F. BRIAN FERGUSON/Sunday Gazette-MailThe poultry industry has long been a staple of the Hardy County economy. Historically, farms were small and family-owned. Today, they can be huge commercial operations.
By Ken Ward Jr.
SUNDAY GAZETTE-MAIL
A microscopic bug that disguises itself as a plant and eats fish has put a national spotlight on chicken manure.
The microbe is called pfiesteria piscicida. It was discovered in 1988 in North Carolina, where it was partly to blame for the death of millions of fish two years ago.
Since August, similar fish kills have been reported on streams in Maryland and Virginia. Some scientists believe pfiesteria is again to blame.
Pfiesteria experts say the microbe thrives, and may turn toxic, in waters that are polluted with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous. In Maryland, Gov. Parris Glendening has called for a crackdown on poultry farms that are a major source of nutrient pollution.
Across the region, the pfiesteria flap has fueled an already brewing controversy over whether West Virginia does enough to keep its poultry farmers from polluting the Potomac River and, in turn, the Chesapeake Bay.
Concern over the issue was jump-started in April, when a national environmental group named the Potomac River the seventh most endangered waterway in North America.
Becky Norton Dunlap, Virginia's secretary of natural resources, quickly complained to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Dunlap said she was "perplexed" that West Virginia still hadn't signed onto the Chesapeake Bay Compact, a multistate agreement to reduce pollution of the Bay.
After The Washington Post published an expose on the Potomac Valley's poultry industry in June, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., demanded an EPA investigation.
"The poultry industry threatens to reverse years of progress we have made in this region in improving the water quality of the Potomac consistent with the Clean Water Act," Moran wrote to Browner.
EPA officials have met privately with state regulators several times about these complaints. Sources say EPA is putting pressure on West Virginia to act, but federal officials offer a much rosier picture.
"We have felt that, currently, under the Underwood administration, there seems to be a recognition that this is a problem," said W. Michael McCabe, regional EPA administrator in Philadelphia.
"Are we pressuring West Virginia? We are, but we're pressuring other states, too," McCabe said last month. "I think West Virginia could do more, but I think state officials are aware of the problem."
In September, Glendening called Gov. Cecil Underwood and governors from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina to a summit on the pfiesteria problem in his state.
Glendening asked for the meeting after toxic outbreaks of the microbe were linked to fish kills on two Chesapeake Bay tributaries, the Pocomoke River and Kings Creek.
Underwood attended the Sept. 19 summit in Annapolis, Md. His press office put out a news release about the trip.
"Gov. Underwood stressed that West Virginia has had no reports of any comparable incidents and that Mountain State streams have not been linked to problems in Maryland," the release said.
"West Virginia water quality experts have said available information thus far suggests that the pfiesteria outbreak has occurred only in salt water or in areas where fresh water streams empty into salt-water bodies," it said.
It's not completely clear, however, that pfiesteria problems are impossible in the Potomac.
The microbe probably does exist in the river, according to the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. No problems there have been confirmed. But scientists still don't know what water conditions make pfiesteria, a normally harmless, single-celled dinoflagellate, turn toxic and attack fish. Worse still, experts don't understand fully the microbe's possible effects on human health.
During congressional hearings Sept. 25, Glendening again said the pfiesteria problem in Maryland should be a call for a Bay states to reduce agricultural and other pollution.
"This is not a Maryland problem," Glendening said. "It's a regional problem."
Underwood returned from the summit, however, confident that West Virginia was doing enough to keep its part of the Potomac from polluting the Bay.
"I don't see any evidence that there is a crisis," Underwood said in a late September interview.
"It seems to me that we've taken more positive steps already in the South Branch valley than the other states have."
Underwood's top environmental official, DEP Director John E. Caffrey, says otherwise, according to agency records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Act.
In letters to Browner and Dunlap, Caffrey conceded that West Virginia is behind other states in the region because it didn't join the Chesapeake Bay Compact.
The federal government funneled millions of dollars to states that joined the Bay Compact, to help those states meet pollution reductions states agreed to as part of joining the compact.
"Previous administrations have chosen not to become active participants in the compact for various reasons, not the least of which was the potential adverse economic impact to the eastern panhandle's agricultural community," Caffrey wrote to Browner on July 23.
"Several if not all of the Bay states have state cost-sharing programs in place, supplementing federal programs, which serve to provide enhanced incentives for landowner compliance," Caffrey wrote.
"Considering the amount of federal and state resources devoted to water quality control efforts in the Bay states over the past twenty years, it is understandable that Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland have more multifaceted programs in place to deal with water quality problems," Caffrey wrote.
Caffrey asked Browner to set up a meeting at which West Virginia officials could discuss joining the Bay compact. McCabe followed up with a letter agreeing to such a meeting, but none has been scheduled to date.