Poultry company plans to use waste to power new steam plant
DELAWARE - Poultry house wastes would power a new steam plant in Maryland west of Seaford under a plan announced today by Seaford-based Allen’s Hatchery Inc.Charles C. Allen III, president and chief executive officer of Allen’s, said construction on the 12,000-ton per year plant was expected to begin this fall and by September 2006 could replace about 15 percent of the steam source now used at JCR Enterprises Inc., a rendering plant in Linkwood, Md., east of Cambridge and west of Laurel.
Poultry companies and farmers have been working for years to find new uses for poultry litter, a combination of chicken manure and wood chips or similar bedding material. Driving the effort are concerns densely concentrated commercial animal farms produce too much animal waste for safe use as fertilizer, jeopardizing water quality.
The Delmarva Peninsula produced 561.2 million chickens valued at more than $1.7 billion last year, making broiler production the region’s largest farm industry. But farm operation also generated hundreds of thousands of tons of poultry litter.
Allen said the steam plant, endorsed by Maryland farm and environmental officials, would replace a source powered by natural gas at JCR Enterprises, a factory that renders unusable animal castoffs into proteins.
Source: DelawareOnline
27 October 2005
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