The Dark Side of Kentucky: Krishtine de Leon Reports on Tyson Chicken Houses

Lee Dew is project director for the Sierra Club's Western Kentucky Water Sentinels, a group of citizen volunteers in Owensboro who test the state's water systems and farms three times a year to check for herbicides, bacteria and other pollution. "Aside from Alaska," Dew says, "Kentucky has more miles of waterway than any other state." Water Sentinels have found up to forty to fifty truckloads of manure from chicken farms dumped next to drainage ditches leading to open water sources, and seventy-five percent of the water systems monitored by the group have tested positive for high levels of E. coli, a bacteria that can cause severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and even death. (In a recent outbreak of E. coli last fall, spinach contaminated with the bacteria infected more than 200 people, killing three.) In addition, Water Sentinels have found local waterways spiked with dangerous levels of nitrogen and phosphorus -- chemical waste that is common in industrial chicken farms.

Dew and other citizens are fighting to put a stop to the pollution. Dew's wife, Aloma, has put together a "Tour de Stench," driving people in vans throughout western Kentucky so they can see for themselves how factory farms have saturated the countryside and decreased the quality of life for rural residents. "Many chicken growers don't live around their chickens," says Dew. "They make their employees live around them." Working with the Sierra Club, Dew and other residents sued Tyson Foods and held it accountable for the toxic ammonia emissions from its operations. The case was settled when the company agreed to pay $500,000 to monitor air quality and spend $50,000 planting trees to act as filters for the air between its poultry operations and surrounding homes.

Tyson says its strives to comply with all environmental regulations, adding that the farmers it pays to raise the chickens are ultimately responsible for waste disposal. "The independent producer has long had responsibility for the litter," says spokesman Gary Mickelson. "Tyson Foods works with the producer to promote proper management practices, and Tyson technical advisers typically visit the farms on a weekly basis."

But residents in Kentucky say the pollution is getting worse. Tyson's growers, they report, are disposing of chicken carcasses by burning them in huge piles, creating fumes that can be smelled for miles.

Bernadine Edwards is all too familiar with the stench. Her son is a grower for Tyson operating his own houses -- and her own home is surrounded by 108 poultry operations within a two-mile radius. In 1999, her husband died from emphysema -- a condition she believes was exacerbated by the burning of brush to clear swaths of land for the industrial farms. The farm next door planted two rows of trees to filter the noxious air drifting over the property where her husband was born, and now lies buried, but the trees are barely knee-high.

"I used to barbecue and have the grandkids play in the yard," says Edwards. "Because of the flies and nauseating smell, we can't do that no more."

NOTE: We sent members of the I'm From Rolling Stone cast into the field to document America's eco-disasters. The result is a series of four reports from around the country. See a full-index of their work and tell us what you think here.