water quality

After years of complaints from its neighbors, state regulators have ordered a poultry rendering plant on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to curtail its pollution of a Chesapeake Bay tributary and say they will crack down on environmental violations there.

The Maryland Department of the Environment last week released a new draft wastewater permit for the Valley Proteins Inc. facility in Linkwood that would tighten limits on what it now releases after treatment into the Transquaking River.

“Our proposed actions mean cleaner water and a healthier watershed, with greater accountability for environmental violations,” MDE Secretary Ben Grumbles said in a Sept. 15 press release. The release said the agency would seek a “significant financial penalty” as well as corrective actions for a series of alleged water and air pollution violations at the plant.

Environmental activists welcomed the MDE’s announcement, but said it was long overdue.

“It’s good to see some movement to protect water quality,” said Matt Pluta, head of Riverkeeper programs for the nonprofit group ShoreRivers. “This is what we expected from them all along.”

Local residents and environmental activists have complained for years that the state hasn’t taken steps needed to improve water quality in the Transquaking, which flows through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge before emptying into Fishing Bay and then the Chesapeake Bay just above Tangier Sound.

The headwaters of the Transquaking River flow near the Valley Proteins chicken rendering facility. Photo by Dave Harp, Bay Journal

The river has been classified for more than 20 years as impaired by nutrient pollution. The rendering plant is the river’s largest single source of such pollution, which fuels algae blooms and reduces oxygen levels in the water below what’s healthy for fish and other aquatic animals.

The state has allowed the facility to operate under a discharge permit that expired in 2006, despite a federal law requiring such permits be renewed every five years. Pluta called it the oldest “zombie,” or expired, permit in Maryland. “MDE has let it continue operating without updated [pollution] controls for 15 years,” he said.

In April, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, ShoreRivers and Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth jointly notified Valley Proteins that they intended to sue it for violating the federal Clean Water Act by repeatedly exceeding permit limits on its discharge of pollutants such as fecal coliform, nitrogen, phosphorus and ammonia.

The plant takes up to 4 million pounds of chicken entrails and feathers daily from poultry processing plants, according to MDE documents, and renders them into pet food. It’s currently permitted to discharge up to 150,000 gallons of treated wastewater daily, and it uses an air scrubber to control odors.

In the draft permit, the MDE has set caps on how much nitrogen and phosphorus the plant can discharge, regardless of volume. Those caps represent a 43% and 79% reduction from what is permitted now. To stay within those limits, the plant will have to upgrade its treatment, even at the current maximum discharge volume of 150,000 gallons per day.

But in 2014, the company sought state approval to increase its maximum allowable discharge to 575,000 gallons daily in order to expand production. Local residents and environmental groups objected, arguing that the facility already was polluting the water, and the issue has been unresolved until now.

Earlier this year, the MDE disclosed in budget documents that it intended to give Valley Proteins a $13 million state grant to help upgrade its treatment facility so it could reduce its nutrient discharge while expanding operations. The grant would have covered more than 80% of the estimated cost of the overhaul. It would have been the first such grant to a private company from the state’s Bay Restoration Fund, which has been used primarily to upgrade municipal sewage systems.

MDE officials contended that the grant was warranted because it would help the plant achieve enhanced nutrient removal in its wastewater treatment operation, the same standard applied to large municipal sewage plants. But the General Assembly cut the allowable grant amount to $7.6 million after critics contended that the private company based in Winchester, Va., could afford to pick up a larger share of the tab.

Now, though, amid allegations of pollution violations at the plant, the MDE has decided not to provide the grant to Valley Proteins.

“The company has a lot of explaining to do, and the competition for [Bay Restoration Fund] dollars among other applicants is continuing to grow,” Grumbles said in a statement emailed in response to queries.

The draft permit would give the company the option in the next few years to boost its wastewater output to accommodate increased production. But it would still have to adhere to the annual caps set on the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus it can discharge. That would necessitate upgrades completely at the company’s own expense.

With the state grant off the table, Michael A. Smith, Valley Proteins vice chairman, indicated that the company would forego the overhaul the MDE says it would need to expand operations.

