TITLE: Fish Kills Seen as `Alarm Bell' For Chesapeake, Tributaries; Procedures for Chicken Waste Under Scrutiny
BYLINE: Todd Shields
CREDIT: Washington Post Staff Writer
EST. PAGES: 3
DATE: 08/17/97
DOCID: WP1112738
SOURCE: The Washington Post; WP
EDITION: FINAL; SECTION: METRO; PAGE: B01
CATEGORY: NEWS MARYLAND
ORIGIN: POCOMOKE CITY, Md.
(Copyright 1997)
Tiny chickens reach up and peck, their 26,500 beaks beating
a tattoo on plastic watering nipples suspended from the poultry
house ceiling.
In four weeks, workers will take the birds to slaughter.
Owner Frank Morison will raise the watering apparatus with pulleys.
A small bulldozer will run the 500-foot length of the sawdust
floor, scraping up more than 20 tons of encrusted manure and litter.
It will be enough to fill a backyard swimming pool, and the process
is repeated at least five times a year as Morison cycles flocks
through his facility. Across the Eastern Shore, farmers managing
an estimated 6,300 poultry houses do much the same, fertilizing
their fields with the manure.
The process once may have been dismissed as yielding just
so much chicken waste. But suddenly it is coming under intense
scrutiny as officials investigate what caused the recent deaths
of thousands of fish on the Pocomoke River.
Environmentalists suspect that nutrients from chicken manure
may have seeped from land into water and nourished the predator
microbe Pfiesteria piscicida, blamed in the fish kills earlier
this month.
Poultry industry leaders say no link has been demonstrated,
and state officials acknowledge that chicken waste is just one
of many possible causes.
Regardless, environmentalists say, the Pocomoke's troubles
dramatize the need for accelerated efforts to protect the Chesapeake
Bay and its tributaries. Despite more than a decade of effort,
regional waters remain fouled by nutrients. Pfiesteria is known
to thrive in such conditions, and its sudden and destructive emergence
highlights the bay's fragility, environmentalists say.
The fish kill was "a little alarm bell that we've got
to be even more vigilant in our efforts," said John R. Griffin,
secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
Such realizations come as officials increasingly acknowledge
that Virginia, Maryland and other major bay jurisdictions will
miss their self-imposed goals for cleaning up the Chesapeake by
2000. With that in mind, some advocates say, they fear the slow
pace could mean other rivers will be stricken like the Pocomoke,
scene of the first major fish kill in the bay or its tributaries
in at least seven years.
"We know Pfiesteria exists elsewhere {in the bay},"
said William Matuszeski, director of the federally led Chesapeake
Bay Program, which coordinates government-funded research on the
estuary. "The race is on between nutrients and the growth
of these cells."
Nutrient levels in the Pocomoke, on the southern Eastern
Shore, are about normal for Maryland tributaries of the bay and
have even improved in recent years, as they have elsewhere in
the Chesapeake, state officials said.
Problems on the Pocomoke began in the fall, when watermen
netted fish with dime-size lesions. Anglers elsewhere on the bay
also reported catching fish with sores. Then, from Aug. 6 to 9,
thousands of menhaden and other species died. Gulls swooped down
and snapped them up before researchers could count them. Laboratory
analyses of Pocomoke water confirmed that the fish perished from
toxins emitted by masses of Pfiesteria, a microbe blamed for killing
more than a billion fish in North Carolina.
Why Pfiesteria, a naturally occurring organism that lives
in harmless states throughout the Chesapeake, suddenly mutated
into a toxic state in the Pocomoke remains unclear.
Pfiesteria in the wild has not been shown to affect humans,
although lab workers exposed to it have suffered respiratory ailments,
nausea and disorientation. State health officials say it is safe
to eat fish from the bay and its rivers, but they caution against
eating fish with visible lesions.
The microbe thrives in water rich in nitrogen and phosphorous
-- nutrients that are the Chesapeake Bay's major pollutants. The
chemicals stimulate harmful algae growth, which in turn blocks
sunlight and absorbs oxygen. Major sources of nitrogen and phosphorous
include sewage treatment plants, suburban lawns, automobile exhaust
and fertilizer from farm fields.
In the case of the Pocomoke, analysts are checking whether
rainwater may have washed manure and other fertilizers from the
river basin's 600 Maryland farms into local waters, said Griffin,
the natural resources secretary.
"You're talking about general water-quality problems,
and there may not be a quick fix," Griffin said. "It
certainly involves a redoubling and continuation of efforts we've
been making for the past 15 years" to clean up the bay.
In 1987, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District
of Columbia and the federal government pledged that by 2000, they
would cut the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous going into the
bay by 40 percent. Scientists calculated that a reduction on that
scale would usher in dramatic improvements, with water becoming
more clear, fish and crabs more abundant and underwater meadows
of bay grasses more widespread.
The bay jurisdictions and the federal government spend $40
million to $50 million a year on programs to clean up the bay,
according to federal estimates. The expenditure has bought improvement,
but recovery has been slower than officials had hoped, mainly
because nutrient levels have remained stubbornly high.
Preliminary calculations by federal scientists indicate
that without policy changes, the bay jurisdictions will miss their
goal for reducing nitrogen by more than 25 percent. They will
meet the goal for phosphorous, but only temporarily: The same
federal projections show population growth pushing phosphorous
back above agreed caps within a few years.
"We have a limited amount of money and a very big problem
everywhere," said Ann Swanson, executive director of the
Chesapeake Bay Commission, which advises the legislatures of Maryland,
Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Swanson said taxpayers need to decide whether to spend additional
tens of millions of dollars on advanced sewage treatment, improved
farm practices and other measures.
William C. Baker, president of the nonprofit Chesapeake
Bay Foundation, said one improvement could be made quickly if
large poultry companies took responsibility for chicken waste.
Under current practice, farmers keep the waste after trucks take
away the birds, which are raised for companies such as Perdue
Farms Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. Baker said some farmers leave
the waste in the open or apply it too heavily to fields, allowing
chicken manure laden with nitrogen and phosphorous to wash into
rivers and streams.
State officials also are scrutinizing chicken waste. Maryland
Agriculture Department workers are embarking on a special survey
to see how many chicken farmers near the Pocomoke keep the manure
in sheds to prevent it from being washed away.
Morison, 38, the chicken farmer, stores his manure in a
shed until it can be properly applied to his 83 acres of crops.
But he said some farmers simply pile it on their land immediately,
contributing to the Pocomoke's problems.
It has little effect, countered Kay Richardson, president
of Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., a trade group. Richardson,
whose family runs eight chicken houses on a farm near Willards,
Md., said that manure-handling practices have improved over the
years and that most farmers properly store the substance and carefully
spread it on fields in calibrated doses.
Farm advocates fear that manure-handling practices, now
voluntary, will be regulated by the state. And they caution against
blaming farmers for all the bay's woes.
"The industry wants to do what's right," said
Lewis R. Riley, Maryland's secretary of agriculture. "We
can't move in with artificial restrictions without knowing what
the problem is."
ART: PHOTO,,Theresa Blackwell For Twp
CAPTION: This catfish, caught in the lower Pocomoke River in Maryland, has lesions attributed to Pfiesteria piscicida.
REGION: MD US; MARYLAND; UNITED STATES
DESCRIPTORS: Fishing industry; Ranching; Microorganisms; Fish; Animal diseases; Maryland; Rivers, streams, etc.; Chesapeake Bay; Water pollution;
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
ORGANIZATION: Pocomoke River; Maryland Department Of Natural Resources
INDUSTRY: FOOD
PERSON: John R. Griffin;
OTHER TERMS: @Slug: B01FI