SPENCERVILLE — In the 1990s, Spencerville residents successfully fought off a landfill.
Now, residents are coming together to oppose the latest Spencervillan: Pine Valley Ranch LLC’s proposal to build a massive egg-laying operation housing 2.2 million chickens in six barns near Monticello, in neighboring Van Wert County, about five miles from the center of the village.
“This is a much bigger farm than we’re used to around here,” said opponent Kathleen Codell. She was one of about 30 people who attended the Village Council’s regular meeting Monday to urge Mayor John P. Johnson and council members to join the effort to stop the chicken farm.
Their concerns center around three core issues: the safety and sustainability of the Allen County Area Aquifer, which spans five counties and is the sole source of drinking water for Spencerville and other communities; chicken manure; and traffic.
Pine Valley Ranch’s principal owners, Jim and Josh Fleck, of New Bremen, and Ralph, Randy and Chris Rindler, of St. Henry, were not at the council meeting. They did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
“We have committed our lives to producing safe, wholesome foods and to responsible farming — that remains firm,” they wrote in a statement released earlier this month. “As the project moves forward, it is our intent to do the right thing and to be open in our communications with stakeholders.”
Manure
Two million chickens will lay a lot of eggs. They’ll also make a lot of manure.
“We live in the country. There’s gonna be poop. Yeah, we get that,” said Brett Rider, one of the founders of Spencerville Against Factory Farms, in his presentation to the Village Council on Monday.
Pine Valley Ranch expects its chickens to produce 18,333 tons of manure each year. The manure will be dried in storage barns and distributed off the farm to manure brokers and farmers who will use it instead of commercial fertilizers, according to their application.
Rider and others question Pine Valley Ranch’s figures. They say the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s own guidelines put the manure tonnage at 70,901 tons per year, nearly four times Pine Valley Ranch’s estimates. Another large-scale poultry operation seeking ODA permits, WDC Eggs in St. Henry, would have fewer chickens — 1.6 million — but plans for much more manure, 48,000 tons.
“The ODA Appendix is supposed to be used for planning purposes, yet the estimated manure numbers in ODA [manure management plans[ are all over the place,” opponent Vickie Askins wrote to the ODA.
But manure output is not an exact science. ODA, in its own guidelines, said manure values could be off by plus or minus 30 percent, because of genetics, animal performance and other factors.
Applicants don’t have to use ODA guidelines, either. They can use manure production records from a similar type facility, possibly like the kind the Rindlers operate across the Ohio-Indiana border in Jay County that houses 4 million layers.
No matter what the output, farmers suggest there will be plenty of demand for Pine Valley Ranch’s chicken manure.
“Guys are lining up to buy it, big manure brokers,” said Spencerville farmer and dairy manure hauler Brandon Youngpeter.
He said it’s cheaper and better for the environment than chemical fertilizers.
“It attaches to the soil particles better than the manmade commercial fertilizers. There’s less phosphorus runoff,” said Youngpeter.
But environmental advocates with Lake Erie Waterkeeper and Guardians of Grand Lake St. Marys argue that even a little bit of additional phosphorus in local watersheds will exacerbate the harmful algae blooms that have plagued Grand Lake and Lake Erie in recent years.
Besides denying permits for the 2.2 million chicken farm, they want ODA to extend its stricter “4R Nutrient Management Program” of Right Source, Right Time, Right Rate and Right Place, currently suggested for commercial fertilizers, to manure, too.
Water
In 1987, members of Spencerville’s “Dumpbusters” scored a huge victory when state environmental officials denied a permit for a proposed 240-acre landfill east of the village. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency cited concerns that the landfill would have been too close to the village’s wells, exposing the public to possible health hazards from its leachate.
Spencerville Against Factory Farms hopes a similar argument will persuade the Ohio Department of Agriculture to deny permits to Pine Valley Ranch.