Instead, Smith said, the company plans to make less costly upgrades, which should be enough to meet the new nutrient limits with its current volume discharge.

“So there will be capital improvements but not to the magnitude it could have been had the funding come through,” Smith said.

Activists said they are guardedly optimistic but intend to keep pressing the MDE on tightening the permit.

“With an upgraded plant, we can expect lower levels of nutrients and [other] pollution,” ShoreRivers’ Pluta said. “We can only hope,” he added, that the plant does what’s needed to achieve enhanced nutrient removal.

Fred Pomeroy, president of Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth, said he was pleased after years of advocacy to “finally get affirmation from MDE that the longstanding pollution issues will be addressed in the Transquaking River.”

And Alan Girard, Eastern Shore director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said activists were encouraged by the MDE’s announcement “after more than a decade of inaction. However, appropriate actions must be taken in response to the company’s repeated violations of the current permit and to ensure there is a commitment from Valley Proteins to comply with new pollution limits.”

The company has been fined a total of $5,000 over the last five years, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency database. In the April notice of their intent to sue, the environmental groups said that public reports the company submits to state and federal regulators show the plant has repeatedly exceeded its discharge limits in recent years.

The groups also suggested that high nitrate levels found in monitoring wells may be from water leaking into groundwater from two wastewater storage lagoons on the property. They further alleged that the company hasn’t properly documented the tons of poultry waste sludge that is hauled away from the plant.

In its press release, the MDE said its investigators have found multiple infractions from July 2018 to the present. MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said those include exceeding currently permitted limits on several pollutants, plus an unauthorized discharge of only partially treated waste.

Also, in response to odor complaints, an MDE inspector visited the plant in August and cited it for an air pollution violation after finding fault with the operations and monitoring of its emission scrubber.

The draft permit includes updated groundwater monitoring requirements that the MDE said could provide more information about potential sources of pollution. It also contains more requirements for proper sludge management and reporting on its disposal.

“We are working with the facility, citizens and advocacy groups to ensure environmental progress using our regulatory enforcement tools,” the MDE’s Grumbles said.

The MDE has scheduled a virtual public hearing for 5 p.m. Oct. 20, with an in-person hearing at a date and place to be determined. To register for the virtual hearing, go here. The department will accept written comments on the draft permit if submitted by Dec. 15. For more information, go here, here and here.

By Tim Wheeler and Jeremy Cox

A Norwegian company’s plans to bring land-based salmon farming to Maryland’s Eastern Shore hit a snag Thursday night when one of the sites it had chosen for raising the commercially valuable fish failed to gain needed local approval.

The Dorchester County Board of Appeals denied AquaCon Maryland LLC a special zoning exception that would have allowed it to build a massive indoor hatchery and fish grow-out facility on a defunct golf course bordering the Choptank River.

The board’s decision came at the end of a 3.5-hour meeting where neighboring residents and others suggested the industrial-scale aquaculture operation would be unsuitable in the still largely rural area just west of Cambridge. Some also voiced concerns that its wastewater discharges, though treated to a high level, might hurt the Choptank River’s water quality, undermining recent signs of improvement.

“Is there a better location?” Choptank Riverkeeper Matt Pluta asked at one point.

The 114-acre site, formerly home to the Cambridge Country Club, is one of four locations AquaCon has selected for its planned facilities on the Shore, each expected to produce up to 15,000 metric tons of salmon annually.

AquaCon had previously declared its plans to build a facility on the outskirts of Federalsburg, a small town in Caroline County on a tributary of the Nanticoke River. The other two sites are in Cambridge and Denton, also in Caroline County, company representatives told the board.

Ryan Showalter, an Easton lawyer representing AquaCon, said it is pursuing multiple sites at the same time with the intent to start construction next year on whichever one first receives regulatory approvals. AquaCon is one of several mostly European companies rushing to build land-based salmon farms in the United States that use new developments in recirculating aquaculture technology.

Showalter touted the economic benefits for largely rural Dorchester County, noting that the company plans to invest $300 million in each facility and that each would create 150 jobs, a number of them high-paying profession and technical positions.

“When constructed, this will be an industry-changing, world-leading facility,” he said.

