Chickens at Poultry Farm (Image used under license from shutterstock.com)

Ashley Quincin via UNC Media Hub

Jefferson Currie steps outside his home in Moore County, and the stench of chicken waste lingers in the air. He takes a sip of his morning coffee and grimaces. The coffee tastes like the beans have been roasted with rancid chicken.

Currie lives half a mile from a chicken farm. In southeastern North Carolina, where a large portion of the population is Black, Latino and Indigenous, the odor of chicken and hog manure is overwhelming, hanging in the air and sticking to your clothes, your home, your body. It worries people, Currie said, and has a negative impact on mental and physical health.

“It can make you feel like you’re crazy,” Currie said.

Waste and runoff from unregulated poultry farms not only damage water quality – resulting in increased nitrogen and phosphorous levels and bacterial contamination – but can also contain pathogens and bacteria that cause respiratory problems and a decreased quality of life in humans.

People of color and low-income people are disproportionately affected by pollution which puts them at higher risk for illness. Bacteria and allergens carried in poultry waste often lead to respiratory diseases such as chronic bronchitis, asthma and dust poisoning syndrome, according to the National Institutes of Health.

In Robeson County, home to more than 100 poultry plants and a majority Indigenous population, the asthma rate for children is double that of the state.

Currie, an enrolled Lumbee tribe member, also collects water samples in Robeson. He is involved with a federal complaint against the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, alleging that the department’s weak permitting process on poultry operation waste illegally discriminates against communities of color and exposes them to health risks.

Regulations on poultry operations vary. Josh Kastrinsky, deputy communications director of the Department of Environmental Quality, said the department monitors farms with hog, cattle and poultry wet litter – animal waste mixed with liquid – management systems by providing permits. These permits are a method of regulation and environmental protection by the state.

But the department does not have statutory authority to manage dry litter poultry waste — waste that is mixed with bedding materials such as sawdust. And regulations for industries that produce dry litter are rarely enforced. The division only investigates operations when it receives a community complaint, Kastrinsky said.

In response to a complaint, the department enforcement process can include issuing notices of violation and potentially assessing civil penalties.

The Department of Environmental Quality has previously investigated the effects of poultry operations on water quality throughout the coastal plain of North Carolina. Although the department’s website states that its study did not find evidence that water quality standards were “violated” because of concentrated animal operations, the study observed that nutrient pollution, including nitrogen and phosphorous, is higher in North Carolina watersheds where poultry operations are concentrated.

According to the EPA, a high concentration of nitrogen can lead to large growths of algae, which produce toxins and bacteria that can be harmful to people when consumed.

Waste of a billion-dollar industry

 The poultry industry generates nearly $40 billion in economic output for North Carolina.

Poultry operations have cropped up all over the state, particularly in rural, low-income areas. According to the Environmental Working Group, 268 poultry operations in Duplin and Sampson counties are within three miles of at least 40 other hog or poultry factory farms.

Angela Stuesse, an associate professor of anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill whose research focuses on the industry’s impact on rural communities, said poultry companies will often locate their plants in rural areas lacking other economic drivers.

Will Hendrick, environmental justice director with the North Carolina Conservation Network, said the department is often unaware of the locations of many operations, their size or the volume of waste generated. Only the State Department of Agriculture maintains records of the locations of these operations, and state law allows the records to remain confidential.

“There are limited windows of opportunity to collect the necessary evidence to establish the foundation for any enforcement and more often, the regulatory agency is saying, ‘I may not know where that is,’” Hendrick said.

DEQ’s failure to regulate

In April 2023, the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School in South Royalton, Vermont,  on behalf of Currie, environmental organizer Donna Chavis and Friends of the Earth, filed a complaint with the EPA Office of Civil Rights alleging that North Carolina’s failure to adequately regulate the dry litter poultry industry harms communities of color in Robeson, Duplin and Sampson counties.

The state requires that poultry operations handling dry litter maintain records for at least three consecutive years that include the dates the litter was removed, the amount of litter removed and the location of the sites where the litter was sent. The department also requires that litter not remain in uncovered piles for more than 15 days. But the operations are not required to share their records with the state. And once the department receives a community complaint about uncovered litter piles, the facility has the two-week period to cover the waste before an investigation is opened.

“The problem is the state rarely enforces the registration and reporting requirement,” Hendrick said. “Some newer haulers may only be doing that for a year and not the next year. And those thresholds kind of do not apply to some of the smaller transfers that are occurring.”

Currie said the complaint process began when he and Chavis began observing unprecedented amounts of litter in the communities of color they work with. He said water sampling by riverkeepers and other environmental justice groups has shown that poultry operations are polluting water sources with bacteria, nitrates and phosphorous at alarming levels.

But despite numerous community complaints, the Department of Environmental Quality, which has dealt with a critical staffing shortage during the last couple of years, Currie said, does not have the resources to thoroughly investigate each one and properly enforce its regulations.

The complaint alleges that the state cannot accurately consider the impacts on water quality by unregulated poultry farms without considering the locations and pollution from them. Fredrick Ole Ikayo, a fellow at the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said in a statement that the state’s failure to properly regulate dry litter poultry facilities shows a clear pattern of disregard for the communities previously affected by hog farming.

“The actions that they’ve taken and the inaction they’ve taken – not doing what they’re supposed to – is impacting people in our watershed,” Currie said.

Currie, Chavis and Friends of the Earth requested that the state develop a system of enforcement to ensure poultry operations are safely storing their litter and monitor the litter’s effect on water and air quality. They also requested that it allow community members to enforce their rights if poultry operations violate rules that impact human or environmental health.

This is not the first time the Department of Environmental Quality has been on the receiving end of a federal complaint. In 2014, The Waterkeeper Alliance, NC Environmental Justice Network and REACH – Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help – filed a complaint alleging that the department’s weak permitting process on hog farms disproportionately burdened communities of color with water and air pollution by allowing farms to operate with “grossly inadequate” and outdated waste management systems.

The groups reached a settlement with the department four years later. As part of the settlement agreement, the department agreed to implement a temporary air quality study in Duplin County to monitor the effects of poultry and hog operations on air pollution, particularly looking at ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and other particulate matter. However, after publishing its results in 2019, the department said it could not find a “significant air quality issue” and would not continue additional air monitoring.

The study did find that although one of the study sites experienced levels of hydrogen sulfide higher than the average odor threshold for some time, this did not constitute a level at which the department could take any regulatory action.

In recent years, the North Carolina legislature has protected the hog and poultry industry. The General Assembly has amended its right-to-farm law to prevent future lawsuits. In the preamble to its amendments, the General Assembly said “frivolous” nuisance lawsuits threaten the very existence of farming in North Carolina.

“Essentially, similarly situated North Carolinians no longer have the same property rights as those 500 or so plaintiffs who had successfully asserted the rights that existed in law before those rights were limited or removed by action in the General Assembly,” Hendrick said.

Poultry response

 In response to community complaints, Bob Ford, executive director of The Poultry Federation, said it is easy to criticize from the other side of the fence. He said there are already voluntary setbacks in place by poultry farms and companies, including not building chicken houses within 1,000 feet of an occupied dwelling.

“We feel like we’re doing things right,” he said. “Seems to be working OK. DEQ here in North Carolina does not try to give us a hard time or they will come on and investigate a complaint.”

He also said the plan for many poultry operations is to burn litter to generate energy. In 2007, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 3, which required that electric utility companies purchase power generated from poultry waste.

But communities are still concerned. In 2021 and 2022, the Department of Environmental Quality considered an air quality permit for a North Carolina Renewable Power facility in Lumberton. The litter-to-energy plant had received several noncompliance notices for exceeding emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and methane.

Residents of Robeson County flooded the department’s public hearing on Feb. 21, 2022, to voice their opposition to the permit. Many said the population of Lumberton was largely of color. But the department issued the permit. In response to concerns about the low-income communities and communities of color in Robeson County, the department said that it had considered environmental justice and equity throughout the permit application process.

‘Nobody’s listening’

Although dry litter poultry operations remain unregulated, the DEQ is in the finalization period of general permits for operations with a wet litter management system, effective Oct. 1, 2024. Currie said many community members are unaware of the department’s feedback period, but he is working to increase awareness of the department’s lack of enforcement.

“There is something wrong when the local people cannot make a stand and say ‘Hey, we don’t want this anymore,” Currie said. “Nobody’s listening. Something’s broken in the system. And I think that’s part of the problem.”