PRINCESS ANNE, Md. - On Thursday night, the Maryland Department of the Environment hosted a town hall at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore to answer community questions about two new air quality monitors.
MDE, Delmarva Poultry Industry and and the Keith Campbell Foundation are joining together to place two monitors near chicken houses on the Eastern Shore to track how much ammonia is in the air.
"We want to provide information, scientifically based, objective information that can inform public policy to make sure we keep all citizens of Maryland healthy and the environment as well," MDE Assistant Secretary Suzanne Dorsey said.
But environmental activists like Michael Payan say the poultry industry cannot monitor itself. Payan does not trust that MDE will conduct the study objectively.
"You wouldn't allow a company to audit it's own taxes, you wouldn't allow somebody to be their own watchdog. It's the fox guarding the hen house, you can't trust somebody to make decisions that are going to affect their pocket negatively," Payan said.
Food and Water Watch Organizer Rebecca Wolf says for the last three years community members have introduced the Community Healthy Air Act in Maryland legislation. Wolf says the community needs to be involved in how the studies are executed.
"And time and time again legislators have stood up with the industry and not the community, and now we're seeing that industry is actually involved with monitoring its selves," Wolf said.
DPI Executive Director Holly Porter says the poultry industry wants to know more about what kinds of emissions the poultry industry is putting out. And all of the data MDE collects, Porter says, will be transparently available online for the community to view.
"The poultry industry always wants to be good neighbors and are a part of the community. And so we want to do our part as much as we can and we all breathe the same air so we want to know what's in it," Porter said.
Porter says MDE will be in charge of installing the monitors at sites that are to be determined. She says a tentative deadline is to have the monitors online by August 1.
Porter says the monitors should be gathering data for around a year as a first step in the research process for this project.