Bob Rauch, the company’s Easton-based engineering consultant, stressed that each would be an “all-green” facility. Unlike most open-water salmon farming operations in Europe, these fish would be raised indoors in tanks, with nearly all of the water recirculated and filtered to remove waste. They would not be fed antibiotics or be at risk of escape into the wild, two issues with pen-reared fish.

Solar panels would be placed on the rooftop of the massive 27.5-acre buildings to help offset the facilities’ energy needs. The solid waste produced by raising 3 million fish a year would be converted to energy-generating biogas via anaerobic digestion.

Showalter acknowledged that the size of the building — the largest on the Shore — was daunting. But he said the company pledged to plant a thick buffer of trees around it that in about 12 years should have grown tall enough to hide it from view from the road or neighboring properties.

Several of those attending the meeting praised the company’s efforts to minimize environmental impacts, but they voiced concerns about the wastewater it would generate. The facility would use 70,000–80,000 gallons of groundwater daily and pump an equivalent amount of pretreated wastewater to Cambridge’s sewage treatment plant.

The proposed Dorchester facility would also have withdrawn up to 2.3 million gallons of water daily from the Choptank and discharged the same amount back into the river. That water would cycle through tanks where the salmon would be held just before being harvested so they can be purged of naturally occurring microbes that can give their flesh an unappetizing musty odor and taste.

Rauch said the Choptank water would be treated before being returned to the river, with the discharge meeting the state’s limits for nitrogen and phosphorus.

Tom Fisher, a professor at the Horn Point laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which is next door to the proposed country club site, expressed some concerns about the potential impact on the lower Choptank. The river is suffering from excess nutrients from agricultural runoff and wastewater, but Fisher said it has shown water quality improvements recently in the wake of an upgrade of the treatment plant in Cambridge.

While the added wastewater coming from the municipal plant and the aquaculture facility’s direct discharge to the river would be treated to reduce nutrient levels, Fisher said he was concerned that the Choptank’s recovery might be undermined by the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus remaining in those additional discharges.

“Even if there’s a tiny concentration of something in that water, it’s going to contribute to the impairment,” warned Fred Pomeroy of Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth.

Pomeroy suggested the company focus first on developing its site in Cambridge, which has industrial land in need of redevelopment. Showalter, the company lawyer, said the city site isn’t suitable at this time because it doesn’t have access to the Choptank for purge water. The company is working on a way to eliminate the musty odor in the fish without needing river water, but that’s not ready yet.

Alan Girard of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation questioned how the facility would manage the stormwater runoff coming off the 27.5-acre rooftop. Rauch said the company has at least at least three different approaches in mind, including possibly using the old golf course’s irrigation system to cycle the runoff back into the ground. That portion of the property borders the river, though, where land use is strictly controlled by the state’s Critical Area law, and company representatives said they were still working out how to meet those requirements.

County appeals board members voiced some doubts about the stormwater and the municipal treatment plant’s ability to handle the aquaculture facility’s wastewater, even though company representatives said it had ample capacity to do so.

In the end, though, the appeals board decision seemed influenced most heavily by nearby residents’ complaints about the impacts on their quality of life of such an operation.

“It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it,” said David Rineholt, who said he and his wife Kathleen had built a home next to the old country club 25 years ago.

The site is accessed by a narrow two-lane road, which company representatives acknowledged might need some upgrading to handle 30-35 trucks per week. Otherwise, they said, the traffic generated by the 150-person workforce would be roughly equivalent to what the country club had experienced.

“It will tax traffic,” said board member Charles Dayton, Jr., a sentiment echoed by the rest of the board.

He and a couple of other board members seemed to suggest they might reach a different conclusion if presented with additional information and studies to address concerns raised at the meeting.

Afterward, though, AquaCon representatives indicated they wouldn’t try to win the board over but instead focus on getting regulatory approvals to go forward in Federalsburg and Denton.

“We have other sites,” said Showalter. “We redirect.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

Md. Moves to Curb Water Pollution from Linkwood Chicken Rendering Plant

Zoning Change Denied for Eastern Shore Salmon Farm

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