More than 410,000 tons of poultry waste and one billion gallons of liquid manure are generated every year from chicken, turkey and dairy and beef cow operations in the Shenandoah Valley counties of Augusta, Page, Rockingham and Shenandoah.
And runoff from that vast stream of animal waste makes it into the Shenandoah River, connected water bodies and ultimately to the Chesapeake Bay, creating oxygen-killing algae blooms and high levels of bacterial contamination that damage the appeal of the area as a recreational resource, according to a report issued today by the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit with offices in Washington and Austin, Texas, that advocates for enforcement of environmental laws.
The report, based on what authors said was an exhaustive review of thousands of records, found that the livestock and poultry operations produce more waste than can be used as fertilizer in the area, a surplus of manure that has led to "shockingly high bacteria levels in some cases" in local waterways, said Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the Environment Integrity Project and a former director of civil enforcement at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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"Until the manure overload problem in the Shenandoah Valley is addressed, the algal blooms and high bacteria counts will continue," says the report, which calls for the state to issue bacteria warnings for the waterways similar to those issued at seaside beaches. "While health warnings for the public are important, the bigger picture is that the Shenandoah watershed is more than a drainage system for the livestock industry. With more effective limits on agricultural pollution, Virginia can keep its waterways clean enough for all citizens to enjoy."
Wilmer Stoneman, director of commodities and marketing at the Virginia Farm Bureau who works on water quality and environmental issues, derided the report as "an opinion piece."
Stoneman argued that farmers are fencing numerous miles of streams to keep cattle out and implementing best practices to reduce runoff, often shouldering the financial burden on their own since state funding to assist them has slackened.
"You can drive up and down the Shenandoah Valley and find farmers implementing these practices today," he said. "Farmers are doing everything they know and everything they can to protect water quality and they are doing the best job that they know for the environment and to produce a wholesome and safe food supply. ... Reports like this are just slaps in the face and a disincentive to move forward, but we're doing it anyway."
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The report's authors contend that what farmers are doing on their own isn't enough.
In Rockingham County, for example, the largest agricultural county in the area, about 80 percent of farms with cattle don't fence the animals out of streams, allowing them to defecate in waterways, the report says.
Virginia's commitment to restoring the Chesapeake Bay calls for fencing cattle out of streams on 95 percent of the state's farms.
"The state made some progress in encouraging streamside fencing by offering farmers reimbursement for up to 100 percent of the cost. But then, funding for the program ran short, and a large backlog of farmers seeking the money developed – and the result is that Virginia remains far behind its goal," the report says.
According to Virginia Department of Environmental Quality data, seven out of 16 monitoring sites in the Shenandoah River and its tributaries exceeded screening thresholds for phosphorus, based on a three-year average of sampling results from 2014 to 2016, threatening bottom dwelling animals such as worms, crayfish and snails and creating algal growth that sucks oxygen out of the water and can lead to fish kills.
Environmental advocates, including the Shenandoah riverkeeper, part of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, have unsuccessfully petitioned the DEQ to declare the river impaired because of algal growth.
"Nobody wants to swim, fish or stay in a (bed and breakfast) next to a smelly river choked with algae," said Mark Frondorf, the Shenandoah riverkeeper, who said Virginia's system for policing agriculture waste is "broken."
Manure runoff, the report says, is also partly to blame for the fact that more than 90 percent of the state water-quality monitoring stations for the Shenandoah River and its tributaries detected fecal bacteria at levels unsafe for human contact between 2014 and 2016.
Yet the state does not issue bacteria advisories for the paddlers, swimmers and others who use the river, like it does when testing at beaches shows high levels of fecal bacteria.
"We are not second-class citizens and we deserve the same level of protection afforded to visitors of our saltwater beaches," Frondorf said.
The Virginia Department of Health, which issues the beach advisories, did not respond to a request for comment on the report.
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Virginia's regulatory scheme for what it calls an "animal feeding operation" is complex. Such operations are required to obtain DEQ water discharge permits if "pollutants leave the site and reach surface waters." If they don't, they are only required to obtain Virginia pollution abatement permits and implement state-approved "nutrient management plans" to control runoff if they exceed certain numbers of animals.
Bill Hayden, a DEQ spokesman, said nutrient management plans cover about 97 percent of swine operations, 80 percent of poultry operations and about 13 percent of dairy operations.
However, some farmers choose to obtain the nutrient management plans even if they are not required to because it allows them to take advantage of state cost-sharing programs, said Darryl Glover, director of the division of soil and water conservation at the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Glover said the state has provided about $88 million in funding since January of 2013 for cattle fencing and other practices related to livestock stream exclusion.
"We still have farm operators signing up for livestock-stream exclusion even though we we are no longer offering them 100 percent," he said. "Additional funding is required to meet the demands we are seeing."
Only about 12.5 percent of the nearly 540,000 acres of farmland in the four Shenandoah Valley counties the report studied are covered by nutrient-management plans. And, the report found, about 56 percent of the poultry waste that is transferred from sites with nutrient plans stays in the the area.
"Little public documentation exists to demonstrate that exported poultry litter is being applied in a manner that protects waterways or according to Virginia's regulations," says the report, which also criticizes state regulations that allow spreading manure on fields already saturated with phosphorus.
"Virginia officials depend on crop rotations with yields high enough to absorb the phosphorus from added manure. But actual harvests are often smaller than farmers project. This means less phosphorus is taken up by crops and more is left behind to build up in the soil."
The report calls for pollution control plans for all farms that spread manure, requiring farmers to fence cattle out of streams and improving the state's system for disposing of surplus manure or collecting and shipping it areas where it is needed.
Large meat companies such as Pilgrim's, Tyson and Cargill, which have numerous contract farmers in the valley, "should pay at least part of the cost for this," the report says.
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Hayden, the DEQ spokesman, said the DEQ's last comprehensive trend analysis indicates that waters in the Shenandoah Valley and the rest of the state are getting cleaner overall.
"The results in the Shenandoah basin indicated that 204 of 315 watersheds showed significant improvements in water quality for bacteria," he said. "The results of the trend analysis don’t indicate that Virginia’s waters are free of bacteria, but they do show that DEQ’s 20-year cooperative effort with localities, the public and the regulated community to reduce bacteria pollution in local watersheds is resulting in improved water quality."
Since April 1, 2015, the DEQ has conducted 680 inspections at animal feeding operations in the valley region, finding 316 "inspection deficiencies" at 193 operations, Hayden said. Seventy-seven percent of the deficiencies have been resolved, with 44 of the unresolved inspection deficiencies past their due date, he added.
DEQ has issued 31 warning letters and three notices of violation.
"The number of inspections of regulated farms and the success of follow-up when noncompliance is found indicate that Virginia's enforcement efforts are working," he said.