Roadkill Is Put To Work Along Md. Highways
Facility in Frederick Turns Deer Carcasses Into Compost

By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 6, 2008

Washington area motorists kill more than 3,000 deer annually. What, then, to do with all that roadkill?

In Frederick County, state highway workers have an unusual answer: Place the carcasses in giant bins, separated by layers of wood chips and manure, and turn them into compost. By year's end, if all goes well, the first batch of compost could be helping fields of wildflowers grow along some of the same roads where the deer were killed.

A once-popular method of disposal, burying the deer near where they are found, has become less feasible in Frederick with the proliferation of subdivisions and underground utility lines, never mind the problem of frozen ground in the winter.

Still, working the compost bins isn't for everyone.

"Kinda' swing it up," Rob Mullinix told co-worker Robert Morgan recently as the two placed a freshly killed deer next to another deer.

"We want the legs pointed out," Mullinix said. "Just kinda' flip him. Ready?"

"You want it head-to-head?" Morgan asked.

The facility is tucked behind a bank of trees near a rest stop off Interstate 70. The Maryland State Highway Administration has a similar program in Carroll County, which appears to be the only other such operation in the Washington region.

Nationally, the idea of turning roadkill into compost appears to be catching on. Nearly 50 such operations have sprung up in recent years in New York state, and other states, such as Kentucky and Ohio, have tried composting roadkill. In Montana, authorities also compost elk and moose.

The Frederick operation has eight covered composting bins, each about the size and shape of a small horse stall. When full, the bins typically contain about 40 deer carcasses in four layers.

The manure in the mixture supplies carbon and nitrogen. The wood chips supply carbon and create air pockets that feed oxygen into the mix. The deer carcasses also supply nitrogen. All combine in an organic process that raises the temperature to about 150 degrees, cooking off possible pathogens such as fecal coliform bacteria, officials said.

Like a lot of things, getting rid of dead deer used to be a simpler affair.

In the 1960s and 1970s, state police in Frederick would lash deer carcasses to the trunks of their cruisers and haul them to the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo, where they were fed "primarily to the big cats," said Richard Hahn, director of the preserve.

"We almost always got the animals the same day they were hit," Hahn said, "sometimes within hours."

Hahn said he doesn't feed his big cats roadkill deer anymore because of concern about viruses, bacteria and parasites.

In 2001, Maryland highway workers in Carroll began experimenting with deer composting. Workers there use front-end loaders to rotate the composting piles, which keeps temperatures high by feeding oxygen into the mixture. Workers then cover any exposed body parts, such as leg bones, with the wood chip-manure mixture, said Jim Jones, a manager in Carroll.

After six to eight months of composting and curing, the deer are reduced to large bones such as skulls and hips, Jones said. The big bones are sifted out, for aesthetic reasons, before the compost is applied along roadways, Jones said.

As of late last year, the Carroll operation had composted more than 3,360 deer and applied 180 cubic yards of deer compost, some of it on wildflowers in the median of Route 295, just south of Route 100.

In many jurisdictions in the region, highway workers haul dead deer to landfills or have private contractors pick them up.

In Loudoun and Prince William counties, contractors take carcasses to local landfills, said Mike Salmon, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Transportation. In Fairfax County, landfills don't accept roadkill, so contractors haul carcasses to the Prince William dump. In recent nine-month stretches, haulers picked up 460 dead animals in Fairfax and 996 deer in Loudoun.

Along the George Washington Memorial Parkway, dead deer are hauled to an undisclosed location in a wooded area. "Essentially, the deer become part of the forest again," said Dana Dierkes, a spokeswoman.

In Montgomery County, dead deer are placed in a refrigerated facility in Gaithersburg and then picked up by Valley Proteins Inc. At its headquarters in Winchester, Va., the company places the carcasses into a cooking unit the size of a backyard swimming pool -- 40 feet long, 15 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Two products are produced: a protein meat and bone meal, used as chicken feed, and a fatty oil, which can be used as a lubricant or alternative fuel, said Mike Smith, vice president and co-owner of the company.

State officials have said they are planning to operate an incinerator in the Frostburg area, in Western Maryland, to burn roadkill.

At Cornell University, Jean Bonhotal, has studied roadkill composting for 11 years. Among her research projects: inserting sacks of pathogen-laden material into composting roadkill deer and demonstrating that composting reduces them to safe levels. Bonhotal, a vegetarian, holds roadkill composting seminars and publishes guides.

"Lance the stomach if the carcass is bloated," she advises in one manual. "Explosive release of gases can result in odor problems and would blow the cover material off the composting carcass."

Such concerns notwithstanding, Bonhotal said composting often is the best available option, she said.

"I think it will catch on pretty quickly," she said.

But skeptics said animal flesh actually impedes the natural composting process, which is better suited for grass clippings and vegetable refuse. And not all regulators are enamored.

In Montana, the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department won't let highway workers spread compost produced from roadkill, officials said. The department is concerned about the spread of chronic wasting disease, akin to mad cow disease, in deer.

Doug Moeller, head maintenance engineer at the Montana highway department's Missoula office, said if he can't persuade wildlife regulators to allow him to apply the compost roadside, he will simply keep the compost at highway department facilities. He prefers composting over the old method of dragging roadkill to what even in Montana are no longer out-of-the-way places. "We had too many complaints from people," he said.

At the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Bob Beyer, an associate director, said he has no problems with the program. He is concerned about chronic wasting disease, though, and said his agency tests more than 1,000 deer a year for it.

No cases have been found, but if one is found, Beyer said, his agency won't allow highway workers to spread their compost.