BALTIMORE — A battle between lawyers for environmentalists and the poultry industry continued today, as a long-running court case over water pollution came before a federal judge.
Assateague Coastkeeper Kathy Phillips was expected to testify about how she got the case started: By seeing a suspicious pile of what she thought was chicken manure on a farm and testing water in ditches surrounding the property.
A day earlier, lawyers for the Waterkeeper Alliance, farmers Alan and Kristin Hudson and chicken giant Perdue Farms opened what’s expected to be a three-week trial over whether the family farm is polluting the water and who is responsible.
Jane Barrett, a University of Maryland law professor representing the waterkeepers, argued that the case is about making sure rivers are clean so that people can enjoy them.
She mentioned several members of the Assateague Coastal Trust who care deeply about the Pocomoke River and the Chesapeake Bay and would be harmed by pollution from farms: A mom who won’t take Girl Scouts out on the water, a retiree who enjoys kayaking, a waterfowl guide who helps his waterman son.
Those people, Barrett said, are the reason lawyers are expected to spend three weeks in court discussing chicken manure and water pollution.
George Ritchie, a Baltimore attorney, countered that the real people who matter in the case are his clients: the Hudsons.
Ritchie recounted the lengthy history of the “real-life farm family” that’s now under immense stress due to the lawsuit.
Ritchie said the Hudsons — who have two kids and jobs besides their farming work — have been in “an almost three-year nightmare” since the lawsuit was filed.
In addition to alleging that chickens on the Hudsons’ farm are polluting the water, the Waterkeeper Alliance is trying to prove that some of the responsibility lies with Perdue Farms, the company that contracts the Hudsons to raise chickens.
The case was spurred by the coastkeeper, Phillips, who spotted a suspicious-looking pile on the Hudson Farm in late 2009.