By Jon Hurdle Special to Delaware Business Times Heather Swartley has been drinking bottled water for almost a year after being told that her private well was contaminated with pollutants from the nearby Mountaire Farms chicken plant outside of Millsboro in Sussex County.
Even though she now has clean, free drinking water, and has not suffered any health effects of high nitrate levels, Swartley is still worried about what she might have consumed before she discovered her well was contaminated.
The lawsuits, filed in June on behalf of about 780 plaintiffs, say Mountaire has been polluting local groundwater by spreading waste containing high levels of nitrates and other contaminants on nearby fields.
The other suit, also filed in Superior Court, said about 87 plaintiffs have unknowingly consumed “dangerous and polluted drinking water” which has endangered their health and reduced the value of their homes.
For its part, the company has admitted that its waste water treatment plant malfunctioned because of a buildup of solids, and that it is spending $40 million to fix the problem, but denies it is responsible for high nitrate levels in people’s wells.
That’s why some Millsboro residents fear the lawsuits could force the company to cut back in ways that would hurt the economy of the town of 4,300 residents.
“Obviously our first priority has to be safe water.” In the consent agreement, DNREC says “some but not all” private water wells near the plant have been found with nitrates above the state’s health limit of 10 milligrams per litre, and that even though Mountaire denies responsibility for the contamination, it has agreed as part of the settlement to provide affected residents with a connection to a central water supply system or to deep private wells.
While many residents along Jersey Road use the water jugs supplied by Mountaire, Alice Betts is quite happy with her well water and has been drinking it for more than half a century.
“I’ve been drinking it all my life and I raised my boys on it,” said Betts, 79, as her son killed a snake in her driveway.
“There is a problem and I think they work with it.