Copyright 1998 Stuart News Company

The Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News (Stuart,FL)

September 18, 1998, Friday

SECTION: A Section; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 1046 words

HEADLINE: POULTRY MANURE SUSPECTED IN FISH KILLS

BYLINE: Andrew Conte of the News staff

BODY:

Officials look to nearby chicken farms for answers. The owners of a large Indiantown chicken egg farm, which generates enough manure each year to cover the city of Stuart three times, said the excrement that's spread across farms in the St. Lucie River watershed does not harm local waterways. However, federal officials think manure-polluted stormwater might have been a factor in fish kills in Maryland and North Carolina, which were similar in nature to the large kill earlier this year that left thousands of fish in the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon with lesions and sores. State officials have discounted the Tampa Farm Service egg farm, which houses up to 1.2 million hens, as a contributing factor to the local sick-fish epidemic. But some anglers and environmentalists are concerned that those officials are hiding the truth. "What else are they going to say?" said Gregg Gentile, a fishing guide on the St. Lucie River. "I don't care what they tell you, because what they say and what happens are two different things." Scientists at the state Department of Environmental Protection blame a microorganism called Cryptoperidiniopsis for causing the festering sores on thousands of silver mullet, snook, sheepshead and other species in local waterways. The kill mirrored the Maryland and North Carolina outbreaks, in which biologists blamed nitrates in animal excrement as a likely factor. Following that theory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a draft this week for new regulations requiring farmers and ranchers to prevent manure from mixing with stormwater runoff. Away from agricultural sites, neither federal nor state agencies have much regulatory authority to guard against animal waste leaching. Farmers use chicken manure as fertilizer to help grass grow and in some isolated cases as feed for cattle. When spread across ranchland, it costs about a quarter as much as regular fertilizer and has four times the strength, said Richard Hales of the Hales Farm in Okeechobee, which has applied the manure once. Farmers plow the manure into the ground to reduce the amount of fertilizer that gets washed away. Managers at another ranch said they try to reduce runoff by storing the manure in dry areas.

But federal scientists are concerned that during stormy weather, manure moves off the site and carries nitrates into local waterways. Combined with other urban runoff, agricultural products have polluted about 40 percent of the nation's waterways, making them unsafe for swimming, fishing or both, according to the EPA draft document. "Pollution from factories and sewage treatment plants has been dramatically reduced, but runoff from city streets, agricultural activities, including animal-feeding operations, and other sources continues to degrade the environment," the agency reported. With capacity for 1.2 million hens in 12 buildings, the Tampa Farm Service facility generates an average of 90 tons of chicken manure every day and as much as 120 tons a day in the busy holiday months, said DEP officials. The company sells the excrement to five farm companies in Martin and Okeechobee counties, but most of the waste goes to the Camayen Cattle Co., a 6,500-acre ranch north of the St. Lucie Canal near Port Mayaca, DEP officials said. The other ranches are Walt Hatcher's farm and Allapattah Farms in Martin County; and Robertson Brothers Farm and Hales Farm in Okeechobee County. Charles Holtzhower, a manager at Tampa Farm Service, denied that the chicken manure at any of the facilities could be running into local waterways in great quantities or that it has any correlation with the fish kill. "I just hate for them to point their fingers at us because we're not theproblem," he said. "We're very much environmentally concerned. With anoperation as large as ours, we have to be very careful."The company remains within government guidelines and regulations, he added.Under contract to the chicken egg farm, Short Environmental Laboratoriescollected water samples near the ranch in late August. The company did notfind any factors that might have led to the fish kill, said laboratoryDirector Bruce Cummings."I didn't think the chicken manure was a factor," he said. "The valuesreported were indicative of general water qualities for that area. There was nothing indicative of chicken manure in the runoff." However, Cummings said the amount of agricultural runoff in local waterways often varies with weather conditions. In wet weather, more runoff washes into drainage canals and eventually into the river. DEP officials have collected some of their own samples near the agricultural sites, and agreed that the chicken manure does not seem to pose any negative environmental or health effects. But the agency cannot rule out the excrement as an environmental risk until it conducts more tests, said Tim Powell, program manager of the Industrial Waste Section. "It's not that we're not concerned and not that we don't think we need to be concerned about it," he said. "I don't know that we have enough water quality data to entirely say it's not any problem." Leon Abood, chairman of The Rivers Coalition, a group that formed during this year's fish kill, said he would have to take the DEP's findings at face value. If the agency determines the farms are a source of pollution, the group will demand action to stop the practice of spreading manure, he said. "If in fact they are using chicken manure to fertilize and that runoff is flowing into the river basin, it is a point source of pollution," said Abood, adding that DEP has not made that case. Meanwhile, other federal scientists are looking for factors in agricultural runoff other than manure that might be causing the fish kills. Many people still suspect animal waste, but Ken Hudnell, an EPA neurotoxicologist, said he suspects livestock pharmaceuticals or fungicides such as copper are to blame. Regardless, some river advocates remain suspicious of the chicken manure and its effects on the environment. "I don't need to be a scientist," said Marcia Foosaner, a Martin County boater. "I just know that it's dirt and waste, and dirt and waste create nitrates. It bothers fish."

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