TueWhen Emani Dorival moved to Seaford, Delaware, she was greeted with a terrible stench. The smell came from the rows and rows of chicken coops that house thousands of birds and are located next to mobile home parks, churches and single-family homes in this predominantly rural area.

“It’s like feces mixed with rotten eggs,” said the Haitian native. “It’s part of the environment. People get used to it. I can’t get used to it.”

Seaford is located on the Delmarva Peninsula, a region that annually produces billions of pounds of chicken meat for America’s dinner tables. But all this meat production has a dirty legacy, represented not only by the pairs of ammonia storage dumped by poultry farms, but also by the hundreds of thousands of tons of bird droppings, sludge, eggshells and other detritus generated annually.

A new industrial use for chicken waste is currently being considered, but this could create new problems for the working rural region: a planned large-scale biogas plant will convert 250,000 tons of chicken waste into methane and other by-products annually. Environmental and human rights groups have disputed the plan, saying it would increase air and water pollution and pose a significant health risk to nearby residents, many of whom are black or immigrants from Haiti and Latin America who speak little English.

Dorival, a family nurse practitioner who runs two clinics in the region that cater mostly to immigrant poultry workers, questioned why the proposed biogas system was planned close to home. “In my opinion, every person should have the right to clean air, water and food, and he does not need to fight for this right,” she said.

The planned Seaford Bioenergy Innovation Center will be built on a 225-acre site where Bioenergy Devco, a potential biogas plant owner, is currently composting. The hotel is surrounded by wetlands, freshwater ponds and residential areas, including a mobile home park within walking distance.

The question of what to do with all the poultry waste in the region is already facing the local population. Currently, manure is often applied to fields as fertilizer, but this creates environmental problems because manure contains nitrogen and phosphorus, which can drain into waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay, and are harmful to fish and crabs.

The proposed biogas plant’s proximity to the region’s waterways, as well as black and immigrant communities, also worries local environmentalists. The Delaware chapters of the ACLU and NAACP were among those who applied. complaint with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year, alleging that the local government discriminated against residents of color by not translating educational materials, not offering opportunities for public participation, and not accepting residents who do not have internet access. The complaint was initiated by the Socially Responsible Agriculture project.

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control declined to comment. A Sussex County spokesperson said the county does not comment on pending or active legal issues. In response to questions about its plans at Seaford, Bioenergy Devco, which is not named in the EPA complaint, said it was “committed to keeping our community informed about the site,” citing a public document it submitted during the permit process. . He also encouraged residents to attend his events.

According to the American Biogas Council, an industry trade association, there are about 2,300 biogas systems in operation in the US. While most systems recycle wastewater or operate in landfills, about 300 are located on farms. In North Carolina, residents filed a civil rights complaint against one such project, arguing that a plan to convert pig waste into biogas would pose a pollution risk to nearby black and Hispanic communities. And in California, groups are fighting biogas production at industrial dairy waste plants near low-income, predominantly Hispanic communities in the San Joaquin Valley.

Biogas plants present various potential risks to the environment. Such systems can emit greenhouse gases and threaten water supplies. Biogas is also potentially explosive.

Bioenergy Devco estimates that the new biogas system at Seaford will result in chicken waste being trucked to the plant nearly 200 times a day. The methane produced at these facilities will also then be transported as compressed gas to a regional gas pipeline, and excess wastewater will be diverted for treatment and discharge into a nearby river. Residents are concerned about this near-constant flow of heavy vehicles.

“They’re trying to put them in places where they think people don’t care,” said Leon Lofland, 71, a black truck driver who lived in Sussex Manor, a mobile home park that spanned dozens of trailers about half a mile away. from the proposed biogas system within a decade.

Lofland opposes the biogas plant. “They don’t show us any respect,” he said.

His neighbor Maria Celios, 32, lives with her four children and her husband in a three-room mobile home in the park. Outside her trailer, a pink toy car was parked by a tree, and a pink scooter lay on the lawn. Her husband has been fixing a tire on a car he uses to transport workers to and from a nearby poultry farm, the Mexican immigrant said, speaking in a mixture of Spanish and English. She said she was particularly concerned about the increase in truck traffic.

“I don’t want trucks on my street because of my kids,” Celios said, recalling a child being hit by a car a few years ago on a busy street next to a park. She said government officials were disrespectful by not meeting with the public to explain the plan. “We are immigrants, but we have rights,” she said.

On a nearby street, Sharon Smith, a black woman, 48, who works in a container manufacturing plant, wondered if the new facility would pollute the water. “I don’t think I want it because I don’t want them to spoil my water,” she said, noting that she wants to learn more about this plant.

IN environmental assessment The paid Bioenergy Devco found that the facility would not cause significant air or water pollution. Environmental groups, however, say the company’s application for the permit is incomplete, inconsistent, incoherent and legally dubious. They say anaerobic digesters have been shown to contribute to nitrate pollution, which can seep into groundwater; that converting biogas to methane will lead to emissions that will affect air quality and contribute to the climate crisis; and that the approximately 60,000 gallons of sewage generated each year would add to the pollution of an already distressed river.

Michael J. Kliman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis, who has researched the air quality implications of biogas production and use, said after examining the plans that they appear to “appropriately address all air-related issues.” and water pollution.

“Obviously it will be an industrial facility, but I see no immediate reason to be concerned that it will worsen air or water pollution in the nearby region,” he added.

“It can be done with minimal environmental impact if it is designed and operated correctly,” he said in an email. “But with a better planning process, this facility could have been placed further away from residential areas.”

