An Answer to Waste Worries?

Why burn chicken manure? For starters, consider how effectively chickens produce it.

On the Delmarva Peninsula -- a chicken-growing mecca that includes Delaware and the Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia -- 571 million birds create enough manure annually to fill a line of backyard swimming pools stretching from Washington to Philadelphia.

But disposal options are limited. The leading method, spreading on farms, works well as a fertilizer until too much is applied. Then chemicals can seep into streams and end up in the Chesapeake Bay. A newer option turns manure into dried, little pellets of fertilizer that can be transported out of state and sold to farmers and golf courses. But that product has drawn fewer buyers than hoped.

Which brings us to chicken producer Allen Family Foods Inc. The company last week presented plans to the Dorchester County Council to burn chicken manure in Linkwood on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The resulting steam would help run an Allen Family Foods factory that processes leftover chicken parts such as heads, feet and feathers, turning them into ingredients for animal feed.

Allen Family Foods said it has sorted through the technical barriers that sunk its previous manure-burning plans. The proposed furnace would burn about 1 1/2 tractor-trailer loads of manure a day.

That would be only about 2 percent of Delmarva's annual manure load. But backers see the project as one potential answer to the chicken industry's huge waste disposal needs because if burning proves safe, the technology could expand and consume more manure.

In Britain, three giant poultry-manure burners are producing electricity. In Minnesota, a facility using technology similar to the British plants is going up that is designed to burn 100 tractor-trailer loads of turkey waste a day.

In Maryland, some leading conservationists back the project. If more manure is burned, they say, less will end up on farms and potentially in runoff.

"Conceptually, we think it's a great idea," said Beth McGee, a senior water quality scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "There's a lot of reasons to like these projects."

Development is one of those reasons. If it sounds as though the Eastern Shore is overrun with manure, it isn't. The smells aren't everywhere and can be fleeting. Subdivisions are popping up and taking up farmland, Allen Family Foods said. And state planners predict that the Eastern Shore's population will begin to increase at a faster rate than many of Maryland's counties closer to Washington and Baltimore.

"If we don't find alternative uses [for manure], it's going to be hard to keep growing chickens," Mike Pilcher, Allen Family Foods vice president of operations, said of an industry valued at $1.7 billion in the Delmarva Peninsula.

Chicken executives have been talking up manure burning for more than two decades. But it is technologically challenging, and no one has made it work commercially in the United States, according to industry executives and engineers.