More news about the Hyde County hen house | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Several years ago someone came up with the idea that the State of North Carolina should control what is dumped into our rivers and sounds. They made a law that said you have to have a permit to "discharge" water into streams, rivers and sounds. Imagine is you were required to get a permit even if you did not discharge any water into any body of water. Then imagine that you went ahead and got a permit just to avoid the hassle. Then imagine that the state used that permit to regulate your use of your property that did not even relate to water. Would you think the State had gone too far?

    Rose Acre Farms brought a lawsuit against the State of North Carolina alleging the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) overstepped its authority in issuing an NPDES (water quality) permit for their three and one half million hen egg producing operation in Hyde County. Rose Acre argues they are not required to have a permit because no process water discharges from their egg laying operation. They did not mind the water quality discharge permit until DENR tried to use it to impose air quality standards that DENR invented. The issue was moot because they did not discharge water.

    DENR admits present day ammonia emissions are not impairing surrounding surface waters. However, DENR maintains that at some time in the future there could be an impairment. This is the basis for changing the NPDES permit to require ammonia in air and surrounding stream monitoring. This is the same thing as requiring and automobile driver who had never been charged with DUI to install a breathalyzer because he could drink too much alcohol at some time in the unknown future. Only in dictatorships is this kind of law applied.

    DENR is using monitoring data which they admit does not show a violation. The data has allegedly been discredited by Rose Acre experts in a variety of ways. The base line concentration was not properly set up. That is to say how much ammonia was there before Rose Acre started producing eggs. DENR tried to do in a few months what the experts say takes several years. There are dispersions by several experts about the way samples were taken, stored and whether or not the ambient conditions were adequate for sampling. DENR is desperately trying to legitimize this data because it is the only data they have. This is a good example of the awesome power of government to walk rough shod over the little man. Fortunately Rose Acre realizes what this autocratic power means in the long run and has chosen to fight now rather than later. But they will have to spend thousands of dollars while the State sticks the taxpayer with the cost of defending their rules.

    To put things in perspective, according to Rose Acre's experts, one duck excretion is equivalent to two laying hens. Geese excrete three times as much as a duck. So, 100,000 geese or 300,000 ducks are equal to 600,000 chickens. Rose acre has about three and one half million hens. But, the excrement from the hens is collected on site, dried and heated to kill pathogens and sold off site. None of the hen excrement gets into the local environment, except as fertilizer at the fertilizer rate of application on off-site farm land, but all of the goose and duck excrement gets into the environment, not to mention the sea gulls and if you own a pier you know what that's like.

    Another technical detail DENR chooses to ignore is that in soils that are high in carbon (organic content) any surplus nitrogen (found in Ammonia) is quickly converted or organic nitrogen and used by micro organisms who then pass it to vegetation. The short story is that ammonia in the concentrations being discussed is actually fertilizer and beneficial. Because of the high organic content of most soils in Hyde County this facility is ideally located.

    We are seeing more and more pseudo (false) science being used by all government agencies. The attitude on the part of the government is that very few people or corporations have the money to bring suit in order to protect their rights. Both state and federal governments have hundreds of free (to the bureaucrats) lawyers. Rose Acre has spent more than two million dollars to date to keep their rights. This is an example of oppressive government that is clueless as to the meaning of Constitutional rights. Governments can abuse their citizens at will until the citizens defend themselves. We have a right to defend our rights within our constitutional democracy. But, when governments become as large and bloated as ours the citizen will only get as much democracy as he is willing to fight for. This case goes beyond a disagreement about the interpretation of the law and regulations to the invention of new law and regulations based on what one agency sees as a sovereign mandate bestowed on it by an elected body. But the worst of it is that these regulations are in many instances based on flimsy or even bogus science. That kind of thinking is a real stretch.

    Even more perplexing are the efforts made by Governor Perdue to pay or bribe corporations to bring jobs to the State when there are 150 new jobs to be had in a depressed area at no cost to the State. Citizens in Eastern North Carolina need to start asking questions of all those politicians who claim they support creating more jobs. A good place to start is with all those locally who are running for office.

    Governor Perdue, will you please get out of the hen house door and let our people work.