They worry about its plan to create a 20-foot deep lagoon to hold up to 2 million gallons of water from its egg-washing operation. For eggs blotched with poultry manure, that water could contain manure-borne pathogens along with naturally occurring hormones and antibiotics, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“It might be an accident,” said Kerri Miller of hypothetical contamination of the village’s drinking water, “and they might be sorry, but we would be done for.”
But this farm is several miles away from Spencerville’s well heads. Mayor Johnson said that, based on past hydrological surveys, it would take more than five years for any contaminated water to reach the village’s wells.
He also said the village’s water system wouldn’t be affected by Pine Valley Ranch’s estimated usage of 91,000 gallons a day, either, or even usage of 159,000 gallons a day, which is what opponents say the farm will require. He said a study done in 2001 had test pumps running more than 1.3 million gallons a day, for three days, before other private wells nearby saw their water tables drop.
“The contractor concluded that the wells that we had would sustain much expansion,” Johnson said.
Ohio’s laws state that no manure lagoon can be located above a sole-source aquifer “without design of ground water monitoring or engineered controls or both.”
“In this case,” wrote ODA spokeswoman Erica Hawkins in an email, “the facility has proposed to install an extra-thick liner” of at least 18 inches of compacted clay “as an engineered control to prevent contamination.”
She said additional measures can be added if the department deems them necessary before issuing final permits.
“We also will do what is necessary to ensure proper management of manure, maintain the water supply for residents, and protect the waterways on our land and in the area surrounding our farm,” said Pine Valley Ranch in its media statement.
Truck traffic
“Our local infrastructure is not suited for this facility,” wrote Kerri Buggert, a neighbor of the proposed farm, in her opposition statement to ODA. “The roads are not built for consistent use by large trucks.”
There will, indeed, be more tractor-trailers heading to and from the poultry operation. Pine Valley Ranch estimates a total of 120 manure, feed and egg trucks a week, at 80,000 pounds per truck.
In the permitting process, county and township officials are asked to make recommendations regarding infrastructure improvements that will be needed as a result of the new facility. But the Van Wert County commissioners, the Van Wert County engineer and the Jennings Township trustees did not make any.
“There aren’t any Van Wert County roads involved,” said Van Wert County Engineer Kyle Wendel.
Pine Valley Ranch, which is on state Route 116, said trucks will use state and national roads, approaching from the east along state Routes 66 and 118, through the center of Spencerville, and from the west along U.S. Highway 127 and state Route 117.
The use of state routes is better for roadway wear and tear, Wendel said.
“Township roads, there’s not a lot of base underneath,” he said.
Township road usage isn’t explicitly discussed in Pine Valley Ranch’s application. But township roads evidently will be used, as well, with enough traffic that the Jennings Township Board voted in April to enter into a 10-year Tax Increment Financing Agreement with Pine Valley Ranch under which a portion of the farm’s property taxes would be redirected toward the repair and maintenance of township roads.
As for traffic problems, Kirk Slusher, district deputy director of Ohio Department of Transportation’s District 1 in Lima, said there likely won’t be.
“One hundred twenty trucks a week, that’s 30 trucks per day, spread that out over 10 hours, that’s three trucks per hour,” he calculated. “That doesn’t rise to any type of impact to the state highway system.”
He said the estimated number of trucks servicing the farm “doesn’t even come close to warranting a traffic impact study, from our perspective.”
But he said village officials could request one.
Will opponents succeed?
Whether opponents will successfully block the chicken farm through these and other arguments will be determined in the next few months. ODA received about 50 statements, all against Pine Valley Ranch’s applications, before the public comment period closed June 22. Officials are preparing their response.
ODA has denied just one permit to a major farm operation in the last 10 years. according to ODA’s Hawkins, because it lacked required local government input. ODA is required by law to issue permits if applicants meet all the stated requirements, she said.
“Please note that the law does not give the department the authority to deny a permit due to community opposition alone,” she added.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
