DATE: Friday, October 24, 1997 TAG: 9710240743 SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER LENGTH: 70 lines
In the wake of protests from an environmental group, Tyson Foods Inc. has dropped a request to dump more than three times as much toxic ammonia into a Chesapeake Bay tributary as state law allows.
At the same time, the state Department of Environmental Quality, which earlier this week had supported the request, announced that it now opposes relief for a Tyson chicken-processing plant on Virginia's Eastern Shore.
``After extensive review with the DEQ staff and the Attorney General's Office, I have determined that it is inappropriate to proceed with Tyson's request,'' state environmental chief Thomas L. Hopkins said in a statement.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Hopkins, Tyson president and chief operating officer Donald ``Buddy'' Wray said corporate headquarters in Arkansas was unaware that the Virginia proposal ``was even still on the table.''
He said the proposal surfaced when Holly Farms, not Tyson, owned the Eastern Shore chicken plant in Temperanceville. Tyson bought Holly Farms in 1989 - one year after an ammonia-related biological study was begun.
Wray also said the Temperanceville plant does not need relaxed ammonia limits any longer. He noted that existing discharges into Sandy Bottom Branch, a small stream that empties into Pocomoke Sound and Chesapeake Bay, are well below state pollution standards.
``We apologize for any confusion that might have arisen recently over this matter,'' Wray said.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, one of the largest environmental groups in Virginia, first brought the proposal to light this week, calling it ``patently absurd.''
The foundation's staff argued that ammonia not only is toxic to humans and aquatic life, but that the compound breaks down into nitrogen in water. Excessive nitrogen is one of the prime pollutants that Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington have promised to reduce in trying to restore the Bay.
Heavy doses of nitrogen and phosphorus - called nutrients - also are suspected of igniting a toxic microbe that has killed thousands of fish in Maryland waterways and parts of Pocomoke Sound.
Discharges from the Tyson plant flow down Sandy Bottom Branch and into Pocomoke Sound, where a form of the fish-killing microbe Pfiesteria piscicida forced the waterway's closure last summer for six weeks.
``That DEQ halted this process only after public demands for accountability is depressing,'' said Roy A. Hoagland, the foundation's staff attorney in Richmond.
The foundation said public pressure and the fear of creating a political stink, and not a desire to protect the environment, were why DEQ blocked the proposal.
The environmental group pointed to an Oct. 14 letter from Alan J. Anthony, state director of scientific research, defending the Tyson request.
Anthony said in the letter, and in an interview this week, that letting Tyson dump up to 267 percent more ammonia than state standards allow does not conflict with state efforts to reduce nutrients - even though he concedes that ammonia is a nutrient.
Ammonia, in this case, is only being looked at as a toxic, Anthony has argued.
In addition, the foundation noted that DEQ sought - and gained - a green light for the ammonia change in 1996 from the Attorney General's Office. According to a March 1996 letter from an assistant attorney general to DEQ, the special ammonia standard ``is within the authority granted to the State Water Control Board.''
DEQ said the request no longer will be sent to the board, which would have to approve any such change. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
GREG DESCHEEMAEKER
Eastern Shore News
Send Suggestions or Comments to
webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu |