I don't believe HB1207 allowes any Virginia State agency to regulate the end users of poultry litter.  The law was written and I strongly feel applies only to the generators of poultry waste.  If DEQ or any other agency wanted to write and implement new regulations to impact the end users of poultry litter then the regulations under current law would have to be written to have all responsibility fall on the generators of poultry waste, i.e. chicken and turkey farmers.  The generators would have to have samples taken of the fields of end users, get a NMP, and keep records if those are things DEQ would like to require of end users.  I personally feel that DEQ should go to the General Assembly and ask for regulatory authority to regulate all manure including human waste in the state that will be land applied.  Permit every farmer who produces waste and require a NMP approved by DCR.  Otherwise you are discriminating against one group of individuals without getting the desired results which is ultimately fewer nutrients in water bodies.

the fonejacker, fonejack, fonejacking, to fonejack

To regulate the end user of poultry litter is an unfair practice.  If you do this, you are going to have to regulate every nutrient that is land applied to any piece of ground.  This would include commercial fertilizer also.  Are you going to require cattle and horse producers to place a bag on their animals rectum to catch manure while the animal is grazing in the field? Enough cattle and horses on a pasture generate way more than 10 tons of manure per year.  Do you have the desire that your end result is going to be that all of this poultry waste is going to remain on the farms where it is produced, in giant piles, because farmers do not want to cut through the red tape to have to get permits to apply it to their land?   Wasn't the big problem a few  years ago that you didn't have enough places for all of this poultry waste to go? the poultry farmers were overapplying it to their farms because they had no place for it to go?  I have an idea...lets stockpile about 400 tons of it right next to the state legislature in the middle of the summer and see if they think that you need to require farmers to get a permit to spread it on their farms for fertilize.

It has been more than eight years since passage of the Poultry Waste Management Act of 1999.  And yet the waters of the state, especially the Shenandoah River and the Chesapeake Bay, continue to be polluted by nutrients, despite additional efforts such as funding for agricultural best management practices and sewage treatment plants under the Water Quality Improvement Fund and federal programs. 

Currently agricultural land comprises only 29% of the drainage basin of the Chesapeake Bay but it contributes 58% of the nitrogen and 82% of the phosphorous polluting the Bay, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program.  While the Virginia Pollution Abatement program requires nutrient management when applying  hog, sheep and cattle waste, regardless of who owns the land, in the case of poultry only the growers are required to have nutrient management plans when they apply on their land; other end users are asked to volunteer to be responsible.  Most of the neighboring states have agricultural requirements that are  more protective of state waters than those in Virginia.

The poultry waste management law provides that the program may reflect “such other provisions as the Board determines appropriate for the protection of state waters.”  Va. Code 62.1-44.17:1.1.  Now is the time for the Board to use that authority to establish rules to require nutrient management plans from the end users of poultry waste and thus afford additional protection to state waters.

Even prior to the passage of the Poultry Waste Management Act of 1999, state officials have known from Virginia Tech studies that excess amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus have been applied on land throughout the Shenandoah Valley and that higher concentrations appear on farms that do not grow poultry. Studies by Dr. Shaw Yu at the University of Virginia also revealed that over 60% of groundwater wells in Rockingham County were contaminated by levels of nitrate high enough to contribute to blue baby syndrome. 

In recent years, while there has no study to link poultry waste to the fish kills in the Shenandoah River, something has gone terribly wrong in the that river, and a heretofore important sports fishery has been devastated.  In addition, the Chesapeake Bay continues to suffer from phosphorous concentrations. While sewage treatment plants are undergoing upgrades to reduce their contribution, additional safeguards from agricultural users are also needed.

Poultry litter contains high levels of phosphorous.  While the Waste Management Law requires that poultry growers have a nutrient management plan, those who receive poultry litter from the growers and apply it to fertilize their land are not currently required to have a nutrient management plan.  According to agency studies, more than 80% of all poultry litter is transported off site for land application with the Shenandoah Valley being the prime region for this type of transfer.  Moreover, Virginia Tech’s three-year program of soil testing finds high concentrations of phosphorous in samples. 

Currently, a poultry litter fact sheet is distributed to end users, but this informational and voluntary approach is insufficient to ensure that less phosphorous is applied.  Because of the high cost of nitrogen fertilizers, it is more economical for off-site users to use poultry litter.  While crops will benefit from nitrogen fertilization, the excess phosphorous is not taken up by plants but concentrates in soils and thus leads to increased phosphorous in leachate and surface runoff. 

DEQ should promulgate a rule requiring all users – growers and non-growers – to use a nutrient management plan that will capture phosphorous.  It should more closely track the requirements under the Virginia Pollution Abatement statute for hog, dairy and sheep facilities.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment and please let us know when a regulation is developed for public review.

Poultry litter is an inevitable by-product of poultry production.

If the goal is to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake, while not destroying the poultry industry in Virginia through over-regulation, a better course of action is to improve the utilization of the litter product as an fertilizer product in other agricultural production.

As a hay producer, we are facing large increases in chemical fertilizer products and expect this trend to continue.  Purdue AgriRecycle has a facility in Seaford, DE that produces a pasteurized, USDA certified organic pelletized litter product that we use successfully on our hay fields.  Phosphate levels are being controlled through the use of phytase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/phytase) enzyme in the animal feed.

Rather viewing poultry litter as a problem that must be solved through regulation, it would be a better use of Virginia state government resources to promote the value added processing of the valuable poultry litter to encourage wider geographic use in Virginia's agricultural community.  Concentration of the litter in the production areas would be reduced.

In our area of Northern Virginia, the unregulated runoff of residential lawn fertilizers into streams and watershed are doing far greater harm than agricultural applications.  We have to pay for every pound of fertilizer we apply to our fields and make every effort to ensure that it is used productively.

On behalf of the 39,000 producer members of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation I offer in opposition to further regulation poutry litter the following comments :

• There is little or no evidence that show end users of poultry litter are utilizing it in a manner that causes pollution.  Neither Agriculture Stewardship complaints nor enforcement actions of DEQ demonstrate a water quality problem. Farmers don’t waste things they pay for!

• The Poultry Litter Management Act does not apply to end users and to do so will strand litter on the farms that produce it.

• Requiring soil samples and nutrient management plans for the purchase of litter will make the poultry grower the “policeman” of litter and perhaps acceptance of liability for the actions of purchasers.

• Recent federal court decisions have stated that environmental agencies may only regulate actual pollution not potential pollution.  Requiring this type of permit will regulate the potential for pollution.

• Litter once it leaves the farm of origin is fertilizer; nothing more.  This regulation will establish a precedent for all fertilizer applications.