The surrounding community is within 5 miles of various identified sources of pollution, including hazardous waste and abandoned mines, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. V Blades groundwater superfund website runs along Seaford. Information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the population is at high risk of chronic disease and vulnerable to environmental risks.

Other residents of the Sussex Manor mobile home park said no government agency or Bioenergy Devco came to explain the plan to them. It was only in recent months that activists learned about this, although the plan was proposed back in 2020.

Dorival, a medical practitioner, said she has seen many people in her clinic with chronic conditions, including asthma among children and adults. She said patients who worked in poultry farms had already inhaled toxic fumes at work.

She argued that any new pollution caused by the new biogas system would simply exacerbate the environmental hazards that the people of Seaford were already exposed to. “These people are already in a vulnerable state,” she said.

On Tuesday, operators at a high-profile dementia care facility in Los Angeles were charged with elder abuse and other felony charges related to the death of an employee and thirteen residents in the early days of the pandemic.

Silverado Beverly Place, near the Fairfax area, specializes in caring for the elderly with Alzheimer’s and dementia and was the site of a COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020.

An employee and residents died during the outbreak, when 45 employees and 60 residents were infected, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. The operators of the facility were sued in civil court by the family of several residents and the deceased employee. The object was the subject of a 2020 Times investigation.

The facility was supposed to be closed to visitors, prosecutors said, when a patient from a New York psychiatric ward was admitted there. Silverado Beverly Place’s own protocols required it to keep anyone out of a high-risk area like New York City, which at the time was considered the epicenter of COVID-19.

Prosecutors say the patient was not tested for coronavirus when he was admitted to the hospital and developed symptoms the next morning. But after they tested positive, they were not placed in quarantine, according to the criminal charge.

The prosecutor’s office claims that the institution’s management did not block visitors who traveled within the country or abroad for 14 days to areas where cases of COVID-19 were confirmed.

“These careless decisions created conditions that unnecessarily exposed Silverado personnel and residents to serious injury and, unfortunately, death,” Dist. Atti This is stated in the statement of George Gascon.

The three managers were charged with 13 counts of felony endangering the elderly and five counts of misdemeanor resulting in death. The latest charges were brought in connection with the management of the company’s health and safety of employees. Lauren Bernard Shook, Jason Michael Russo, and Kimberly Cheryl Batrum were charged, along with Irvine-based Silverado Senior Living Management Inc.

Prosecutors say the New York City patient was admitted to Silverado Beverly Place for financial reasons.

Investigators from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health conducted a 2.5-year investigation into Silverado Beverly Place, whose parent company operates several health care facilities across the country.

An email to Silverado Senior Living Management asking for comment on the allegations received no immediate response.

Gascon also read out the names of the 14 dead during a press conference in downtown Los Angeles.

These nurses are Brittany Bruner-Ringo, Elizabeth Cohen, Joseph Manduke, Catherine Apotaker, Jake Khorsandi, Albert Sarnoff, Dolores Sarnoff, Myrna Frank, Frank Piumetti, Jay Tedeman, Luba Paz, Kay Kiddu, Richard Herman and Michael Horn.

Bruner-Ringo told her mother that the newly admitted patient was showing signs of illness – profuse sweating, a “productive” cough and a temperature close to 103 degrees, her mother told The Times.

“I said, ‘It’s definitely problematic,’” recalls Kim Bruner-Ringo, an experienced nurse in Oklahoma City.

The patient was so ill that Brittany Bruner-Ringo called 911 for an ambulance, but it was too late. In the days and weeks that followed, the virus spread throughout the facility.

According to her family, Bruner-Ringo stopped breathing on April 20, 2020 in the intensive care unit at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. she was 32

“I just prayed every day that Brittany could tell her own story,” her sister Breanna Hurd said.

Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Alan Eisner, who is not involved in the case, said the allegations are unique because they concern decisions made by senior care facility leaders in the early days of the pandemic.

“This is a once-in-a-generation pandemic,” Eisner said. “I don’t want to ignore all the people who died. But this is a high bar that prosecutors must prove and show that the institution is responsible for the death of all other patients and even a nurse.”

Jody Moore, an attorney representing seven clients who either became ill with COVID-19 or died in Silverado, said that by early 2020, the federal government had provided guidance to long-term care facilities on how to protect older residents, including screening and testing policies.

“It doesn’t make sense to say loved ones can’t get in, private caregivers can’t get in because their paperwork says we’re putting residents at significant risk by exposing them to what can enter through the front door.” Moore said. “What they let in through the front door was someone with dollars attached. And that’s what’s really egregious misconduct here.”

Helena Apotaker received an email from the institution in the early days of the pandemic informing her that she would not be able to visit her mother Katherine. The announcement said the facility is being closed for the safety of elderly residents.

“No one was allowed in,” Apotaker told The Times. “They were going to protect our loved ones. This was their top priority. Well, not 30 days later, I think they lost their top priority.”

According to Apotaker, her mother had early stages of Alzheimer’s but was generally in good health. After her mother tested positive for COVID-19, Apotaker placed her mother in hospice and was finally allowed to visit in person.

“I was in the building with my mother for a week when she died,” Apotaker said. “I can’t imagine what it was like for everyone who had to watch their parents die through a window or watch their loved ones die on FaceTime.”

Upon hearing the news that Silverado Beverly Place was under criminal investigation, Apohacker was filled with a sense of justice because it seems that people have forgotten about the pandemic and the people who have died.

“But I remember that my mother died,” she said. “The only thing I had to hold on to was the thought that maybe one day I would get justice.”

Times Staff Writer Harriet Ryan contributed to this report.