DHEC clears York Co. turkey manure farm; neighbors raise stink

Environmental regulators have settled an investigation into storage of turkey manure at a York County farm that left neighbors fuming about the smell, even as officials continue to look into the impact of the litter on residents’ drinking wells.

Boyd Farms will not face any fines after the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control completed its review of the property. Several neighbors had complained about the smell of the manure, which they say had been sitting out for months prior to DHEC being alerted to its presence.

DHEC officials held a compliance meeting with Boyd Farms and a neighboring farm at the department’s Lancaster office last week. Both proved to investigators’ satisfaction that the offending manure piles across the property had been spread or covered in line with DHEC regulations.

The agency also required the broker who sold the manure to submit his land application records to the agency by Friday.

If officials had assessed fines against the farmers, they could have been required to pay $10,000 per day they were in violation of DHEC regulations.

Neighbors of the property off Williamson Road say they don’t see, or smell, much of a difference. Some piles of the “turkey litter” have been covered with plastic tarp, and the litter has been spread across the soil elsewhere on the property.

“They still haven’t tillered the soil,” said Kim Hill, whose family property is bracketed by Boyd farmland.

DHEC is continuing to look into complaints about the possible impact on well water at neighboring properties. Just days after the compliance hearing, agents physically measured the distance between drinking wells and the area the manure was spread and found that some was spread within 100 feet of two homes’ wells. Hill said DHEC agents offered to do water quality tests on properties affected.

“The regulations require that the minimum setback for the spreading of manure from a potable well is 100 feet, but notification to the surrounding community is not required,” said DHEC spokesman Jim Beasley.

DHEC’s waste management requirements call for written permission for waste to be spread within 200 feet of a property line, but Beasley said those guidelines only apply to manure from “large swine.”

“While the land application requirements for swine and poultry are, for the most part, identical, there is not a requirement for a minimum separation for land application for poultry manure,” he said. “We will pull this guidance and revise to clearly delineate the requirements for poultry and those for swine.”

Tonya Barrett, who said manure was spread within 50 feet of her home’s well, was still waiting to get the results of her water quality test. She was upset to hear the farm owners had not been fined for their storage violations.

“They just keep giving them more chances,” Barrett said. “It’s only for the people with money.”

Attempts to reach Boyd Farms or its owner, Steve Boyd, for comment were unsuccessful.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 5:58 PM with the headline "DHEC clears York Co. turkey manure farm; neighbors raise stink."