Poultry Power Poops Out in North Carolina

(Source: Mary Ander­son, Couri­er-Tri­bune)

A 36 megawatt bio­mass incin­er­a­tor that would have burned poul­try feces is no longer being con­sid­ered for Bis­coe, North Car­oli­na, to the relief of Mont­gomery and Moore Coun­ty res­i­dents and grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups, such as Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League (BREDL), which opposed the project.

The devel­op­er, Poul­try Pow­er, a sub­sidiary of the Flori­da-based Green Fron­tier, cit­ed the costs of haul­ing manure to the facil­i­ty as the major imped­i­ment to con­struc­tion and claimed to be look­ing at sites clos­er to their sources.

“Res­i­dents have been spared decreased air qual­i­ty, increased odor, increas­es in spills and heavy truck traf­fic,” said Therese Vick of BREDL. As with the burn­ing of any form of “bio­mass,” con­ven­tion­al air pol­lu­tants released from poul­try manure incin­er­a­tors include par­tic­u­late mat­ter, nitro­gen oxides and car­bon monox­ide, gen­er­al­ly at high­er lev­els than coal burn­ing pow­er plants. 

Oth­er air pol­lu­tion con­cerns from poul­try manure incin­er­a­tion include diox­in and arsenic. “Stud­ies have shown arsenic con­cen­tra­tions in poul­try lit­ter to be between 15 and 35 ppm (parts per mil­lion),” accord­ing to “Air Pol­lu­tion and Tox­ic Haz­ards Asso­ci­at­ed with Poul­try Lit­ter Incin­er­a­tion,” a report by Mike Ewall of Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work. “Arsenic is clas­si­fied as a known human car­cino­gen and, when inhaled, can cause can­cer in humans, par­tic­u­lar­ly lung cancer.” 

Sim­i­lar to burn­ing trees, poul­try manure incin­er­a­tion burns up organ­ic mate­r­i­al that has many oth­er uses, in this case as a soil amend­ment for food pro­duc­tion. Accord­ing to the Alaba­ma Coop­er­a­tive Exten­sion, chick­en manure “is the most valu­able of all manures pro­duced by livestock.”