THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The chicken factories or the chickenshit. If you listen to the people responsible for the spread of industrial chicken production on the Delmarva peninsula, you might well believe the chickenshit came first. Regardless of the timing, it is there now along with all the problems that follow it.

The air smells bad now, he said, and the environment feels soiled. The gruff electrician who built his house in rural Somerset County in 1983 remembers being able to trap muskrats whenever he wanted. Today, he said, they’re all gone — and last year he saw a rat in the area for the first time. The population of flies has exploded, Glasgow said. He can leave five flytraps out in his garage, and they’ll be full in two days or less.

The fouling of the Delmarva, Glasgow and other residents say, can be attributed to the rapid proliferation of chicken CAFOs — “concentrated animal feeding operations” — which critics refer to as factory farms. Tens of thousands of chickens live in close quarters in these enclosed poultry houses, which are usually run by national producers such as Tyson and Perdue.

Industry representatives say that there are around 4,600 poultry houses currently operating on the Delmarva. Residents and researchers are calling for a state moratorium on the construction of new houses as another 200 are on track to be opened by the end of 2015. These operations use industrial-sized fans to pull air out of chicken houses, raising concerns over whether locals are being exposed to airborne toxins, and about the kinds of waste that are being drained into the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

“They keep saying there’s no environmental impact,” Glasgow said in response to industry representatives who maintain that the chicken houses are more environmentally friendly than ever. “But there is.”

“We want to be good neighbors,” said Bill Satterfield, the executive director of Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., a trade association that represents poultry producers on the peninsula. He added that people who live in agricultural areas need to understand what it means to live near farms.

Lisa Inzerillo of Princess Anne grew up around her grandparents’ farm in Sommerset County and lives on land that’s been in her family for more than four centuries. She knows that the Delmarva has always been poultry country. Her house, however, is also near a newly built chicken CAFO that she said her grandparents wouldn’t recognize.

“I’m not at all against poultry,” she said. “But this is industrial-sized farming. This does not belong in our neighborhood.”

And the real chicken shit?

The letter stated that in 2013 at least 215,349 tons of poultry waste — containing 5 million pounds of phosphorous, which fuels toxic algal blooms in high concentrations — was moved off chicken farms in the area. Much of it ended up on agricultural land in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

So it has gone from small scale farms to industrial size facilities and it is unlikely that any of the factory owners can pay to control pollution. (see John Oliver). As long as the chickens keep the facilities from being labeled industrial, the quality of life in a once beautiful area will be crucified on a cross of chickenshit.