12-18 news: Two groups plan to sue Perdue over water pollution
The groups claim that a drainage ditch is feeding into the Pocomoke River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, and that chicken manure is being washed off the farm and into the river. A pair of water-filled trenches lead from the pile to a grassy ditch nearby. The groups took aerial photographs they claim show uncovered piled of manure and wood shavings, and they say water sampled from the ditch downstream of the farm in recent weeks contained high levels of bacteria associated with animal waste, nutrients and arsenic, a toxic metal.
Perdue spokesman Luis Luna said the environmental groups' news release was "full of errors and misstatements." He said the pile in their pictures is not manure because the farm's owners told Perdue they hadn't removed any manure from their chicken houses in the past 20 weeks.