Sierra Club vows suit over Chicken Farm Dust 

JAMES BRUGGERS /  The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) 5feb01

The Sierra Club will bring a national legal battle to Kentucky in a challenge to Tyson Foods over ammonia fumes and dust from four huge chicken farms.

Representatives of the environmental group said they will announce today in Louisville that the club is notifying the company that it will be filing a federal lawsuit -- the first step in litigation under the nation's Superfund law, Community-Right-To-Know law and the Clean Air Act.

The four Tyson-affiliated farms -- in Webster, McLean and Hopkins counties in Western Kentucky -- are so large that their fumes and dust should be considered ''emissions'' under federal laws adopted primarily to control pollution from factories, refineries or chemical plants, Sierra Club representatives said yesterday.

A Tyson spokesman, Ed Nicholson, said he couldn't comment specifically because he had not seen the Sierra Club's legal notice.

However, Nicholson said Tyson doesn't operate any chicken farms in Kentucky. Rather, they are run by farmers who contract with Tyson to grow the company's chickens.

Two of the four farms have 24 houses, holding up to 600,000 chickens each, and would fall under Clean Air Act provisions, said Barclay Rogers, a San Francisco-based lawyer with the national Sierra Club.

The other two facilities have 16 houses and can hold up to 400,000 chickens each, he said.

''This is all about massive concentrations of chickens,'' Rogers said. ''It's not about family farmers.

''Due to this massive concentration, it is triggering both the reporting requirements for hazardous substances under our toxics laws, and triggering the permit requirements for dust emissions under the Clean Air Act.

''These emissions -- and the reason they are required to report them -- are because they threaten public health,'' Rogers said.

Nicholson said there have been no ''comprehensive scientific studies to positively determine exactly how much ammonia is produced and released in a typical broiler operation, nor have any governmental agencies regulated this issue.''

Rogers said the operators of the four chicken farms will be named in the lawsuit. He identified them as Roland Buchanan, the Adams Chicken Farm and the Tyson Chicken Partnership.

Buchanan lives in Georgia. One of his Kentucky farm managers, Lisa Moore of McLean County, said the Sierra Club ''has been giving us chicken farms such crap. What do you expect to find in the country? Farms and cattle. Odor goes with it.

''It smells occasionally, but it's not so bad that it hurts me. And I work in them.''

The Sierra Club's legal challenge follows action by it, other environmental groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that seeks a shift in how the nation's environmental laws apply to agriculture.

Last April, the federal EPA accused an Ohio egg producer of violating the Clean Air Act. And in November, the U.S. Justice Department settled litigation with Premium Standard Farms of Missouri, the nation's second-largest hog producer, after the company agreed to pay fines, install wastewater-treatment facilities and monitor air quality.

However, the EPA's push to regulate emissions from factory-scale farms has since slowed down.

A letter from EPA administrator Christie Whitman on Nov. 9 states that the EPA does not have ''sound emission estimates to support regulatory determinations for animal culture.''

The agency intends to work closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a policy based on ''sound science,'' Whitman said.

The lead Kentucky lawyer for the Sierra Club's action will be Phillip Shepherd, former secretary of the state Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet.

Shepherd said state and federal environmental regulations have not kept pace with the so-called confined animal feeding operations.

''Regulatory oversight has to some degree been neglected or fallen between the cracks,'' he said. ''In the last several years, these facilities, once they get up and running, end up creating air pollution in ways that were not anticipated.''

The cabinet's efforts to control pollution problems from the confined feeding operations and require minimum setbacks from neighbors have been hampered by legal challenges from the industry, said Mark York, a cabinet spokesman. Those efforts have largely dealt with water pollution, he said, although the agency recognizes odor is a problem.

The cabinet has also tried to make companies like Tyson equally liable with their contractors for violations of environmental laws.

The Sierra Club has similar pending challenges in Oklahoma and Ohio, Rogers said.

Tyson and its partner-operators will have 60 days to respond and correct any problems before the Sierra Club can actually file its lawsuit, Shepherd said.