Source: Columbus Dispatch, February 25, 2013
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
When Crystal Sullivan moved into her Croton Road house more than a decade ago, the flies from the nearby egg farm were so thick that they coated the porch ceiling.
The infestation was widespread. Neighbors complained of flies crowding their cars and ruining their picnics. Nearby, one young man was too embarrassed to bring girlfriends home.
But today, with fly season again approaching, Sullivan has hope. She stands on her porch in Licking County, the hen houses looming just down the road, and says things have changed since a new company took over.
“I think it’s getting better,” said Sullivan, 29.
After decades of turmoil surrounding pollution and lawsuits and state-ordered shutdowns, things are uncharacteristically quiet at the former Ohio Fresh Eggs farms in Licking, Wyandot and Hardin counties. After Trillium Farms took over the mega-egg operation, the Ohio Department of Agriculture renewed its operating permits last year — permits that had been on hold since 2008 — with little hesitation.
“We haven’t received any complaints … in quite some time,” said Agriculture Department spokeswoman Erica Hawkins.
J.T. Dean is the chief operations officer at Trillium, which with 9 million hens producing 4 million dozen eggs a week, is one of the 10-largest egg producers in the country. He’s an Iowa boy who was born into the egg business: The Dean family, which co-owns Trillium with an Iowa construction company, manages several egg farms. His boss is his dad, and when Dad said he was interested in some egg farms in Ohio, Dean balked. He knew those Licking County operations well. They had left a black mark on the entire egg industry.
“I said that I wasn’t going to come here,” Dean said, sitting inside the Trillium offices on Croton Road. “There’s a tremendous history to these facilities.”
To recap: Over 30 years and under different owners, the egg operation — once the largest in the world — has been called the Croton Egg Farm, AgriGeneral Co., Buckeye Egg Farm and Ohio Fresh Eggs. It also has been called a nuisance and an environmental scourge, tied to wretched odors, polluted rivers choked with dead fish and thick swarms of houseflies. Neighbors would show up at Statehouse rallies carrying fly strips loaded with dead insects. Some sued the farm and won.
“There were times that it was just unconscionable to see the amount of flies they had,” said Fred Dailey, who was state agriculture director when conditions at the farm were at their worst. ” There (were) almost waves of dead flies on the ground. If you got near the ventilators, you’d see flies several inches deep. The neighbors were right to complain.”
The state intervened numerous times, fining the farm hundreds of thousands of dollars and filing contempt charges against its officials. In 2002, Buckeye Egg Farm owner Anton Pohlmann bowed to the pressure and moved back to his native Germany, where he’d previously been convicted of animal cruelty. The next year, Dailey ordered the farm shut down.
Ohio Fresh Eggs snapped up the three-county operation in 2004, and neighbors seemed optimistic about the new owner. But flies again were so bad in 2005 that the state issued an emergency order for Ohio Fresh to spray insecticide at its Croton barns. Later that year, the state again tried to shut down the farm, revoking its permits under charges that the company had hidden its involvement with egg mogul Jack DeCoster, who had a lengthy history of environmental violations.
Ohio Fresh fought to stay open and won an appeal to keep its permits. It continued its operation, renovating barns and striking an agreement with the state in 2011 to resolve a decade of environmental violations lodged against it. That’s when Trillium came in. The company signed a nine-year lease-to-own deal with Ohio Fresh in 2011 and agreed to follow its cleanup decree with the state. Dean is happy to oblige.
In fact, he said, the Croton operation — which his company calls the “south” farm, to distinguish it from the facilities in Wyandot and Hardin counties — wasn’t the disaster he expected. He agreed to tour it and found that all of the buildings had been renovated in the past decade. The workers knew what they were doing. He could pull together the management team the farm needed. Dean quickly changed his mind.
Trillium took over, renewed the operating permits and reopened a closed egg-laying facility. It converted one of the north facilities to produce a liquid-egg product that’s sold for everything from scrambled eggs to pasta and ice cream. It also made sure to meet with area residents, well aware of what happens when the neighbors complain.
“We knew we had to do the right job,” Dean said. “I think it’s fair to say we went in with eyes open.”
It helped, Dean said, that Ohio Fresh already had made great strides at the farm. Dailey agrees, crediting not only the company but also pressure from the state. In 2002, Ohio lawmakers shifted oversight of megafarms from the state Environmental Protection Agency to the Agriculture Department, a move Dailey said strengthened enforcement. He visited the farm several years ago and didn’t see a single fly, even in the summertime. He was pleasantly surprised.
“Over a period of time, they went from one extreme to another,” Dailey said. “I think it shows that persistent regulation can pay off.”
But Rick Sahli, a Columbus environmental lawyer who represented residents in lawsuits against Buckeye Egg Farm, doesn’t think that the state has been tough enough on the farm. Regulators have gone after acute problems, but they’ve allowed persistent chronic problems — such as those overpowering manure odors — to continue. He thinks residents largely have given up the fight. They don’t contact him anymore.
“I think the reason we’re not hearing as much is folks feel there’s not much recourse at the state level,” Sahli said.
Josh Sullivan seems resigned to deal with the smells and flies at his parents’ Clover Valley Road home. Their brick house sits in view of one of Trillium’s five egg-laying sites, and it still draws the kind of flies that embarrassed him so much he never brought girls around when he was younger. Now 31, Sullivan, who is not related to Crystal Sullivan, said he escapes to his girlfriend’s Westerville home to avoid the swarms of insects and the odor of chicken waste, which hasn’t changed much.
“It smells about the same,” he said.