Mountaire offers to dig new wells for 88 Millsboro-area neighbors; some aren't appeased
The Sussex County chicken plant accused of polluting groundwater near Millsboro now says it will pay to dig deeper wells for 88 of its neighbors or connect them to a public water supply.
Mountaire Farms made the announcement Friday evening in a release to local media. A spokesman for the company did not immediately respond to emails and phone calls.
"We want to express our sincere apologies to our neighbors for the anxiety created by the wastewater situation at our facility in Millsboro," Michael Tirrell, the company's executive vice president of processing operations, wrote in a letter. "We will make this right."
Mountaire said it is in the process of reaching out to eligible residents about the offer.
The proposal came as news to Joan Balback, who has lived about 2 miles from the poultry plant for nearly 40 years.
"No one came and told us," she said Saturday morning. "Don't you think they should have communicated this to us before they put it on the news? I don't think they're handling this very well."
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Background:Sussex residents worry poultry wastewater will taint their water
Balback's neighbor Bob Phillips said he first heard of the offer on the evening news.
"I could not believe they put this out on a Friday night without talking to us," he said. "We're just not happy."
Balback and Phillips are among dozens of homeowners in the area who have been warned against drinking their well water because of potentially high levels of nitrate and fecal coliform in the groundwater linked to the poultry processing plant.
Most of the plant's neighbors draw their drinking water from wells. As of Tuesday, at least 25 homes — including Balback's and Phillips' — were found to have nitrate levels up to three times the federal drinking water standard of 10 milligrams per liter.
Exposure to high levels of nitrates can reduce the capability of the blood to carry oxygen to all parts of the body. For some, exposure can lead to decreased blood pressure, cramps, trouble breathing and even death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It remains unclear whether those levels were the result of historically high nitrates in most of Sussex County's groundwater or directly caused by Mountaire.
"We are confident that our recent wastewater treatment system upset is not a significant source of these elevated levels," Tirrell said in his letter.
Mountaire Farms says it first discovered the "serious upset" at its wastewater facility in late August and immediately contacted the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
The plant's wastewater, which contains both poultry and human waste, is supposed to be thoroughly treated using a process that involves screens, separation tanks, lagoons and nutrient-eating bacteria.
DNREC investigators found that workers there had bypassed crucial steps in the factory's wastewater treatment process, sprayed highly contaminated effluent on hundreds of acres of farm fields and failed to report crucial data about its activities.
Over several months, the factory released hundreds of gallons of effluent that contained up to 41 times the permitted levels for nitrogen and up to 5,500 times the permitted level for fecal coliform, among other pollutants, according to state regulators.
DNREC issued a citation notice to Mountaire on Nov. 2 and is currently investigating the extent of the pollution and the full impact on the surrounding community.
The agency has demanded a number of documents and ordered the plant to beef up its wastewater testing but so far has not issued any fines.
The response so far
At the urging of state regulators, Mountaire on Dec. 1 began providing bottled water to residents who live near the plant and whose homes draw water from wells.
Those deliveries began 90 days after Mountaire first reported serious malfunctions with the treatment and disposal of the plant's wastewater to state regulators — and a month after DNREC issued a violation notice to the company.
For most residents, the water deliveries arrived without warning or explanation, leading many neighbors to question whether some of their longstanding health issues — ranging from mysterious bacterial infections to birth defects — are related to contaminants in their wells.
"What they're doing now with the wells is the same thing they did with the water," Phillips said. "They're not actually talking to us. It sucks."
Mountaire on Monday stepped up its response effort by sending letters to area neighbors offering free nitrate-removal systems to those whose wells were identified as being tainted with potentially dangerous levels of the colorless, odorless contaminant.
Several neighbors rejected that offer, saying they do not trust the company that may have polluted their wells to protect them from those same contaminants.
Most said they did not hear from Mountaire officials until Thursday when company spokesman Sean McKeon began going door-to-door.
Even then, they said, no one mentioned an offer for deeper wells or a town water connection.
"That would be amazing," said Lisa McCabe, whose son Benny was born in June without an ear or an ear canal. "It's definitely a step in the right direction."
Lingering questions
Mountaire's latest offer to area residents came just hours after the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays board members sought answers from state officials about the extent of the poultry plant's pollution and what is being done to mitigate any harm to public health and the environment.
The center fears the pollution could have long-term effects on Swan Creek and Indian River, which border Mountaire's property on Del. 24, just a few miles east of Millsboro.
The river is already one of the most polluted tidal waters in the state and contamination from Mountaire could potentially contribute to that degradation for years to come, center officials previously told The News Journal.
DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin is a member of the center's board but sent an appointee to its latest meeting of scientists and citizens tasked with overseeing the issues that affect the Inland Bays.
Terry Deputy, DNREC’s acting director of watershed stewardship and former environmental finance administrator, said Mountaire has reined in bacteria levels but is still discharging water with high nitrogen levels.
That nitrogen is later converted into nitrates by bacteria in the soil.
Deputy was unable to say what the actual nitrogen levels are, other than stating they are above the permitted 15.6 milligrams per liter — even after an 80 percent reduction since the plant was cited by DNREC.
“It’s still above the threshold limits,” he said after reading from a prepared statement.
That appears to contradict previous statements from DNREC and Mountaire, which have both claimed wastewater being applied on local farms fields has been within permitted levels since October.
Afterward, the scientists who work with the center said truly understanding the reach of the plant’s pollution would be a monumental task.
“This is a highly complex issue with a lot of variables at play,” said Scott Andres, a hydrogeologist with the Delaware Geological Survey.
Some of Mountaire’s spray fields are more than a mile north of Indian River. While groundwater systems are highly complex, hydrologists have said it generally flows in a north-to-south direction in that area toward the river.
“Next to the bay, you have transit times of less than a year,” he said. “If you’re a mile away, it could be 5,000 days, 3,000 days. You’re on that kind of time schedule.”
It’s possible the nitrate pollution people are seeing in their wells may have nothing to do with Mountaire, Andres said.
“Mountaire has to do their due diligence to identify what they’re responsible for,” he said. “What is it that’s beyond their control?”
Center Executive Director Chris Bason said he wanted to organize a public forum to help residents better understand what is going on, but found state and company officials were not responsive to the suggestion.
“I think we should move forward without DNREC,” Board member Robert Robinson said. “I think right now, with both DNREC and Mountaire, I feel like there are significant trust problems on the part of the public.”
The board also will form a committee to determine what the center’s role should be in communicating with the public and figuring out the scope of contamination.
“All the communications we’re getting are from the newspaper,” Andres said. “And sometimes that’s not the ideal way of presenting information.”
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Mountaire's promises
In its Friday press release, Mountaire stressed it is taking action to address both the concerns of its neighbors and the underlying issues that led to it releasing contaminants.
The company reported last month that it had fired its entire wastewater staff in August after discovering those workers "were not doing their job properly."
Now, Mountaire says it is beginning work on a $35 million overhaul of its wastewater treatment system at the Millsboro-area plant. Those upgrades are being designed by an undisclosed firm that Mountaire says is "one of the top poultry wastewater engineers in the country."
"Once complete, this wastewater treatment system will be one of the largest and most effective systems in the state of Delaware," Tirrell wrote.
DNREC announced in November that the company has applied for a permit to build a storage facility capable of temporarily holding wastewater solids, known as sludge.
The new facility, proposed on the banks of Swan Creek, would allow Mountaire to begin cleaning out built up sludge from its two existing lagoons.
DNREC officials did not respond last week to a request for a copy of that permit application. Mountaire also has not responded to questions about the application.
At least one area resident has requested a public hearing on the application, said Maria Payan. She is an organizer with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project and a frequent critic of how the state regulates the local poultry industry.
"The concern is this storage facility would be located in the 100-year floodplain," she said. "According to Sussex County ordinances, anything that goes into that zone is supposed to get county permission first."
Payan on Saturday also took issue with Mountaire's handling of its latest offer to area residents.
"In the middle of all these people with health concerns, they went to the media with this rather than talk to the residents," she said. "It almost seems like they're more concerned with their public image than their neighbors."
Several of those neighbors said Saturday that they are pleased with Mountaire's offer in theory. But without more details, they remain cautious.
It was not immediately clear whether Millsboro is willing to connect residents just outside of town to the municipal water system, an option preferred by several Mountaire neighbors.
The company also has not provided any timetable for how long it would take to replace the wells of residents who chose that option or exactly how deep it would dig those wells.
Most private wells in the area are in the sandy, surficial aquifer, which ranges from 80 to 120 feet below the ground. The proposed deeper wells would likely go far below the shallow aquifer, through a layer of clay and then pull water from a deeper, confined aquifer, which is far less susceptible to nitrate contamination.
Some residents are asking what happens after that work is complete.
"My concern is whether this is going to be it," Phillips said. "What about our health issues? What about our property values? If they say we can only take this if we promise not to sue, I won't be able to do that."
Balback said she and her husband also are approaching the offer with caution.
"We have to be careful about every step we take," she said. "I'm not ready to sign anything until I know what's best for me, my family and our neighbors."
Contact reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel. Contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @MaddyinMilford.
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