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Sunday, June 20, 2004

Environment - Rose Acre Farms proposes egg farm in North Carolina

The Washington Daily News has an interesting story today about Indiana-based Rose Acre Farms' plans to built a four-million-bird egg-laying operation in North Carolina.

The headline to the story is: "Rose Acre watching, waiting." Some quotes:

A proposal to construct a controversial egg farm in Hyde County may be opened for public input in early August.

The state Division of Water Quality, which has been the prime permitting agency, is in the process of writing a draft permit for Indiana-based Rose Acre Farms. A public hearing will be called, possibly as early as August, to allow input before any permits are issued, said Susan Massengale, DWQ spokeswoman.

Rose Acre has proposed building a four-million-bird egg-laying operation near the Hyde community of Ponzer. Many residents of job-poor Hyde County have been pushing for state approval of the operation, but a few neighbors-to-be as well as a cadre of environmental groups have expressed concerns and urged the state to thoroughly study the operation before approving permits. * * *

Tony Wesner, Rose Acre Farms vice president, doesn't dispute the existence of ammonia emissions, but he does question the levels used in the calculations. Wesner, confident his operations are below projected ammonia emission levels, invited the Environmental Protection Agency to study emissions at several Rose Acre farms.

"We don't know the numbers yet," said Wesner on Thursday.

The Environmental Protection Agency hired Purdue University to do both studies, said Wesner. The first three-year study was done at a facility in White County in Indiana. The second study, begun 18 months ago, is still under way at a facility in Pulaski County, he said. "I thought we'd be done by now," said Wesner, who had anticipated a June wrap-up.

There is much more in the story, which also contains this link to a Science News article titled "Chicken Farming, Ammonia, and Coastal Threats."

[It took me a while to discover WHERE the Washington Daily News is based. I didn't have a clue. Although the site is identified as "Pulitzer Prize Winning" and "The Voice of the Pamlico", the paper's publishers must believe everyone already knows that it is a North Carolina paper. Maybe "Pamlico" should have been a clue. A look in the dictionary gave this definition: "a member of the Algonquian people formerly of the Pamlico river valley in North Carolina."]

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 20, 2004 07:54 PM
Posted to Environmental Issues