s Road, a narrow, sandy stretch near the Robeson-Hoke County line and began counting the chicken barns: “Four, eight, twelve … this is a 48-barn operation,” Currie said, “at 35,000 per barn” – doing the math, that’s roughly 1.7 million birds being raised for Mountaire Farms in nearby Lumber Bridge.

Feces, feathers, urine: All of it stinking, shedding and seeping into the air and water in largely non-white, low-income neighborhoods throughout North Carolina, especially those east of I-95.

Currie, in his capacity as river keeper, Robeson County environmental organizer Donna Chavis, and Friends of the Earth filed a complaint with the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights alleging that the NC Department of Environmental Quality has failed to adequately regulate the poultry industry, which illegally discriminates against Native, Black and Latinx communities in Robeson, Duplin and Sampson Counties.

The complainants are represented by the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Sharon Martin, DEQ deputy secretary for public affairs, said the agency had not yet received the complaint.

The farms in question are those that manage “dry litter” – manure, urine, feathers and other waste from the enormous operations – which is stored in open barns or fields. The waste, roughly 2.5 billion pounds per year – is eventually spread on farmland as fertilizer. These farms, which house millions of birds, aren’t required to obtain a state permit. 

Only farms that use “liquid waste management systems” – wet litter – are subject to permitting requirements. There are only 19 “wet litter” farms in North Carolina, according to state data, accounting for 550,000 birds – a fraction of the 1 billion raised in the state each year.

But that distinction is a matter of semantics. Under state rules, the “dry litter” piled in the fields is allowed to sit for as long as 90 days. During that time, rain can wash the manure into nearby waterways, spiking levels of pollution into streams, wetlands, lakes and even drinking water supplies. 

The contaminants include fecal bacteria, ammonia, nitrogen, phosphorus, nitrate and even tetracycline, an antibiotic used in the poultry industry, according to test results by riverkeepers, including Currie.

Fecal bacteria can make people sick if they ingest the water through drinking, swimming, tubing and other recreational activities. Phosphorus and nitrogen contribute to algal blooms, some of which are toxic to people, animals and aquatic life.

The waste piles also attract rodents and flies – and they reek of the shrill smell of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. The piles also emit fine particulate matter, which can exacerbate asthma and harm human health.

When the waste is applied on farm fields as fertilizer, the pollution continues, but is not comprehensively tracked by state regulators. “We don’t even know where the manure is being hauled.”

The civil rights complaint quotes Henry Brewer, a lifelong resident of Robeson County, as he describes the litter or “crust” from the farms: 

“Crust is dumped across the street from my house around every hundred days . . . Each of the five piles is over eight feet tall. They stand there and start fuming off. The odor is terrible. Sometimes it feels like the flies are about to eat us alive — the dogs can’t even live in the yard.”

This regulatory exemption for the poultry industry also keeps secret the locations of the farms. Unlike hog operations, which must have a permit and whose locations and owners are listed in a public database, there is not similar transparency for dry litter operations. Only the state Department of Agriculture has a database of these exempt farms, which state law allows it to keep confidential.

Aerial flyovers can detect many of the farms, but the only comprehensive way to tally the location and number is to go county-by-county and analyze building permits.

“As a result of this unchecked regulation, dry litter poultry facilities are overwhelmingly concentrated in areas already overburdened with a long history of environmental discrimination, particularly stemming from the hog industry,” the civil rights complaint reads. By failing to regulate the poultry industry, the complaint alleges, DEQ is disproportionately burdening predominantly non-white communities, who are protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from “cumulative impacts.” 

Without considering the locations and pollution from these unregulated poultry farms, “DEQ cannot accurately consider cumulative impacts on water quality in its other permitting processes as it is required to do by state statute,” the complaint reads. “Each time DEQ issues a permit without considering the cumulative impacts of dry litter poultry facilities, it is a discrete violation of Title VI.”

The complaint also alleges that DEQ’s “failure to implement a comprehensive and effective permitting regime for dry litter poultry facilities is a systemic violation” of the Civil Rights Act.

These same communities are burdened with giant hog operations and their attendant open-air waste lagoons and spray fields – also a major source of water and air pollution. 

In 2014, several environmental groups filed a civil rights complaint related to DEQ’s weak regulations over the swine farms. Four years later, the parties reached a settlement agreement that included timelines for investigating complaints and considering all information submitted by complainants. Under the agreement, DEQ must publicly document how it responds to citizen complaints. 

The agency’s Community Mapping System, which allows the public to see all permitted pollution sources in the state – was also part of the settlement. However, dry poultry, lacking permits, is not available through the system.

The complainants are asking DEQ to take several steps to improve its poultry program:

• Develop an enforcement system that ensures dry litter poultry operators are properly storing their dry litter piles and monitoring the piles’ impact on water and air quality and soil health.
• Allow and respond to community input when it comes to issuing any new dry litter poultry permits.
• Provide clear criteria to designate areas that are already overburdened with CAFOs [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] and therefore unable to accommodate new or expanding facilities.
• Adopt enforceable oversight systems that allow residents to have recourse when dry litter facilities harm the environment and public health.

“Dry litter poultry facilities comprise the largest industry in North Carolina yet have been unlawfully allowed to operate without adequate regulations in place,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director for Friends of the Earth in a press release. “This lack of regulation fails to protect the environment and nearby communities from industrial agriculture pollution. It also prevents state officials and the public from accessing vital statistics and records related to the industry. Today’s filing launches the first step toward finally securing much needed standards for this prevalent and destructive industry.”