Maryland’s Wicomico County is launching a program to get rid of its numerous dilapidated poultry houses.
The poultry building removal program “will serve a multitude of favorable purposes through the removal of abandoned poultry buildings and structures,” the county announced on its web site.
There are about 88,559 acres of farmland in Wicomico County, according to a 2017 census, and getting rid of existing abandoned poultry buildings will help farms reduce “accumulated contaminated nutrient runoff,” the county added.
Municipal funds designated to reduce stormwater pollution will cover tipping fees for demolition debris, according to the country. After demolition, the poultry houses can be converted into a grassed area, remediated back to row crops or planted with native trees.
There’s some 490 farms within the county, with nearly half involved in poultry and egg production, Heather Lankford, civil engineer for the county’s public works division, told a local news outlet.
“The goal of this program is to reduce the impervious area in our county by 20%, which is equivalent to approximately 603 acres,” Lankford told an ABC News affiliate, WMDT. “Some of these poultry buildings are very large, and are creating some discharge that we don’t really want to see. We want to change this impervious area to either a grassy area, row crops or into trees.”
