Critics: Hatchie River faces threat from poultry farm
BROWNSVILLE, Tenn. — After two nearby tracts of land were sold recently, Natalie Pinner was shocked to learn that she might have chickens as her new neighbors — hundreds of thousands of them.
“I don’t want it at all,” she said of the prospective poultry operation. “That would cause us to have to sell our property immediately.”
The recent announcement of a Tyson Foods Inc. chicken-processing plant to be built in Humboldt, about 30 miles northeast of Pinner’s home outside of Brownsville, means 80 or so poultry farms will be established within a 50-mile radius to supply the facility with chickens.
That could result in poultry houses — each containing tens of thousands of chickens — popping up across a swath of rural West Tennessee extending to within 15 miles of the Shelby County line.
In Haywood County, where an Arkansas poultry grower bought the two tracts near Pinner’s home, the potential influx of poultry farms has generated both alarm and uncertainty.
Residents who attended recent meetings with county planners and commissioners voiced concerns about truck traffic, potential odors and pollution, including runoff threatening the scenic Hatchie River.
Haywood is among a relative few rural counties with zoning and planning ordinances in place. And the county’s zoning rules require that large animal feed lots be situated on tracts of at least 200 acres and meet setback requirements from residences and schools.
Both of the tracts recently sold for the prospective poultry operation are less than 60 acres, meaning they don’t meet the requirement for feedlots.
But before they could even render a decision on the matter, Haywood officials were notified by the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation that under state law, their powers over poultry operations appear limited. The Farm Bureau cited laws that prohibit counties and municipalities from regulating agricultural operations, including feedlots.
“They (the Farm Bureau) are pretty much right,” said Michael Banks, the county’s attorney.
Banks, however, did some research of his own and found a 1979 state law stipulating that animal feeding operations are subject to zoning rules if they were enacted before the operations were proposed. Haywood adopted its rules on feeding operations in 2005.
Banks plans to ask a local legislator to seek a state Attorney General’s opinion on whether the zoning rules do in fact take precedence.
Other laws enacted by the General Assembly have loosened environmental regulations on animal-feeding operations.
Under a measure passed by the Legislature last year, only large feeding operations that maintain their waste in liquid form will be required to maintain state permits intended to prevent pollution. That law, and subsequent amendments, left all but 32 of 332 previously permitted feeding operations exempt, according to the Sierra Club.
Operations such as poultry farms, which maintain their wastes in dry form, are exempt from the permit requirement, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation spokeswoman Kim Schofinski said in an email.
Schofinski added, however, that no feeding operation is authorized to discharge pollutants into waters of the state.
Opponents of poultry houses and other concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, cite reports such as a 2010 study by the National Association of Local Boards of Health. It noted that feeding operations can contaminate groundwater with pathogens and nitrates, while surface streams can get polluted with ammonia, which depletes water of oxygen.
Local residents say a poultry operation on the tracts near Pinner’s home could pose a threat to the Hatchie. Carter Creek, a tributary to the Hatchie, drains the properties. “It’ll definitely end up polluting the Hatchie,” Pinner said.
But Tyson spokesman Worth Sparkman says the concerns about pollution and odors from poultry farms are largely unfounded. Sparkman said that after harvesting three or four flocks, poultry farmers typically push the litter — a mixture of manure and bedding material — into long windrows within the chicken houses so it can compost into organic fertilizer, which is then spread on crop fields.
“There’s no pollution or runoff at any of the houses,” Sparkman said. “It’s very dry for the most part.”
He added that it’s rare for odors to be noticeable farther than 100 feet from chicken houses.
Tyson, one of the world’s largest food companies, each year pays $800 million-plus to 4,000 independent poultry farmers under contract to supply plants with chickens. For two decades, the company has operated another West Tennessee plant, in Obion County, that has drawn praise from local officials.
Sparkman said Tyson will work with a third party to help every new farm built in Tennessee to develop a nutrient management plan, which will help them decide how to apply or sell their litter. The third party also will assist the grower with construction storm-water permitting and development of storm water pollution prevention plans, which are required by the Clean Water Act.
Amid the debate in Haywood County, for-sale signs popped up in recent days on the two tracts recently purchased by the Arkansas poultry farmer, indicating the planned operation might be headed elsewhere.
Reach Tom Charlier at 901-529-2572 or thomas.charlier@commercialappeal.com and on Twitter at @thomasrcharlier.