Virginia Public Radio

New poultry houses in Accomack County near the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Pamela D’Angelo

Big poultry on the DelMarVa Peninsula began by accident when  homemaker Cecile Steele was shipped 500 chicks to raise instead of the 50 she ordered. She kept them, made a profit and ordered a thousand the next year.

And so, an industry was born and has been growing ever since.

But the hundreds of thousands of tons of manure produced each year so close to the Chesapeake Bay worries residents of Virginia’s Eastern Shore as Pamela D’Angelo reports.