ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 TAG: 9703260074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HARRISONBURG
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tests so far, a health official said, show nothing harmful in the sludge from a dairy and a chicken processing plant.
Nancy Wiseman started getting headaches every time a foul odor began wafting into her house from a neighboring dairy farm, and the pain was so bad that her doctor tested for a brain tumor.
There was no tumor, but she began keeping a journal to verify that the smell and the headaches arrived soon after the farmer applied sludge to his fields.
Wiseman, 61, is among more than 120 residents who signed a petition protesting the sludge spreading. It is a common practice in the Shenandoah Valley, where several million chickens and turkeys are raised and processed every year.
The sludge comes from Shenandoah's Pride, where raw milk is pasteurized, and the Perdue Farms Inc. plant in Bridgewater, where butchered chickens are cooked and packaged.
Perdue holds a Department of Environmental Quality permit allowing the sludge to be spread on Everett Gardner's farm.
Gardner said the water used during the process is strained and, after chicken parts are removed and sent to a rendering plant, the residue is put in a tanker truck and dumped in a lagoon on his farm. He mixes in lime and spreads the sludge to fertilize his alfalfa and corn fields.
G. Douglas Larsen, director of the Staunton and Augusta County health department, is on a fact-finding team of county and state officials looking into the complaints.
Larsen asked residents at a meeting Monday night to submit their medical records so his staff can analyze them.
Two of the records his department reviewed claim a correlation between the health complaints and the spread of sludge, Larsen said.
``What we need are many more records,'' Larsen said. He said initial studies indicated nothing in the sludge that would cause health problems.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB